A Freeper's Introduction to Rhetoric (Part 12, Test Your Knowledge)

Introduction to Logic | Irving M. Copi & Carl Cohen

[general_re]

Referring to the fallacy discussions previously posted (and linked below) may be helpful before beginning.

Among the following passages, identify those in which there is a fallacy; if there is a fallacy, analyze it, give its kind (whether relevance, or presumption, or ambiguity) and its specific name.

1. Which is more useful, the Sun or the Moon? The Moon is more useful since it gives us light during the night, when it is dark, whereas the Sun shines only in the daytime, when it is light anyway.

   — GEORGE GAMOW (inscribed in the entry hall of the Hayden Planetarium, New York City)

2. The human brain, with a volume of roughly a quart, encompasses a space of conceptual and cognitive possibilities that is larger, by one measure at least, than the entire astronomical universe. It has this striking feature because it exploits the combinatorics of its 100 billion neurons and their 100 trillion synaptic connections with each other. Each cell-to-cell connection can be strong, or weak, or anything in between. . . . If we assume, conservatively, that each synaptic connection might have any one of 10 different strengths, then the total number of distinct configurations of synaptic weights that the brain might assume is, very roughly, 10 raised to 100 trillionth power, or 10^{100,000,000,000,000}. Compare this with the measure of only 10⁸⁷ cubic meters standardly estimated for the volume of the entire astronomical universe.

   — PAUL M. CHURCHLAND, The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey Into the Brain, MIT Press, 1995

3. Time heals all wounds. Time is money. Therefore money heals all wounds.

   — "Ask Marilyn," Parade, 12 April 1987

4. Revelation is a communication of something which the person to whom that thing is revealed did not know before. For if I have done a thing or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done it or seen it, or to enable me to tell it or to write it. Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth, of which man himself is the actor or the witness; and consequently, all the historical and anecdotal parts of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and therefore is not the word of God.

   — THOMAS PAINE, The Age of Reason, part I, p. 13

5. The average earnings of workers with a high school education remain significantly above those of the less educated, and the earnings of workers with a college education now dwarf those of the high school educated. . . . Society as a whole also benefits from education. The nation is strengthened economically by having workers with more and better skills. . . . The more educated are more prone to vote in local and national elections, and a better-informed and more responsible electorate improves the workings of a democratic society. Increases in the level of education are also associated with reductions in crime. Education has also helped to achieve greater social equality in the distribution of economic resources. . . . It is safe to say that education has been a good investment both for society and for individuals.

   — ERIC A. HANUSHEK, Making Schools Work, Brookings Institution, 1994

6. An outstanding person is always "out of step" in some respects. If he were entirely "in step" he would be no different from anyone else and hence, by definition, not outstanding.

   — EDWARD SHILS, "More at Home Than Out of Step," The American Scholar, Autumn 1987, p. 577

7. Mysticism is one of the great forces of the world's history. For religion is nearly the most important thing in the world, and religion never remains for long altogether untouched by mysticism.

   — JOHN MCTAGGART ELLIS MCTAGGART, "Mysticism," Philosophical Studies

8. Mr. Stace says that my writings are "extremely obscure," and this is a matter as to which the author is the worst of all possible judges. I must therefore accept his opinion. As I have a very intense desire to make my meaning plain, I regret this.

   — BERTRAND RUSSELL, "Reply to Criticisms," in P. A. Schilpp. ed., The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (Evanston, IL: The Library of Living Philosophers), p. 707

9. For the benefit of those representatives who have not been here before this year, it may be useful to explain that the item before the General Assembly is that hardy perennial called the "Soviet item." It is purely a propaganda proposition, not introduced with a serious purpose of serious action, but solely as a peg on which to hang a number of speeches with a view to getting them into the press of the world. This is considered by some to be very clever politics. Others, among whom the present speaker wishes to be included, consider it an inadequate response to the challenge of the hour.

   — HENRY CABOT LODGE, speech to the United Nations General Assembly, 30 November 1953

10. The war-mongering character of all this flood of propaganda in the United States is admitted even by the American press. Such provocative and slanderous aims clearly inspired today's speech by the United States Representative, consisting only of impudent slander against the Soviet Union, to answer which would be beneath our dignity. The heroic epic of Stalingrad is impervious to libel. The Soviet people in the battles at Stalingrad saved the world from the fascist plague and that great victory which decided the fate of the world is remembered with recognition and gratitude by all humanity. Only men dead to all shame could try to cast aspersions on the shining memory of the heroes of that battle.

    — ANATOLE M. BARANOVSKY, speech to the United Nations General Assembly, 30 November 1953

11. Prof. Leon Kass reports a notable response to an assignment he had given students at the University of Chicago. Compose an essay, he asked, about a memorable meal you have eaten. One student wrote as follows:

    I had once eaten lunch with my uncle and my uncle's friend. His friend had once eaten lunch with Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein was once a man of great spirituality. Therefore, by the law of the syllogism, I had once eaten lunch with God. And, as Einstein had habitually expressed in reaction to the quantum theory: Gott wurfelt nicht . . . God does not play dice.

