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Introduction to Logical Fallacies
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0:02
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Hello everyone, my name is Dr. Jason Lepojarvi.
0:07
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: One of the things that I try to do in all my teaching, regardless of course, regardless of topic, is I tried to incorporate sort of intellectual sparring, if you will. And together, help train intellectual virtues and even moral virtues which is part of the university education.
0:36
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And one way to do this, to hone these transferable intellectual skills is to study fallacies, is to study bad logic, bad argumentation, as an indirect way of learning about good argumentation. So when you're good at detecting BS, you're more likely to avoid it yourself.
1:07
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Those of you who actually take courses with me, you have as an added, a special reason to pay attention to these fallacies that I'm about to introduce. And the reason, I'll reveal the reason at the very end.
1:26
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Whether you're studying Ideas of Love with me, or
1:32
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Cults / New Religious Movements, or Dimensions of the Paranormal, or the Chronicles of Narnia, or Women, Religion and Spirituality, or J.R.R. Tolkien and the Religious Imagination or whatever, Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Logical Fallacies is something that we'll be training throughout the course in every lecture, in fact, regardless of content. As I said, these are transferable skills that will great you greatly benefit you in and out of university.
2:11
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: What is an argument? Well, an argument is a proposition that consists of premises and conclusions. Conclusion is where you're striving towards. So premises A and B lead to C, which is the conclusion.
2:34
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Now a valid argument means an argument where the premises genuinely do result in the conclusion that has been offered. The conclusion
2:48
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: organically follows from the premises that that preceded it. That's a valid argument. It's interesting or important to realize that
3:03
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: you can have a factually incorrect argument, which is still valid. What this means is that one or several of the premises is actually not true. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: It's false factually. But if they weren't true your argument is valid. There is no logical contradiction or problem there. So that's a valid argument. A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises.
3:36
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So a sound argument is a stronger argument.
3:47
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or logically both valid and sound arguments are as strong,
3:53
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: but persuasively, the sound argument has more leverage because it's not built on false premises which can be pointed out.
4:08
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: There's a scholar by the name of Bo Bennett. I believe he's a psychologist and he's written a book called 300 fallacies or something like that. A I kind of tweaked one of the
4:27
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: ideas in that book, slightly changed it a little: "Expose an irrational belief, keep yourself rational for a day expose irrational thinking, keep yourself rational for a lifetime." Obviously this is a bit negatively expressed. You could, you could express it more positively as well.
4:52
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And I like to say love is not blind. So even in Ideas of Love, the course Ideas of Love. We look at arguments, love is not just about emotion. There are good and bad ideas about love.
5:10
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I've chosen
5:12
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: 20 most common fallacy. I mean, it could be 30, it could be 40. And by most commo I mean that
5:21
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: combined, these 20 probably make up about, I don't know, 70%, could be 50, it could 80, a significant portion of bad
5:34
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: argumentation that we witness on social media, even in our textbooks, even in the classroom. Speaking of the classroom,
5:46
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: professors are not infallible creatures. I mean, we make mistakes. Hopefully, more often than not, we don't do it on purpose. But we're not perfect. We're finite human beings. So it's good for everyone, students in particular, to
6:06
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: encourage, practice a posture of learning that is not naively credulous that believes on everything uncritically. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: On one hand, that's one extreme. But on the other hand is not categorically cynical either, disbelieving, distrusting everything. That's the opposite extreme. And both are inimical to learning.
6:35
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Here are
6:38
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: the first 10. As you can see, these are in alphabetical order. Here are fallacies 11 to 20. We'll look at these each one at a time.
6:52
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Starting with ad hominem or against the person. Many of these fallacies have Latin names.
7:01
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And it's not a coincidence. Medieval scholars, Scholastics
7:06
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: advanced our understanding of
7:11
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: logic quite a bit. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of fallacies that they coined and developed. So this is one, ad hominem, against the person. Other names
7:26
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: it's also known as personal abuse.
7:30
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Kind of smearing questioning motives, guilt by association. These are all types of ad hominem fallacies. And it means that instead of addressing the argument, critiquing the argument you attack the person making the argument. This is a form of lazy, very lazy reasoning. And
7:59
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: and it's something to be aware of. It's not just an
8:03
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: accident. It's kind of morally also questionable.
