No, it doesn't. People make mistakes in logic. (See Wason's three-card task for examples.)
Do good quarterbacks throw interceptions? According to Sports Illustrated, every NFL starting quarterback has already thrown at least one interception this season -- and these are the best in the business. A good quarterback isn't one who never throws interceptions. He's one who doesn't throw them often.
Do good kickers miss field goals? Five kickers haven't missed a field goal yet this year. Shall we say that those are the only five good kickers in the world? If Jeff Reed misses one next year, does that drop the total to four good kickers?
Yes, but religion is something extremely important in someone's life. So when you criticize something that is that important in the life of a smart person, that he builds a large part of his life around, does it imply then that you are smarter than him?
Not throwing interceptions is very important in a quarterback's life. Sometimes it's the difference between gainful employment and starvation. Abstractions like "eternal salvation" pale in importance next to the idea that you won't have a job next week because you've been benched and cut. Just because something is important doesn't mean that people don't make mistakes.
I gave the example upthread of my brother-in-law, the salesman. He's a smart guy. And selling is important to him, for the same reason (he has a wife and two kids to feed). But he still makes mistakes. Why?
In fact, it's well documented that people often make more mistakes about important matters, precisely because the stakes are so high. Sometimes you'll hear this called things like "choking under pressure."
No, it simply implies that I believe that he made an important mistake.
JetLag, I don't know how may different ways I have left to say "No" politely to you.
No, criticizing someone does not imply that I think I am smarter than him. Not under any imaginable circumstances. Re-posing the question with an even more far-fetched hypothetical will not change the "no" into a "yes." The biggest fool in the world can say the sun is shining, but that doesn't make it dark out. Similarly, the smartest man in the world can tell me that it's Tuesday, but that doesn't make it so. The smartest person in the world can be disproved by the dumbest piece of paper in the world -- if that piece of paper happens to be a calendar.
People make mistakes. No one is so intelligent that they never make a mistake. (Actually, I find -- and Albus Dumbledore supports me on this -- that the smarter people are the ones who make correspondingly bigger mistakes. They make fewer mistakes, but because they are so used to not making mistakes, they tend not to notice when they do and therefore make huge ones.) And just because i point out that you have made a mistake does not make me smarter than you -- it just means that I didn't make that particualr mistake.
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Yes, but the term ad hominem is still used. And it's still a fallacy because "anti-democratic" is unrelated to the truth or falsity of a statement.
Actually, I'm not sure I agree with you here. I don't see how a proposition (remember that only propositions are true or false) can be democratic or anti-democratic. Propositions don't vote.
"Reasonable statements" can still be fallacious. (I told you earlier to look up "fallacy.") The problem is that the biggest fool in the world can say the sun is shining, but that doesn't make it dark out. Just because something is "likely to be" true doesn't make it true. And
(Bold added by me)
You say that if a certain form of argument can lead from a true premise to a false conclusion, then it is always wrong.
But I am not sure that it is always wrong for all/I] subjects. A certain form of argument (an appeal to popular opinion) might be wrong, when it comes to physical objects, but not wrong when it comes to immaterial entities.
You are disproving a certain form of argument by using a material example -> shape of earth (not flat) is the one you used. But it might be that material an immaterial subjects are just so different that you cannot conclude from the inability to use a certain form of argument for one - to another.
Belz...
Fiend God
Useless distinction. "Important" is relative.
Exactly wrong. I say that if a certain form of argument can lead from a true premise to a false conclusion, then it is always fallacious. That's because fallacy means "a form of argument that can lead from a true premise to a false conclusion." Fallaciouis arguments can have true conclusions, but only by chance, since the truth or falsity of the conclusion is more or less independent of the truth of the premises.
Furthermore, I will also state that if a certain form of argument can lead from a true premise to a false conlcusion, then that argument is always unreliable, which means we cannot rely on it as a method of obtaining truth.
Yes, and that's another fallacy -- "special pleading" -- because it can lead from true premises to false conclusions. And, as a fallacy, it's unreliable and can be safely disregarded by a rational observer.
And here we have another fallacy, that of "argument from ignorance." Yes, it is indeed possible that any random sentence happens to be true -- I can put my pet kittten at the computer keyboard and the string of keys she hits might be a true sentence. It might be that my desk drawer is filled with gold bricks. But that "might be" can also lead from true premises to false conclusions, and is therefore fallacious, unreliable, and to be disgarded by a rational observer.
You'll need to do much better than a collection of fallacies. If you want to make any statements that will not be immediately ignorable about your hypothetical immaterial being, you better back them up with either evidence (of which you admit you have not) or valid (i.e. reliable, non-fallacious) reasoning. So far, you have done neither.
rocketdodger
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No, and there is no need to. I think this has been covered already in this thread.
