Logical Fallacies: Funny Material

I forgot to post this when it was forwarded to me about two weeks ago by Ted Poston.

Ad Hominem:
This is the best logical fallacy, and if you disagree with me, well, you suck.

Appeal To False Authority:
Your logical fallacies aren't logical fallacies at all because Einstein said so. Einstein also said that this one is better.

Appeal To Emotion:
See, my mom, she had to work three jobs on account of my dad leaving and refusing to support us, and me with my elephantitis and all, all our money went to doctor's bills so I never was able to get proper schooling. So really, if you look deep down inside yourself, you'll see that my fallacy here is the best.

Appeal to Fear:
If you don't accept Appeal to Fear as the greatest fallacy, then THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON. Do you want that on your conscience, that THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON because you were a pansy who didn't really think that Appeal to Fear was worth voting for, and you wanted to vote for something else? Of course not, and neither would the people you let die because THE TERRORISTS WILL HAVE WON.

Appeal To Force:
If you don't agree that Appeal to Force is the greatest logical fallacy, I will kick your ass.

Appeal To Majority:
Most people think that this fallacy is the best, so clearly it is.

Appeal To Novelty:
The Appeal to Novelty's a new fallacy, and it blows all your crappy old fallacies out the water! All the cool kids are using it: it's OBVIOUSLY the best.

Appeal To Numbers:
Millions think that this fallacy is the best, so clearly it is.

Appeal To Tradition:
We've used Appeal to Tradition for centuries: how can it possibly be wrong?

Argumentum Ad Nauseam:
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.
Argumentum ad nauseam is the best logical fallacy.

Begging The Question:
Circular reasoning is the best fallacy and is capable of proving anything.
Since it can prove anything, it can obviously prove the above statement.
Since it can prove the first statement, it must be true.
Therefore, circular reasoning is the best fallacy and is capable of proving anything.

Burden Of Proof:
Can you prove that Burden of Proof isn't the best logical fallacy?

Complex Question:
Have you stopped beating your wife and saying Complex Question isn't the best fallacy?

False Dilemma:
I've found that either you think False Dilemma is the best fallacy, or you're a terrorist.

False Premise:
All of the other fallacies are decent, but clearly not the best as they didn't come from my incredibly large and sexy brain.

Gambler's Fallacy:
In all the previous talks about this subject, Gambler's Fallacy won, so I just know the Gambler's Fallacy is going to win this time!

Guilt By Association:
You know who else preferred those other logical fallacies?
*(insert pictures of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot here)*

Non Sequitur:
Non Sequitur is the best fallacy because none of my meals so far today have involved asparagus.

Post Hoc/False Cause:
Since I've started presuming that correlation equals causation, violent crime has gone down 54%.

Red Herring:
They say that to prove your fallacy is the best requires extraordinary evidence, because it's an extraordinary claim. Well, I'd like to note that "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence" is itself an extraordinary claim.

Relativism:
Well maybe all those other fallacies are the best for you, but to me, the relativist fallacy is the greatest logical fallacy ever.

Slippery Slope:
If you don't like Slippery Slope arguments, you will do poorly in class, drop out of school, commit crimes, go to prison, and die of AIDS.

Special Pleading:
I know that everyone is posting about their favorite fallacies, but Special Pleading is out-and-out the best, so it should just win with no contest.
(Credit should go to Brian McGroarty who compiled this list, which I subsequently received via e-mail fwd.)

Update #1: Steven DenBeste makes a small correction to the Gambler's Fallacy, and adds a few good ones of his own, including (look for his blog entry "20060908.1240"):

In all the previous talks about this subject, Gambler's Fallacy lost, so I just know the Gambler's Fallacy is going to win this time because it's the Gambler's Fallacy's turn to win!
And,

If you agree with me that Appeal to Flattery is the greatest fallacy, it shows that you are intelligent and good looking and really good in bed. And a snappy dresser.

If you don't agree that Appeal to Pity is the greatest fallacy, think how it will hurt the feelings of me and the others who like it!

It's obvious that Bandwagon is going to win as the greatest fallacy. You wouldn't want to be one of the losers who choose something else, would you?

I just did a poll of all the people in the "Biased Sample Fan Club" and 95% of them agree that Biased Sample is the best fallacy. Obviously it's going to win.


Update #2: Mike Williams formulates a better version of the Complex Fallacy question.

Update #3: Justin Weinberg adds a few more of his own to the earlier list. He also notes, "P.S. The equivocation (below) is on 'is' -- some people have trouble spotting that."

Appeal to Ignorance:
No one has been able to prove that another fallacy is better than Appeal to Ignorance, so it must be the best.

Composition:
Each of the other fallacies suck. The Fallacy of Composition is therefore better than the whole lot of them combined.

Division:
This is the best list of fallacies. It follows that there could be no better description of the Fallacy of Division than this.