8:09
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Very smart people can do this out of ill will.
8:14
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Unlike some of the other fallacies, which are really, really hard to spot and avoid.
8:21
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This one isn't. It's very easy to avoid it. Here's an example.
8:26
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Only monks, nuns and other bigots believe there is any value in celibacy.
8:34
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Notice there's no argument against celibacy, just smearing the people who might believe it. And if you're one of these people, Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: you're guilty by association with these monks, nuns and other bigots. Here's another example. Why would you believe in UFOs? So thinking of cults, new religious movement, only a Texan would be such a fool.
9:03
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Yet another. Why would you read Narnia? juvenile literature written by a Christian bigot. By the way, big, it doesn't mean anything usually. It's just a label.
9:18
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And finally: I totally disagree with your reading of The Hobbit. What would you know as an atheist or a Catholic? Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Tolkien was a Catholic author. And so, an uncharitable reader might say, you have to have faith in order to appreciate it fully or, alternatively, uncharitable atheist reader might say, well,
9:47
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: your religious beliefs are distorting your pure appreciation of the works and you're reading into it meanings that aren't there.
10:00
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Secondly, this is appeal to common belief, also known as appeal to democracy, appeal to the masses, or the bandwagon fallacy, mob appeal as well.
10:15
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is the claim that
10:18
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: when most or many people in general, accept the belief is true, it's evidence for the claim being true. So, because many people believe it must be true. Because many people this believe it must be false.
10:36
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: It's pretty weak argument. Obviously, many people do believe in truths, but they're true regardless of the number of people that believe in it. So truth stands on its own terms, regardless of advocates.
10:55
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: How could you not believe in elves when millions of Tolkien fans believe in them? For example.
11:03
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The appeal to common belief or the mob appeal is a, it's a lazy form of thinking and a dangerous way to accept information. This is tricky because on one hand
11:16
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: trusting authority, experts in fields,
11:21
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: parents and so on, there's virtue in it. So I believe many, many things, not really because I necessarily understand them, or have proved them, but I trust the people who Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: present these things. Where, again, we're finite people. We cannot be intimately familiar with everything we believe in, although that is that is an incremental
11:47
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: pursuit or goal. History has shown that sometimes those who break away from common beliefs change history. That happens as well. There are multiple examples of masses believing literal falsehoods, and
12:08
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: insofar as they believe them, they wreak havoc. Eventually they're unlearned and and damages corrected.
12:19
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: But moving on.
12:20
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Appeal to emotion. Number three. This is known also as playing on emotions or sometimes emotional blackmail, which could be a form of, an instance of the more general fallacy.
12:38
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Now, it's important to remember that emotion is not bad and appealing to one's emotions, to the others emotions, has its rightful place. I mean, we're human beings not computers.
12:53
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: But notice the qualification in the description. When emotion is used in place of reason, in order to attempt to win the argument. It is a type of manipulation used in place of valid logic. And usually when logic or reason would lead to a different conclusion.
13:20
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: An example. You don't want to make me cry, do you?
13:26
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is a silly example but I once remember telling a person that I didn't like their habit of guilt tripping me. And the response was, stop it, or I'll cry.
13:41
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Here's another example. I have had an out of body experience, and you can either believe me or hurt my feelings.
13:51
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Tolkien suffered so much as a child, losing both his father and his mother before he was 10 imagine being that little boy his opinions about suffering are spot on.
14:07
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is very close to a different fallacy called argument from trauma, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
14:17
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Appeal to law. This is very common.
14:21
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And when obeying the law is assumed uncritically to be morally right without justification or when breaking the law is assumed to be morally wrong without justification. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So this is a confusion of the moral and the legal dimensions. Kind of collapsing them into one, that one being that legal dimension. So just because something is legal doesn't necessarily mean it morally morally wrong. We've seen many examples of
14:53
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: such in history and there may be many examples still prevalent in society today.
15:04
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And also just because something is illegal doesn't necessarily mean it's morally wrong. So you can have bad laws. Societies can criminalize things that aren't bad in themselves.
15:22
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And often do.
15:25
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Here's an example, obvious example, easy. I cheated on my partner or exam. Oh, we'll get off your moral high horse. It's not as if it's illegal. Okay. Cheating isn't illegal anymore and some societies, it still is.
