Witch Hunts Lecture 7
Friday, 29th September, 2006
Relevance and Presumption

Next Week:

Wednesday:  Quick and Dirty Guide to Political Philosophy
Friday:  Spring/Summer 1933

Validity and Soundness:
•	In an argument, if the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion, the argument is valid.
•	If the premises are true, and the argument maps meaningfully onto the world, the argument is sound.
•	An argument can be valid but unsound, it’s nonsense.
•	An argument cannot be unsound and valid…but it can be convincing.  There is often a fallacy involved.

Broad Categories:
•	Fallacies of Relevance
•	Fallacies of Presumption
•	(Fallacies of Ambiguity)
•	NOTE:  often, an argument can be charged with committing more than one fallacy, and sometimes the edges of the categories blur a bit.  It’s a judgement call which error is being committed.

Fallacies of Relevance:
•	DEF:  when an argument relies on premisses that are not relevant to its conclusion, and that therefore cannot possibly establish its truth, the Fallacy committed is one of relevance.

R1&2: Ignorance, Inappropriate Authority
•	Argument from Ignorance:  when it is argued that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not yet been proved false, or false because it has not yet been proven true.
•	Appeal to Inappropriate Authority:  when the appeal is made to parties having no legitimate claim to authority in the matter at hand.

R3&4: Ad Hominem, Appeal to Emotion
•	Ad Hominem:  a fallacious attack in which the thrust is directed, not at a conclusion, but at the person who asserts or defends it.
•	Appeal to Emotion:  replaces the task of presenting evidence and rational argument with expressive language and other devices calculated to excite enthusiasm, excitement, anger, or hate, etc.

R5&6: Appeal to Pity, Appeal to Force
•	Appeal to Pity:  a special case of the appeal to emotion, in which the altruism and mercy of the audience are the special emotions appealed to.
•	Appeal to Force:  to cause acceptance of some conclusion using any form of ‘strong-arm’ tactics.

R7: Irrelevant Conclusion
•	Irrelevant Conclusion:  when an argument purporting to establish a particular conclusion is instead directed to proving a different conclusion.
•	The reasoning may seem plausible, but the premises miss the point.
•	This mode of reasoning is designed to bypass all talk of alternatives in favour of a conclusion which is desired by the speaker, often coupled with useful Ad Populum fallacies as well, and expressive language.

Fallacies of Presumption:
•	DEF:  to argue in a way that inclines the audience  to assume the truth of some unproved or unwarranted proposition.
•	Unwarranted leaps of reason are called presumptions.

P1&2:  Complex Question, False Cause
•	Complex Question:  asking a question in such a way as to presuppose the truth of some conclusion buried in that question.
•	False Cause:  assuming that one event was caused by another because they occurred in the right order, but not because a causal connection has been demonstrated.

P3: Begging the Question
•	Begging the Question:  to assume the truth of what one seeks to prove, in the effort to prove it.

P4&5: Accident and Converse Accident
•	Accident:  to presume the applicability of a generalization to individual cases that it does not properly govern.
•	Converse Accident:  to presume that what is true of a particular case is true of the great run of cases.

Uses of Fallacious Reasoning:
•	Used generally, they are how we often intuitively get past awkward questions and situations.  Most quarrels can be found, on reflection, to have one or more fallacies floating around in them.
•	Used deliberately, they are hugely persuasive methods of manipulation.

END.