    — LEON KASS, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature, 1995

12. If Utilitarianism be true it would be one's duty to try to increase the numbers of a community, even though one reduced the average total happiness of the members, so long as the total happiness in the community would be in the least increased. It seems perfectly plain to me that this kind of action, so far from being a duty, would quite certainly be wrong.

    — C. D. BROAD, Five Types of Ethical Theory

13. . . . it is only when it is believed that I could have acted otherwise that I am held to be morally responsible for what I have done. For a man is not thought to be morally responsible for an action that it was not in his power to avoid.

    — ALFRED J. AYER, "Freedom and Necessity," Polemic, no. 5, 1946

14. Whether we are to live in a future state, as it is the most important question which can possibly be asked, so it is the most intelligible one which can be expressed in language.

    — JOSEPH BUTLER, "Of Personal Identity"

15. If you hold that nothing is self-evident, I will not argue with you for it is clear that you are a quibbler and are not to be convinced.

    — DUNS SCOTUS, Oxford Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard

16. Thomas Carlyle said of Walt Whitman that he thinks he is a big poet because he comes from a big country.

    — ALFRED KAZIN, "The Haunted Chamber," The New Republic, 23 June 1986, p. 39

17. If we want to know whether a state is brave we must look to its army, not because the soldiers are the only brave people in the community, but because it is only through their conduct that the courage or cowardice of the community can be manifested.

    — R. L. NETTLESHIP, Lectures on the Republic of Plato

18. As the American Revolution began to appear likely, some Americans sought reconciliation with England; Thomas Paine opposed reconciliation bitterly. In Common Sense (1776), he wrote:

    . . . all those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation may be included within the following descriptions. Interested men, who are not to be trusted, weak men who cannot see, prejudiced men who will not see, and a certain set of moderate men who think better of the European world than it deserves; and this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this Continent than all the other three.

19. If science wishes to argue that we cannot know what was going on in [the gorilla] Binti's head when she acted as she did, science must also acknowledge that it cannot prove that nothing was going on. It is because of our irresolvable ignorance, as much as fellow-feeling, that we should give animals the benefit of doubt and treat them with the respect we accord ourselves.

    — MARTIN ROWE and MIA MACDONALD, "Let's Give Animals Respect They Deserve," New York Times, 26 August 1996.

20. I know that she's sick, but that's not my problem. She's needed at the shop, and when an employee is sent supervisor, that employee is expected to show up.

21. When we had got to this point in the argument, and everyone saw that the definition of justice had been completely upset, Thrasymachus, instead of replying to me, said: "Tell me, Socrates, have you got a nurse?"
    "Why do you ask such a question," I said, "when you ought rather to be answering?"
    "Because she leaves you to snivel, and never wipes your nose; she has not even taught you to know the shepherd from the sheep."

    — PLATO, The Republic

22. Clarence Darrow, renowned criminal trial lawyer, began one shrewd plea to a jury thus:

    You folks think we city people are all crooked, but we city people think you farmers are all crooked. There isn't one of you I'd trust in a horse trade, because you'd be sure to skin me. But when it comes to having sympathy with a person in trouble. I'd sooner trust you folks than city folks, because you come to know people better and get to be closer friends.

    — IRVING STONE, Clarence Darrow for the Defense

23. The most blatant occurrence of recent years is all these knuckleheads running around protesting nuclear power — all these stupid people who do not research at all and who go out and march, pretending they care about the human race, and then go off in their automobiles and kill one another.

    — RAY BRADBURY, in Omni, October 1979

24. When Copernicus argued that the Ptolemaic astronomy (holding that the celestial bodies all revolved around the earth) should be replaced by a theory holding that the earth (along with all the other planets) revolves around the sun, hewas ridiculed by many of the scientists of his day, including one of the greatest astronomers of that time, Clavius, who wrote in 1581:

    Both [Copernicus and Ptolemy] are in agreement with the observed phenomena. But Copernicus's arguments contain a great many principles that are absurd. He assumed, for instance, that the earth is moving with a triple motion . . .[but] according to the philosophers a simple body like the earth can have only a simple motion. . . . Therefore it seems to me that Ptolemy's geocentric doctrine must be preferred to Copernicus's doctrine.

25. All of us cannot be famous, because all of us cannot be well known.

    — JESSE JACKSON, quoted in The New Yorker, 12 March 1984

26. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.

    — JONATHAN EDWARDS, "The Pit of Hell" (1741)

[LouisianaLobster]

"Time is Money" only works in one direction. That is, time can be transformed into money. You can use your time to work, and earn money. Or you can put money in your savings account, and given enough time, the interests will accumulate to any sum.

The opposite however, is not true. Money can not be transformed in time. If it could, old billionaires would spend it to buy extra years for their lives.

So time and money are not completely equivalent, which means that you cannot just substitute the word 'time' with 'money' in any sentence.

[jennyp]

The opposite however, is not true. Money can not be transformed in time. If it could, old billionaires would spend it to buy extra years for their lives.

I don't think this statement is true. Anyone who saves up money & spends it on a vacation has bought time - free time, at least, and presumably it's time being spent on something they'd rather be doing than working.