15:44
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: But is it still may be morally wrong. And the same with cheating in exams or elsewhere.
15:53
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So I fabricated the ghost photo. Same thing. Get off your moral high horse.
16:02
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So CS Lewis agreed to marry Joy Davidman, despite not loving her romantically and living apart.
16:11
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Get off your moral high horse. This is historically true by the way. CS Lewis did agree to marry his wife before they were romantically involved in order to help her
16:24
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: stay in England. Today we would call this immigration fraud.
16:32
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Number five. Argument from offence or argumentum ad offendum. I just made that up. My Latin is rusty. Somebody could correct me. What's the correct Latin? Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is the fallacy when feeling offended is used to discredit the other person's argument. So it doesn't mean that you offend the other person. It means that you yourself are offended, and you take this feeling of offence as evidence for the other person being
17:07
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: wrong, when they may be wrong, or they may actually be right, and that's why you're offended.
17:14
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So you hurt my feelings, please apologize for being wrong. Basically, this is, this happens all the time. Or: The claim that suit superstition is prevalent in India is racist and super offensive. Take it back.
17:32
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or: Your claim that the majority of Tolkien readers are ignorant about religion is super offensive. Take that back.
17:43
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Number six, argument from trauma. Now this is a new one. I haven't included this before. And I'm still kind of developing the correct terminology and my understanding of this fallacy. I have checked the Latin, so it is argumentum ad calamitatem. This is close to the Stockholm fallacy,
18:06
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: which I made up from the Stockholm Syndrome.
18:12
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: You remember in the Stockholm Syndrome, the person being kidnapped falls in love with the kidnappers or becomes very sympathetic to them at least. And this happens, this is a psychological process that does happen from time to time.
18:31
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And
18:33
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: so we'll, we'll return to that. This is the false assumption - so the argument from trauma - is the false assumption that experiencing a traumatic event results in expertise of the causes of
18:49
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: hat event or experience.
18:54
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Appropriate and justified feelings do not necessarily translate into correct ideas of the causes of those feelings.
19:05
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The portion within the brackets is my attempt to describe the Stockholm fallacy, which is actually now that I think of it, a more general fallacy. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And the argument from trauma is perhaps one instance of this more general fallacy. So, just as in the Stockholm Syndrome, the person falls in love with a kidnapper who's shown them kindness and grace and warmth
19:39
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: so in a way, your positive emotions to that person may be justified and appropriate to some extent.
19:47
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: It results in, or you use this feeling as a justification for false beliefs about that person. So that they're good guy, and this is legal, or they should be doing this, or my parents should be paying them $10 million, or whatever.
20:04
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Appropriate and justified feelings don't necessarily translate into correct ideas of the causes of those feelings. Here's an example.
20:15
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I lived through a school shooting. So my thoughts on gun laws are informed.
20:23
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Obviously false. They may or may not be informed
20:28
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: depending on other factors, not the experience of living through a school shooting. That may inform it to some extent, but you may still be
20:41
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: predominantly wrong in your beliefs about effective gun laws.
20:47
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Okay, another example would be: I feel really terrible for people who experience racism. Therefore, I know how to combat racism.
21:00
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Well, you maybe you do or maybe you don't. Maybe your ideas of racism and how to combat it Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: are lopsided somehow, distorted somehow. That's a possibility. The fact that you Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: have justifiable and appropriate feelings of sympathy to people who have experienced racism, or if you have experienced racism, doesn't necessarily - it can - but doesn't necessarily mean that you have very clear or well thought out opinions about racism.
21:32
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Number seven, begging the question. This is easy. And most people recognize it immediately. It's circular reasoning, assuming the answer. You remember an argument consists of premises and a conclusion that follows it. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Well, begging the question or a circular argument is an argument where the conclusion is actually already assumed or hidden in one of the premises. An example is: The Bible says the Bible is true, so the Bible must be true.
22:07
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And it begs the question, well, how do you know that the Bible is true?
22:13
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The belief that the Bible is true is actually the starting point here, it's a hidden conclusion that is presented as a premise, but really isn't. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Another example would be: As a young man talking broke off his relationship with Edith, which he did, because they couldn't continue their relationship.
22:38
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is, this begs the question, I mean, why couldn't they continue their relationship? That's the whole
22:44
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: That's the whole that's the beef.
