[general_re]

Previous installments:

Part 1 - Introduction and the Argument From Ignorance
Part 2 - the Appeal to Inappropriate Authority
Part 3 - the Argument Ad Hominem
Part 4 - the Appeal to Force and the Appeal to Emotion
Part 5 - the Irrelevant Conclusion
Part 6 - Fallacies of Presumption and the Complex Question
Part 7 - False Cause and Begging the Question
Part 8 - Accident and Converse Accident

[general_re]

Part 9.

Part 10 will discuss the fallacies of amphiboly and accent, and the final installment, part 11, will discuss the fallacies of composition and division.

[Ichneumon]

I ran across an example of this fallacy on FreeRepublic a couple of months ago. In one of the eternal creation/evolution debates, a poster posed a question that he felt was an obvious paradox: "The question: can a system devoid of design create design?"

I identified this as an example of the error of equivocation, and pointed out that he meant two different things by "design" in the same setence. What he was really asking was, "can a system without conscious planning bring about functional complexity?".

The question becomes a lot more ordinary, and less "self-contradictory" (and thus less "loaded") when restated more precisely.

The use of "create" in the original sentence was carrying a lot of baggage as well, since it carries strong connotations of intentional purpose (as does "design" itself).