Equivocation:
The best fallacy is on this list.
Equivocation is on this list.
Therefore, the best fallacy is equivocation.

The Fallacy Fallacy:
Some have argued that the Fallacy Fallacy couldn't be the best fallacy because some arguments for it being the best fallacy are themselves fallacious. Clearly, this is a fallacious argument, from which we can only conclude that the Fallacy Fallacy is indeed the best fallacy.

False Analogy:
Just as the jelly donut is the best donut, so too is False Analogy the best fallacy.

Hypostatization (personification):
Go, Hypostatization Fallacy, you can do it! If you just try hard enough you can be the best fallacy there is! Oh come on now, don't look at me like that.

Use/Mention:
If I mention the idea that "the use/mention fallacy is the best fallacy" then the use/mention fallacy is the best fallacy.

The link was from here.

New Draft on Virtue Epistemology

I've got a new version--the first full version--of my paper "Realizing Virtue: A Unified Virtue Epistemology."

Here's the abstract:

In this paper I will offer a sketch of an account of knowledge which seeks to unify a number of disparate elements the inclusion of which I assume to be a desideratum of a theory of knowledge. The device I will utilize to achieve this unity-in-diversity is that of a functional property—a property multiply realizable in widely varying realization bases. The essential idea is that the property warrant is a functional property: that which epistemizes true belief, that which turns mere true belief into knowledge. The ability of functional properties to be realized in diverse ways provides the flexibility to bring together all the items we want to fall under the concept knowledge.

I go on to pursue the creditable true belief proposal and distinguish between reflective knowledge--where the property that realizes creditiblility is one which entails the property has consciously thought about it--and unreflective knowledge where it does not.

New to the creditibility account is a larger role for deontology. For example, Mr. Truetemp (naive version) doesn't have any kind of knowledge because the discredit for unjustified belief swamps the credit for true belief. No need to advert to confounding notions like safety.

I think I've managed to have the most inclusive account yet (you can judge if that's good or bad!).

It's posted here:
http://www.Trent.Dougherty.net/Philosophy.htm

Putting some things together on epistemic value.

So in two posts below I've asserted

(VI) Cognitive acts which are *guided by* ideals are more valuable than cognitive acts which merely go *according to* rules.

and tried to say something about what I mean.

The original context was to underwrite the following value judgement in epistemology:

(TD1) Consciously inferred beliefs are more intrinsically epistemically valuable than basic beliefs.

The premise which gets us from (VI) to (TD1) is something like

(L) Conscious inference is guided by ideals and basic beliefs are not.

The conclusion I'd like to draw is parallel to that others--especially Jon Kvanvig--have drawn about knowledge and other states: roughly, let's focus on what's really valuable. I'm saying that just as epistemic virtues are arguably more valuable than knowledge and so deserve a greater share of the attention of epistemologists, likewise inferentially justified beliefs are more valuable than basic justified beliefs and so deserve a greater share of the attention of epistemologists.

Foundationalists have spent waaaaaaaaay too much time in my opinion on trying to come up with theories of justification for perceptual beliefs. The dilemma is always the same: either you intellectualize justified belief by saying that it takes second-order thought to have justified perceptual beliefs and thus rule out lots of simple kinds of justified belief which is mostly "autonomic" or you let in any old autonomic belief and suddenly it looks like clairvoyants have justified beliefs. The literature is as thick as the Gettier literature from the 70's.

When an inference is justified is in fact enough trouble in its own right, as illustrated by "Carroll's Paradox" illustrated by Carroll's story--published in Mind--"What the Tortoise said to Achilles." This is a subject to which I hope to return with something useful to say.

Keywords: epistemic value, value-driven epistemology, Jon Kvanvig, inference, Lewis Carroll

Giving Some Account of "Value" for Value-driven Epistemology

I just proposed the following principle:

(VI) Cognitive acts which are *guided by* ideals are more valuable than cognitive acts which merely go *according to* rules.

So I need to say what it means.

Let's keep cognitive acts fairly broad and natural. Though I think the notion is broader, it's probably wise to restrict scope to the token I'm most interested in: conscious inferences.

Rules I don't have much to say about yet, but we can probably passably define ideals as rules one consciously endorses.

"According to" I don't have much to say about yet, but perhaps it can be defined in terms of "guided by".

The first step would be to give us a toy theory to Chisholm on. Say that

(G1) S is guided by rule R (hopefully no vicious circularity here) just in case (i) S consciously considers R, and (ii) intends to follow R.

The first thing that we should probably relativize the notion to the intended subject of discourse.

(G2) S is guided by rule R in making inference I just in case (i) S consciously considers R, (ii) S makes I, (iii) S intends to follow R in making I.

I'm taking consciously considering as a basic notion. Likewise for making an inference (not because it's trivial, but because its natural), and I suppose I'll have to take intending to do M for the sake of E as basic as well. I'm OK with all this at this point.