22:47
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Another example. I used to live in Tanzania for some time, and I remember going to the bank, which was closed and the glass door had a piece of paper on it.
22:58
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: That had the text: The bank is currently not open because it is closed. Manager.
23:08
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: True story.
23:12
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Number eight, bulverism. This has been coined by CS Lewis. Sometimes it's called the psycho-
23:21
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: genetic fallacy.
23:25
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: It's very close to poisoning the wells. So this is when
23:31
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: You jump over the difficult step of proving that someone is wrong to speculating about how the mistake came about. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So instead of doing the hard work of showing where the faulty argument is you start to psychoanalyze, you start to speculate about how they made that mistake in the first place,
23:55
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: a mistake you haven't proven exists. The name bulverism comes from the essay bulverism. There's a very good doodle video on online, which you can see. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And Ezekiel Bulver is the name, who realizes the power of this fallacy to manipulate conversation. Check it out. Here's an example: All white people are racist, but you just don't see this because you're white.
24:25
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Maybe all white people are racist, but that hasn't been proved.
24:31
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Rather that bit has been jumped over to speculate on why the other person is wrong. They're wrong because whatever reason. This is Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Close to the fallacy of unfalsiability, which has the 19th fallach. We'll get there soon. Here's another example: You are absolutely wrong. And it's big because you were never hugged as a child.
25:03
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Cherry picking, number nine. Known also as suppressed evidence or one sidedness or slanting or argument by half truth.
25:16
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: When only select evidence is presented in order to persuade the audience to accept the position and relevant counter evidence is withheld.
25:27
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The stronger the withheld counter evidence, the more fallacious the argument is. This is very difficult to spot sometimes unless you know more about
25:41
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: the topic of discussion than your friend or the presenter, or the professor, or the YouTube star, or the Instagram influencer, or whatnot. So it's very difficult to
25:58
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: expose someone who's cherry picking, especially the smaller the group is the easier it is to get away with this. And so that's why scientific discovery proceeds through
26:12
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: open discussion where a great many people can participate in the honing and the critiquing of the argument or the evidence.
26:25
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Here's an example.
26:28
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: CS Lewis gave 90% of his books sale profits to charity and went to church every Sunday. Therefore, he was always honest and forthcoming.
26:41
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Well, if you didn't know that… first of all, the first part is true. The premise is true. He did give
26:50
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Up approximately 90% of his book sell profits to charity, especially widows and and single mothers. And he did go to church every Sunday. But he wasn't, as a young man, always honest and forthcoming. We know this now. He could hide things. And as you know, he even
27:13
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: committed immigration fraud He was a partner in crime.
27:23
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Another example would be a Scientologist
27:27
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: who did the same.
27:30
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Whoever whoever that is. Or: Tolkien's essays are full of wit and charm and compassion. He was a charitable man, never irritable or captious.
27:44
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Again, pretty true, his essays are full of whip and charm and compassion and he was a charitable man, but he could be irritable and captious.
27:55
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And he had long spells of this foul mood sometimes. And you wouldn't know it unless you know much about Tolkien and you've read his letters, very personal records where he's forthcoming about these these flaws of
28:13
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: of his.
28:15
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I want to emphasize that the fallacy of cherry picking, like most of the fallacies,
28:22
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: isn't always morally reprehensible. I mean, thinking is difficult. Arguing is difficult. We don't always, probably usually don't, argue deliberately fallaciously, or use dubious tactics in our debates and disagreements.
28:43
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Much of it is just a result of the fact that thinking is difficult and we're finite human beings.
28:52
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And we have a lot to learn. So we need to be gracious towards others and to ourselves as well.
29:01
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Chronological snobbery is the second fallacy coined by CS Lewis. And this is the uncritical prejudice against the past in favor of the present or the future.
29:17
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Basically wisdom died yesterday. Now sometimes later is better, but this is the uncritical prejudice that this is always so. For example: That's so 20th century.
29:35
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The fact that something is 20th century doesn't mean in itself, but it's bad. I mean, it could be better than the 21st century, depending on other factors. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Another example would be: Tolkien working in the 20th century was a better philologist than his mentor, Professor Joseph Wright was, because Wright's literary theories literary theories were mainly from the 19th century.
30:04
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Obviously a bad example. He may have been a better philologist, but that cannot be solely or even primarily because
30:17
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: he was working in the 20th century.