Because it is impossible for a human being to use anything OTHER than logic, as we know it, to think.
JetLeg, any conclusion you reach about anything, anywhere, anytime, must be a result of logical thought. Even if you make an "illogical" decision it was nothing other than logic that led you to it.
Huh?
If a person testifies that something is important to him, it usually is.
If a person puts a large part of his time to his religion, probably it is important to him.
I agree, thank you.
Can you give an example why is this type of reasoning wrong?
You can use some reasoning in math, that you cannot use in science for example. So I suggested the same with imm-beings versus m-beings.
slingblade
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Like what? Give an example, please, of reasoning that is used in math that can't be used in science, or vice-versa.
Expiriments have no validity in math.
And math has axioms, unlike science, which tries to function without them.
Sure. Here's an example from nizkor.org
Similary, the idea that ordinary rules of logic apply to everything except your particular pet woo is a blatant case of special pleading. You cannot justify the claim that immaterial beings are exempt from the rules of logic.
ETA: a more declarative version would be
A: All cats have four legs
B: Except for my cat, Fluffy
C: My cat, Fluffy, has only three legs.
It is literally impossible for statements A and C to be true at the same time; if A is ttrue, then C must be false. Therefore, an argument by special pleading can lead from a true premise to a false conclusion -- and is therefore fallacious.
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slingblade
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Sorry to butt in, but I'm not sure that C is a conclusion. I can't rationally insert a "therefore." They all seem to be premises, and B is an iffy premise at best. But then, on second thought, you may have meant to create three premises. If so, I apologize for my misunderstanding.
If it's all right, though, I'd like to make a comment or two about it.
A. All cats have four legs.
B. My cat, Fluffy, has three legs.
C: Therefore, fluffy is not a cat.
The problem is, of course, the wording of A. As worded, it is not entirely a true premise, though that's what we want, for demonstration.
A. As defined, a cat is an animal with four legs.
B. My cat has three legs.
C. Therefore, mine is not a cat.
Now then. Those true premises do not lead to that conclusion, because we can think of exceptions to A, even though, as stated, A is true.
The argument, therefore, is fallacious. It's flawed.
Sorry if I'm being a butthead.
Is C a conclusion in your example? The specific amount of legs Fluffy has is not related to anything.
A better example would be
A: All cats have four legs.
B: Except for my cat, Fluffy.
C: Therefore my cat, Fluffy can have less than four legs.
Is that what you mean?
Do you think that because A is true on one hand (when you don't think of the exceptions), but false on the other hand (when you think of cats that were in a car accidents), it contradicts the law of excluded middle?
slingblade
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A is conditionally true, as indicated by the words "as defined." It admits that there are conditions in which not all living cats have 4 legs, but that the definition (the abstract, if you will) of the cat is that it is a 4-legged animal.
I think it's also a kind of oppositional truth, such that a cat is defined as "a 4-legged animal," i.e. a type, as opposed to those types of animals with two legs (like humans), six legs (like insects), and so on.
I think it's also a kind of oppositional truth, such that a cat is defined as "a 4-legged animal," i.e. a type, as opposed to those types of animals with two legs (like humans), six legs (like insects), and so on.
Um,... yes, that's right. Given that it's a fallacious argument, I would be extremely surprised if you could. [insert obligatory sarcastic comment]
The point is that if you have reason to accept that A is true, then you have no basis at all for accepting C. And similarly, if you have reason to believe C, then you have a direct counterexample to the potential truth of A.
"Special pleading" is an argument -- in the weakest possible sense of the term -- used to justify (again in the weakest possible sense of the term) holding two beliefs that even the speaker knows to be contradictory. If Barbara really feels that all murderers should be punished, without exception, then she herself must also face punishment. If she feels that her murder deserves some sort of special dispensation, then she must also accept that other murders might equally deserve dispensation. The fact that she does not, and continues to hold those opinions without adjustment is what makes it special pleading.
In this case, JetLag knows (has admitted) that feelings are a lousy basis to assess truth. But somehow he wants to hold out that his feelings are somehow different. He knows that that things that violate the fundamental semantics of English are impossible -- but wants to hold out somehow that God is exempt from this general rule. He knows that no rational person would buy into a statement on the simple grounds that the statement cannot be proven false. But, again, he wants to hold out for a special exception for God.
Special pleading. And it's a fallacy for exactly the reason you outlined. Either A is an oversimplification (most cats, but not all, have four legs) and we should be able to find evidence of that, or C is simply untrue.
Absent any evidence that there is actually a reason to believe that some feelings are epistemologically sound, then a rational obserer would believe that no feelings -- including JetLag's -- are worth a half-cup of warm spit, epistemologically speaking.