The big question is what kind of value we're talking about here. I see no way to avoid--indeed I want to endorse--that there are various kinds of irreducible intrinsic value. You'll want to know "value for what" or "for whom" or "according to what scale" and I've got not much to say there. The best I can do--and you may not think it much--is to advert to a traditional Aristotelian notion of orders of function like the "Porphyrian Tree".

Plants are of more value than rocks because they have all the value of composite material objects plus the value added by organic unity constituting a life. Animals have all this value plus the value added by the ability to represent the world in some kind of internal mental system. Humans have all this plus the added value of being able to reflect consciously upon it and represent even representations (all the way up).

Whatever kind of value this is--and I'm endorsing that there is this kind of value--it is the kind of value I have in mind. If great-chain-of-being-value weren't so cumbersome I'd be fine with that. Calling it "metaphysical value" makes it sound too "Continental". I'd like to call it "organic value" I think. I don't have much (more?) illuminating to say about it.

I don't know if most other value-driven epistemologists think the relative value of epistemic states are a special kind of purely *epistemic* value or not. At any rate, I do not. Perhaps a values epistemologist could take something like reflection to be a basic epistemic value and then remain agnostic about where such values come from or how they fit into a greater system of value. Perhaps some just think there's nothing more than conventional instrumental value at stake. For my own part I think of the relative value of epistemic states as arising out of what kind of organic value they happen to instantiate.

For the sake of ease of discussion let me call the kind of value exemplified when epistemic states exemplify organic value "intrinsic epistemic value". The reason I favor this term is that I think it aptly distinguishes the subject from means-end value in getting to the truth which would be well-represented by reliability. The main problem is that Chisholm has a notion of the value of epistemic states which could reasonably go by this name. However, I'm going to stick with my terminology in part because I have an eye on explicating just what Chisholm had in mind.

Keywords: value, epistemic value, value-driven epistemology

Conscious Knowledge vs. Unconscious Knowledge

During the discussion of knowledge-how and knowledge-that, we focused on an example like that of my daughter below. Because of the difficulties in stating what propositional knowledge she acquired and when she acquired it, Rich said today that the main subject of epistemology--at least this course--was knowledge at the conscious level.

Perhaps I'm reading this wrongly, but it seems that the question which drives the engine of architectural epistemology--foundationalsm v. coherentism; internalism v. externalism, etc.--and the discussion in Rich's book--is the status of empirical beliefs. But empirical beliefs are almost always unconscious.

Having said this, most of my epistemological inquiries focus on the conscious level and you might even say that what I'm interested in is the justification of *inferences* (Fumerton talks this way a lot). I'm not even sure the rationality of basic beliefs or empirical beliefs is rightly treated in anything very similar to the the rationality of inferences.

To look at it from another angle, it's not clear to me that basic beliefs can have as much value as non-basic beliefs, at least *conscious* non-basic beliefs (unconscious inference is something I'd like to know more about, but I'd make the same kind of value judgement). The reason, very roughly, is that in making conscious inferences we are guided by an ideal.

Basic beliefs and unconscious inferences might go *according to* a rule, but they are not *guided by* rules in the way that conscious inferences are. I've been assuming the following thesis which might be even more controversial than I guess:

(VI) Cognitive acts which are *guided by* ideals are more valuable than cognitive acts which merely go *according to* rules.

This begins to change the subject a bit, so I'll try to make (VI) more clear in a separate post.

Keywords: basic beliefs, rationality, foundationalism, rules, rule-following, epistemic value, value-driven epistemology.

Is knowing-how reducible to knowing-that?

This question came up in Rich's Epistemology survey which I'm auditing this semester.

One suggestion, the one I'm *inclined* to endorse--for various reasons that may be revealed--is that all knowledge-how *can* be reduced to knowing-that. Since we shouldn't postulate kinds of knowledge without necessity, we shouldn't endorse irreducible knowledge-how unless there are cases of putative knowing-how which we can't reduce to knowing-that.

A common objection to the reduction is something about ineffability. Knowing-how often seems incommunicable.I think this objection can largely be handled by the use of demonstratives. For example, by daughter, who just went off training-wheels this past weekend, knows that [When I move like this, the bike goes like that.] The referents of the demonstratives will be very hard to articulate, but this doesn't stop the knowledge from being propositional knowledge.

Furthermore, it should be remembered that many of our beliefs are automatic and yet still "propositional beliefs". I don't have a clear conception of what information is, but I think it's surely intimately related to propositional content. Minimally, I think any item of information will entail some proposition (it would be nice if information just were propositions, but I haven't thought about it hard enough to make that assertion).

There's little doubt that there is--to steal a phrase from Dretske--a "flow of information" going on in her cognitive system while she's riding her bike. Some of these will be hosted affirmatively or negatively, so I think we've got propositional knowledge here and I see no reason yet to think anything else is necessary.

Keywords: epistemology, knowledge, know-how, Richard Feldman, factual knowledge, reduction, information.