30:25
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Now we've gone through the first 10 and we've got 10 more to go.
30:31
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: We'll start with 11, false dilemma, also known as the false dichotomy, either-or language, or black and white thinking. Very common and I'm sure you recognize it immediately. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: When only two choices are presented yet more exist or a spectrum of possible choices exist between two extremes. Either-or language.
30:59
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Variation of this fallacy would be false trilemma when you give three choices when more than three exist.
31:10
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Here's an example.
31:13
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I thought she was a good person, but then I found out that she was a Jew or Muslim or an atheist. As if you have to be one or the other, a good person or
31:26
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: a religious person. That's a false dilemma.
31:31
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or you're either for Gondor or against Gondor. Or the US or Canada. This is a either or fallacy, black and white thinking.
31:44
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Now, some time there actually is only two options. Sometimes you have to choose one of two or one of three. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The false dilemma is only a fallacy if there actually exists more than two or three or whatever. I remember a friend, an Iraqui friend, who was almost in his 20s, I'm exaggerating a little bit. My apologies.
32:12
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: When he learned that a Kurd, so a person from Kurdistan, Northern Iraq, doesn't mean idiot, as his father had taught him. So a Kurd was just as a label, a swear word. And then he realized that no actually, idiot and Kurd mean different things.
32:39
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Genetic fallacy, or the fallacy of origins, comes close to bulverism.
32:46
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is basing the truth claim of an argument on the origin of its claims or premises. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: In other words, if you know how a belief came to be, how it was originally developed, you'll be able to deduce whether it's true or false. Which is nonsense. An example: Tolkien was brainwashed as a child into believing God exists. Therefore God probably doesn't exist.
33:22
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The fact that someone is brainwashed to believing something that God exists or God doesn't exist, or that two plus two is four, doesn't mean that it's untrue.
33:35
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So you need to separate the truth. This is just an example.
33:41
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Number 13, no true Scotsman, or no true Christian as it sometimes called in Christian societies. When a universal claim, so "every" or "all", is refuted by a counter example, rather than conceding the point and revising your argument you dismiss the counter example on some arbitrary ground.
34:11
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: For example: No true Canadian is intolerant.
34:18
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Well then you point out, well, this person is intolerant and you reply, instead of modifying your claim and say, Well, usually Canadians aren't intolerant, or whatever.
34:30
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: You say, well, they must not be Canadian then.
34:34
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: There are many, many examples.
34:41
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: A very technical example comes from Calvinistic theology.
34:46
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Calvinists believe that a person who is saved in the spiritual sense can never lose their faith.
34:56
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And so if you do lose the faith, it kind of proves that you were never actually a Christian or saved to begin with. That's no true Scotsman.
35:09
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or: No true Tolkien aficionado likes Game of Thrones. Which is untrue. I have met him.
35:20
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Number 14, non sequitur, or that does not follow, invalid reference or derailment.
35:31
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is a really basic mistake and some of the previous fallacies that we've talked about
35:40
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: can
35:42
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: commit this fallacy
35:47
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: as well, or in addition to the two to a different - so the fallacies can be compounded, you can actually commit more than one fallacy at the same time. So this is when the conclusion doesn't actually follow from the premises. So an invalid argument. C does not follow from A and B. Very basic.
36:11
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: My favorite example and I always use this the laughing Buddha, which is a local bar in the city where I live in presently Sudbury, Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: my home, the laughing Buddha has the best beer in town and was voted number one in Northern Life, which is a newspaper, now discontinued. Therefore, the manager of laughing Buddha should run for mayor of Sudbury.
36:42
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Well,
36:45
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: The fact that you produce best beer in town, doesn't mean that you should run for mayor in Sudbury. Maybe some of you think that this is not a fallacy, but Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I won't argue with you. I'll just mention that I found out later that the manager of laughing Buddha, had actually not only run for mayor, hadn't not run for mayor but run for Parliament. But I assume that
37:10
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: he was basing his candidacy on other methods too.
37:16
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Number 15, poisoning the well. Which is easy. If you know what ad hominem, the first fallacy means, you know what poisoning the well means, because poisoning the well is a preemptive ad hominem attack against someone. Also called smear tactics, or his job, or discrediting.
