My blog

[watchamadoodle]

Added Unsupported assertion, False dichotomy and Quote mining to the Logical fallacies page.

I'd love to know if my explanations are too long, too short, confusing... or good All constructive feedback welcome!

That looks good to me.
This is probably too much work, but wouldn't it be neat if there was a little test at the end? The reader is presented with examples of logical fallacies, and he/she clicks on the correct fallacy? Probably too much work though.

[Pizza]

How are "broken compass," "unsupported assertion," "Argument ad neuseam," and "circular logic" fallacies? "Argument ad neuseam" seems more like a cheap debating tactic than a fallacy; ditto for Quote mining. I'm not sure about "unsupported assertion" given it can't be reasonably expected that anyone can argue for every premise for the premises of an argument; It's just a waste of time. I don't even know what "broken compass" is.
As for "circular logic" you should change that to question begging. Circular reasoning isn't always fallacious since it's not a formal fallacy but an informal one. Context and use is everything with informal fallacies. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html

First of all, not all circular reasoning is fallacious. Suppose, for instance, that we argue that a number of propositions, p1, p2,…, pn are equivalent by arguing as follows, where "p → q" means that p implies q:
p1 → p2 → … → pn → p1

Then we have clearly argued in a circle, but this is a standard form of argument in mathematics to show that a set of propositions are all equivalent to each other. So, when is it fallacious to argue in a circle?
For an argument to have any epistemological or dialectical force, it must start from premisses already known or believed by its audience, and proceed to a conclusion not known or believed. This, of course, rules out the worst cases of Begging the Question, when the conclusion is the very same proposition as the premiss, since one cannot both believe and not believe the same thing. A viciously circular argument is one with a conclusion based ultimately upon that conclusion itself, and such arguments can never advance our knowledge.

[robvalue]

OK thanks for the feedback, I shall have a good look through what you've said

Tim: thank you for that explanation. I'm still looking through everything you've posted here. Would you agree that the bible's account of jesus' life is still mythical in nature, in the vast majority? That is, if it was based on a real person, the overlap between them and the bible jesus would amount to say 5%, and the rest is highly likely to be made up or exaggerated. Do you think that would be a fair assessment?

[TimOneill]

Tim: thank you for that explanation. I'm still looking through everything you've posted here. Would you agree that the bible's account of jesus' life is still mythical in nature, in the vast majority? That is, if it was based on a real person, the overlap between them and the bible jesus would amount to say 5%, and the rest is highly likely to be made up or exaggerated. Do you think that would be a fair assessment?

We have no way of making that assessment. It could be 5% or it could be much, much higher. Once we rule out the miracles, there really isn't much in there that is hard to accept - Jesus went to a town, told a parable, disputed with some other people, preached to some peasants, ate a meal etc. It's pretty unremarkable stuff. But it's impossible to determine how likely it is to have happened.

Even most of the miracles are impossible to rule out completely. Walking on water and raising the dead almost certainly didn't happen. But in a society which associated affliction and possession with sin, faith healing of people who are "lame" or "blind" is hardly miraculous. And he must have got his reputation as a miracle worker from somewhere.

The general tenor of the story is entirely plausible. Remove the more spectacular claims of huge crowds of followers, feeding 5000 people and rising from the dead and you have ... the story of a first century apocalyptic charismatic.

The problem is that there is no way of assessing the likelihood of these ordinary stuff - all we can say is that it's entirely possible. His crucifxion and his brother's execution are able to be reasonably well established by external evidence. His origins in Nazareth, his baptism and his apocalyptic message can all be quite well established by internal inference. The miracles can be (largely) ruled out. The rest - its fits with the context and makes sense but we can't assess it's likelihood.

[robvalue]

Fair enough Thank you.

[robvalue]

Hey nice idea watchamadoodle! Yeah, I could probably do a test like that. It would be easiest to have a set of questions and you click on the button to try and pick the correct fallacy; it tells you whether you got it right or not then moves on to the next one. Would take a while but could be done.

Alternatively, I could have a page of questions, and then the user writes down all their answers before continuing to the next page to see how many they got right.

[Mudhammam]

Added Unsupported assertion, False dichotomy and Quote mining to the Logical fallacies page.

You might want to distinguish them between formal and informal. In my logic class I just had an exam on all 22 informal fallacies so I can list them out for you if you want.

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Hey Tim, so what's your theory as to what happened to Jesus at the end of his life and what inspired early Christians such as Paul to believe the things they wrote about him? Do you accept a 30-33 CE dating for the crucifixion and then a few years afterward for the earliest Christian creeds such as the one located in 1 Corinthians 15?

[Pizza]

I've been thinking. It may be easier for rob to just link to other websites about fallacies instead listing them on his own site.

[robvalue]

Thanks Nestor, yes that would be helpful. I've realized it's a bit of a mixed bunch I have there, fallacies and dishonest tactics. I wanted to keep them together because they're the kind of thing that keep coming up.

I was thinking of changing the title to "logical fallacies / dishonest practices" what do you think?

@Tim: where do you stand on the issue of Paul? Carrier maintains that he was referring entirely to a different mythical jesus, a celestial one, and not at all to the human. He thinks the human references are forged letters. Would you agree?

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@pizza: yeah I did think of that. I thought it would be more friendly and accessible to have my own descriptions and all in one place. What do other people think, are my descriptions any good or should I just have links to other pages for the explanations?

Been very tired the last few days so not been able to add anything, but I hope to work on it again soon.

[watchamadoodle]

@pizza: yeah I did think of that. I thought it would be more friendly and accessible to have my own descriptions and all in one place. What do other people think, are my descriptions any good or should I just have links to other pages for the explanations?

I think there is value in explaining some of the common fallacies, etc. in your blog. Then you could say that you're only giving an overview, and interested readers should read a book on it?

Also, I was wondering if you should list a few critical thinking techniques. To be honest, I don't know much, but it seems that critical thinking (Occam's razor, etc.) is yet another topic separate from logic and the debating tricks? (Of course, all those topics could be together in the same list. You could simply say "this is a logical fallacy", "this is a dishonest debating tactic", "this is a critical thinking technique" in the description?)

EDIT: You should remember it's your blog. If it was my blog, I would have page after page ranting about UFOs, how angry Catholics make me, etc. (Nobody would want to read my blog. )