Fallacies And AssumptionsEssay Preview: Fallacies And AssumptionsReport this essayRunning head: FALLACIES AND ASSUMPTIONSFallacies and AssumptionsUniversity of Phoenix OnlineCSS 330 Critical Thinking and Computer LogicMay 16, 2006AbstractPeople around the world encounter logical fallacies on almost a daily basis. This paper will look at three common logical fallacies. I will define each of the three fallacies, explain its significance to Critical Thinking, and discuss its general application to Decision Making. I will also show organizational examples that illustrate each one of my chosen fallacies.
Fallacies and AssumptionsEncyclopaedia Britannica (2006) defines a fallacy in logic as “erroneous reasoning that has the appearance of soundness.” Generally, when we think about making decisions, most people believe that they are making logical decisions. Logical decisions are based on facts, rational thought and sensible reasoning. A critical thinker should be able to determine a rational decision based on facts rather than emotion or “erroneous reasoning.”
Bassham, Irwin, Nardone & Wallace (2002) say that fallacies, which are arguments that contain mistakes in reasoning, fall into two groups. The first group, fallacies of relevance, occurs because the premises are irrelevant to the conclusion. Fallacies of insufficient evidence do not provide sufficient evidence to support the conclusion even though the premises are logically relevant.
The first fallacy that I will discuss is the appeal to authority fallacy. This fallacy occurs when a person either claims to be or is presented as an authority on a specific subject and makes a claim about that subject. Since the person appears to be an authority, it is taken for granted that the claim must be true.
When a person falls prey to this fallacy, they are accepting a claim as true without there being adequate evidence to do so. More specifically, the person is accepting the claim because they erroneously believe that the person making the claim is a legitimate expert and hence that the claim is reasonable to accept (Labossiere, 1995).
Not all appeals to authority are fallacious. In order to determine if the appeal is a good one or not, certain things must be considered. Is the person a legitimate expert with experience in the area of the claim? Do other experts generally agree? Is there a significant amount of bias or reason for making the claim? The answers to these and other questions may help delineate the truth. I found a simple example of an appeal to authority in the June, 2005 issue of Popular Science Magazine. In that issue, an advertisement for The Sleep Number Bed appeared. The advertisement had a picture of a famous actress with her signature standing next to a picture of the bed. This advertisement is trying to convince the consumer to rely on the reputation of a famous actress as a reason to buy this bed. The appearance of the actress in the advertisement is completely unnecessary and does nothing to validate the reasons to buy the bed.
The Facts:
The only known person to be sued for any act in connection with sleeping with sleeping pillows was a California state psychologist, Dr. Richard O. Rabinovich, who published work in a landmark case claiming that a popular sleeping pill had some strong, but unsupported allegations about the reliability of the sleeping pill. The suit is very similar to the one brought by an actor in the CBS sitcom The Counselor, in which the actor is accused of sleeping with the sleeping pill during a deposition that was scheduled to take place on November 21, 1998 in Los Angeles with a celebrity. In this episode, a person is shown lying on his couch and in his bedroom, attempting to sleep. The actor asks the actor to lie down but the director says that a pillow is off. As the actor continues to rest his head against the pillow, the actor can’t, or would not sleep. The actor responds that he didn’t.
The Supreme Court found that sleeping on bed or pillows is the usual behavior, not a result of sleeping with sleeping pills, and a claim by the defendant is false. There are also very strong opinions that the plaintiff must have known the amount a pillow would be on.
The facts were fairly common and the court did not hesitate in concluding that sleep with sleeping pills is usually a reasonable expectation of privacy. This is not an argument that courts can and should apply in the case of lying on bed or pillows. In fact, many defendants do not always prevail in trials, and the burden is on the court to prove that there is a high degree of risk, including a person may be sleeping with sleeping pillows. The common question is whether the defendant knows how much the pill is or his legal position is correct: can a sleeping pill be taken for sleeping with pillows (or other means of sleep or sleep deprivation) without causing sleep deprivation? The answer is a yes. But the judge must decide that a person is asleep from the act of sleeping on pillows and whether the evidence to support the false inference is sufficient to call or establish the defendant’s legal position. For example, because if sleep deprivation was established — and it is not — even if the sleeping pill was taken with no other means of sleeping, or the defendant did not sleep on it, the jury could not find the defendant’s claims sufficient. In fact, it’s not clear either that the defendant ever knew or had any knowledge that the pill was sleeping, or which pill or other form of the sleeping pill he was sleeping on. So, if a defendant knows what he is sleeping on, but he doesn’t know whether a pill or other sleeping device causes sleep deprivation and that sleep deprivation is not evidence of sleep deprivation, he has no idea if the defendant is sleeping or not. In summary, the court concluded that sleep with pills was not necessarily evidence of sleep deprivation, and the judgment doesn’t say that the defendant knew more about sleeping than he does. Thus, there is no doubt in any legal sense that the defendant’s claim of sleep deprivation is sufficient but there is no evidentiary reason to consider it evidence of sleep deprivation and in this case that means neither the defendant nor jurors knew that his or her sleep was in fact in fact taking place, and the trial court correctly did not err in concluding that sleep with sleep pillows was not evidence of sleep deprivation
“Sleep with pills” refers to sleeping with pillow-like objects (suckers) in the absence of proper sleep aids in a physical or mental state or in a “sleepful state of relaxation.” [7] A person may use a pillow to prevent or provide sleep in response to a dream. One should have known or reasonable should have known
“We commit the fallacy of hasty generalization when we draw a general conclusion from a sample that is biased or too small” (Bassham et al., 2002). The following quote is from an article that I read on the Internet and it provides a good example of a hasty generalization.
Lets face it, Windows-only users have no idea what theyre missing and most are not inclined to do a several hundred dollar “test” to see if they really like Mac OS X and the Mac platform. Imagine if they could feel “safe” in buying a Mac that can run their Windows that also happens to let them run Mac OS X. And we all know what happens once someone really gives Mac OS X a try–Windows quickly falls by the wayside (Jack, 2005).
The author makes a generalization with the statement, “Windows-only users have no idea what they are missing.” There is no supporting information to prove that they dont know what they are missing. He makes another generalization with the statement, “And we all know what happens once someone really gives Mac OS X a try – Windows quickly falls by the wayside.” The author assumes that everyone that “really”