37:38
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: That is you prime your audience, whether it's your classroom or whether it's your readership if you're a journalist, with negative information about the person in order to discredit their opinions.
37:55
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So take there's a presidential election or or whatever. And there's three candidates and as a journalist, if you're if you're an immoral journalist, you Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: start to write out right they hit piece where you just try and discredit one candidate so that their policies and opinions won't be taken seriously.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I hope I presented my pro-life position clearly. Now my opponent will try to refute my arguments by the same old fallacious, incoherent, illogical arguments we have heard all too often.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or I hope I have presented my case against telepathy. Now my opponent will try to refute my arguments by the same old fallacious, incoherent, magical thinking we have heard all too often. That's poisoning the well.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This should be a reduction to without the N.
38:58
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Reductio ad Hitlerum, argument to Hitler or argument from Hitle. Playing the Nazi card or the Hitler card. And this is an attempt to make an argument analogous with Hitler or Nazi Germany.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And I should add, make a
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: when the analogy is actually quite weak.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: For example: You have concerns about immigration. Well, so did people in Germany in the 1930s. Therefore you empathize with Nazi ideology.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: There's tons wrong with this argument, but one of them is argument to Hitler.
39:45
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is lately
39:48
I mean
39:50
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: It comes and goes. Sometimes it's overplayed too much and then you don't hear about it for a long time, then it comes back. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: It's important to know that it's not always a fallacy. So sometimes the analogies super strong and justified. Say, if Canada started building concentration camps for Jews, for example.
40:13
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: That's a red, real red flag. The fact that some people might be concerned over immigration, be the indigenous or not,
40:22
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: concerned over
40:25
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: non-indigenous immigration, or non-indigenous citizens concerned over Asian immigration or whatever, necessarily in itself doesn't mean that the people are racist. They may or they may not. But you can have justifiable reasons to have to have concerns about it.
40:50
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: An even more clever trick or tactic is the so called Nazi card card, which is second second level tactics. And this is a card that is often played after the Nazi card is played. So when somebody says, okay, you're a Nazi or this will lead to the Third Reich.
41:11
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And then a person replies well: oh you're playing that Nazi card. As an attempt to discredit them. Well, if the person playing the Nazi card actually had good reasons and justifiable reasons, if the analogy is actually pretty strong, then the Nazi card card
41:34
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: is an attempt to derail
41:38
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: the conversation.
41:43
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Slippery slope 17, also called the domino fallacy, or the edge of the wedge. When a relatively insignificant first event is suggested to lead to a more significant event, causing a domino effect with some horrible end.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: For example: If we legalize pot soon every student will come to class high.
42:10
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or: If we legalize magic mushrooms soon every student will join a cult.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or: If we legalize pipe smoking in classrooms, soon everyone will dress up as hobbits. These are all examples of of slippery slope. Again
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: sometimes the slope is really slippery, is very steep. It depends on the context. So if I tell my children, for example, Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: who are playing outside, and there's traffic, and I say, well, you know, be careful on ice, or you might fall and car might run over you. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And they reply, they wouldn't, they're four and six, well, maybe the six year old would,
42:54
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: They reply: Oh dad that's a slippery slope argument, that that'll never happen. Well, it's not. It's actually possible that that would happen. It's not unheard of that that happens. It happens all the time. But if I say something like
43:10
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: you know, don't play outside
43:14
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: No, don't jump around too much, or you might be hit by the helicopter rotors on their way to the local hospital or something. That's, it's very Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: improbable, to say the least. It's a slippery slope argument. Actually, I jumped over several of the stages, the helicopter realtors should be the very last, dramatic end result.
43:42
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Strawman fallacy, number eighteen. Very, very common. And again, not always done deliberately. Sometimes we commit it because we don't understand the other person. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And we misunderstand them. But sometimes we almost deliberately misunderstand them in order to win the battle. So substituting a person's actual argument with a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of the argument.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Which will be very easy, like a straw man, very easy to collapse, to push over. A real man would kind of push back, fight against your attempts to topple them.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: An example, an atheist says: I don't believe in a God who upholds morality. And a theist responds: so what you're saying is that there's no right and wrong that everything is permissible, including rape.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: No, that's, that's not their argument.