Also, when we spend money on any labor-saving device we're exchanging money for time. IOW, we spent time to make money, which we used to buy a labor-saving device which saves us time. So we spent time to make time, with a conversion into money and a second conversion out of money in the middle. In that case I think it does work both ways.

[LouisianaLobster]

What you say is true. You can paint your own kitchen, but you can also pay someone to do it for you. In that case you have bought/saved time with your money.

However, in the case of "Time heals all wounds" this is not the case. You cannot pay someone else to do your grieving, and you can't buy a machine to do it for you. You just have to 'sit it out', and this sort of time can't be bought.

[PatrickHenry]

8. Mr. Stace says that my writings are "extremely obscure," and this is a matter as to which the author [Russell speaking in the third person about himself] is the worst of all possible judges. I must therefore accept his opinion. [Ding, ding, ding!] As I have a very intense desire to make my meaning plain, I regret this.

— BERTRAND RUSSELL, "Reply to Criticisms," in P. A. Schilpp. ed., The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (Evanston, IL: The Library of Living Philosophers), p. 707

Russell is obviously being silly here, effecting a most uncharacteristic humility. He is sarcastically accepting the criticism of someone he may well regard as a fool, merely because it would be -- to his critics -- arrogant for Russell to point out the great clarity of his writings, and presumably the large number of people who would agree with that assessment. (Personally, I've always found Russell to be extremely clear in his prose.)

Anyway, he's pretending to accept a conclusion for the reason that he is too ignorant to judge whether it may in fact be right or wrong. This is probably an Argument Ad Ignorantiam, but I'm not certain of this. It's fairly common, as when people refuse to examine a matter, saying: "Who am I to judge?"

[general_re]

Hmmm. I think you're overthinking this one, although if Russell had included the full quote from Stace (which I don't have handy), it would have been helpful. If I say "Joe Blow is an extremely obscure historical figure", what do I generally mean by that?

[PatrickHenry]

If I say "Joe Blow is an extremely obscure historical figure", what do I generally mean by that?

Ah, I had missed the ambiguity. There is a potential double meaning in: "Mr. Stace says that my writings are 'extremely obscure' ..." I had assumed that the critic was saying Russell's writings lack clarity; and I ignored the other meaning, as in "Russell is an all-but-forgotten writer." But I don't think that's the fallacy we're supposed to spot. Russell goes on to say: "As I have a very intense desire to make my meaning plain ..." so I think, from the context, that the potential ambiguity is one which we can ignore. I'll stick with my analysis.

[general_re]

Russell goes on to say: "As I have a very intense desire to make my meaning plain ..."

That's my point - I think Stace probably intended it in the sense of Russell being an unknown, unread writer, but Russell (intentionally) chose to take it as meaning that his work was unclear. Hence, Russell engaged in a bit of equivocation about the meaning of the word "obscure" as a flippant way of dismissing a critic that he didn't take all that seriously to begin with - if you're familiar with Stace, it's not at all surprising that Russell didn't take him particularly seriously.

And the ultimate irony is, of course, that nowadays, sixty-odd years later, W.T. Stace is the one who is obscure, albeit perhaps not "extremely" obscure ;)

[PatrickHenry]

I think Stace probably intended it in the sense of Russell being an unknown, unread writer ...

I donno ... That's a difficult interpretation for me. Russell, during his lifetime, was an international celebrity. The only thing that makes sense (to me) is that the critic was talking about the clarity of Russell's his writing -- and that too is nonsensical. Either way, it was neat for Russell, whose reputation for brilliance was unquestioned, to dismiss someone he regarded as a hack critic by saying: "Well, I guess you must be right." I'll still stick with my analysis, but I've been wrong before. As you know, in his declining years, Russell became a kook for pacifism, but in his prime he was awesome.

[general_re]

I think Stace intended it as an insult, to be truthful. While Stace is obscure these days, it wasn't always so. His main bag was mysticism, and an attempt to explore mystical experiences (visions, revelations, dreams, et cetera) as though they were real phenomena, indicative of some reality external to oneself. Given that, it should hardly be surprising that he had little use for Russell, and Russell for him. But like I said, these days, Stace is the obscure one, getting what little play he gets in New-Agey crystal-gripping circles, although he did enjoy a bit of a resurgence in the '60's with the Timothy Leary/Carlos Castaneda-types, for obvious reasons.

[PatrickHenry]

So what was Russell's fallacy?

[general_re]

Equivocation is my guess, although your answer is arguable too, I think.

[PatrickHenry]

Whatever it was, Russell certainly knew his logic, so if he's guilty of anything it's being a smart-ass. (It was cruel, selecting as an example for this test a piece of irony written by a logician.)

[general_re]

Quite so. I've no doubt that Russell did it entirely on purpose.

[PatrickHenry]

It's somewhat as if Einstein had said to the TimeCube guy: "Yeah, I'm not qualified to judge my own work, so you must be right."

[general_re]

In effect. I don't Stace was quite as far out as the Timecube guy - he did allow that most people who hear voices and such are just plain bananas, IIRC - but that's about the size of it.