44:49
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: That's a distortion of what they actually believe. If you had a more nuanced conversation with lots of back and forth in a charitable spirit
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: you might be able to
45:04
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: critique the theists position and the atheistic position with a little bit more nuanced and precision.
45:16
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Okay penultimately, second to last fallacy. This is really difficult. This is really difficult to spot. It's called the fallacy of unfalsifiability or untestability or pseudo-theory. Now in science, a good theory,
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: or a theory that even merits the name theory,
45:41
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: is a theory that in principle could be disproven, could be proven false. There ought to be some criteria that, if they are met, the theory collapses. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: If there are no such criteria, if you literally cannot disprove and refute a theory or an argument, not because it's a very good argument but because it's an
46:11
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: unfalsifiable argument, then that should be a red flag that it's a pseudo theory. It's not really a theory. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: So this is confidently asserting a theory or hypothesis that cannot be proven true or false. It's assumed to be true, but you can't really disprove it which means you can't really prove it either, because there are no criteria.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: For example: We are systematically oppressed by structures in society or bike spirits in society that entirely escaped our notice.
46:57
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This, this may be true, but how would we know? If they escaped our notice. How would we prove that it's not true?
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: How would we prove that it's true? What are the criteria?
47:22
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Finally,
47:23
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: one of my favorite
47:27
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: fallacies. Whataboutism. Developed by the KGB in Soviet Russia.
47:34
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: You hear all the time, or whataboutery, or relative privation, is this close to the fallacies red herring and muddying the waters. Well, not quite. Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: This is the attempt to discredit someone's position or character by charging accusing them with hypocrisy and raising a different issue without actually refuting or disproving their argument.
48:04
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Oh, let's go straight to the example: Person A says: I worry about racism in society. And person B responds: Well what about free speech? What about.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: As, as if you can't worry about both free speech and racism simultanously, you can't have more than one valid moral concern. Obviously, obviously you can, and that that means, that's basically consistency.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Or alternatively, somebody says, Well, I worry about free speech in society and person B replies that well what about violence and
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: and so on.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Same mistake. The problem with this fallacy is that
48:59
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: and you see this on social media all the time, is that because it's so easy to accuse someone, you know, they are worried about something and you point out a horrific thing in a Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: silly example would be, well, I didn't like that the person slapped me and somebody says, Well, what about all the people who are being punched not slapped. Well yeah, punching is bad, but I still don't like the person slapping me. But back to social media.
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: We become so weary of accusations like
49:37
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: and we become so weary of this trick, tactic KGB tactic played on us that we quickly want to denounce everything just in case,
49:52
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: to make sure that nobody can accuse us of being sympathetic to whatever thing you forgot to denounce. And so we have these denouncement rites where everybody has to go and say that was bad. I mean, it's obvious that it was bad.
50:07
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: But it's important to say it so that you everybody knows that you are the good guy, and everybody knows that you belong to the right side and history. It's a moral posturing really. And it creates, and it's a lot of nonsense, no matter what side
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Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: commits it or where it happens.
50:29
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Whataboutism.
50:33
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: Finally, here are the 20 fallacies. And at the beginning, at the outset of this lecture this recording, I promised that I tell you why they're relevant to my students who take courses with me, classes with me.
50:48
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: What I like to do in all my classes is I like to deliberately commit a fallacy.
50:57
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: At least one.
50:59
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I mean, I may commit more than one fallacy, but only one of them is deliberate or usually.
51:08
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: I make mistakes. And I, you know, call me out on my mistakes. One of them will be deliberate.
51:15
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And I'll change it every time.
51:19
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: And the idea of this is for you to kind of
51:23
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: practice, like we said, practice, the, the right posture between two extremes, the extremes of naive credulity and categorical cynicism, pessimism, distrustfulness. You need to trust people. Life would be intolerable without trust. But uncritical trust sometimes can wreak havoc, lead to calamitous
51:54
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: effects. And so this will also help you become more aware of arguments and reasoning in your textbooks, not just in my classes, but in every class, Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: on social media and the newspapers, and lectures, in your conversations, in in your own essays, when you write essays. Little by little, your training these
52:20
Dr. Jason Lepojarvi: intellectual habits. Think of them as actual muscles, physical muscles. And you train them. You start with small weights. Little by little, you're able to lift larger weights, or train harder or longer, or stretch better, or whatnot. So think of intellectual virtues as muscles.
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