New vid: argument from ignorance explained through mining

[Edwardo Piet]

I'd say the equivocation fallacy isn't one you usually typically spot a theist using,

But when it comes to theist apologists who obfuscate and confuse, with all their disingenuousness, the equivocation fallacy is pretty much implicit in a great deal of their arguments.

I think it's an important one to know about.

He's the Wikipedia and Rational Wik on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Equivocation

Never read about it on Rational Wiki before actually, I just searched for it because I assumed it must have some. Interesting summary of it here:

Equivocation (or doublespeak) is a logical fallacy that relies on the different meanings a word can have in different contexts.
It is a favorite fallacy of creationist and woo hucksters alike. It can be used both to seemingly belittle a concept or idea, or to raise one up to false pretenses. It can be used to disguise bullshit like in quantum woo where people like Deepak Chopra use equivocation to make their ideas sound like they have some basis in reality.
Equivocation is an informal fallacy and a fallacy of ambiguity, although its parent fallacy, the four-term fallacy, is a formal fallacy.

(my bolding)

Never even heard of the "four-term fallacy", it's clearly a major fallacy because it's a formal one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_four_terms

Interesting.

In everyday reasoning, the fallacy of four terms occurs most frequently by equivocation: using the same word or phrase but with a different meaning each time, creating a fourth term even though only three distinct words are used:

Major premise: Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
Minor premise: A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Conclusion: A ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

[robvalue]

Ah, OK. So it focuses on the semantics angle.

The most common one I see in that category is "faith"; trying to equate religious faith with reasonable, evidence-based confidence.

Thanks for that, I was thinking it also covered faulty analogies, which I see incredibly frequently. That's what I was mainly referring to, although it appears they may not technically come under this heading. Things like "Just like a parent, God has to punish his children when they misbehave [by torturing them forever with no hope of redemption]."

Would you still like me to do a vid on the semantics angle, or the analogy one? Or both?

[Pizza]

I put this in the religious section because it addresses an argument used incredibly frequently by some theists, and they can't seem to grasp why it isn't valid.

The "argument from ignorance" (which is just the name it happens to have, it's not meant to be an insult) is the claim that a statement is (probably) true because it can't be shown to be false. My new video below demonstrates why this argument does not work, so please, please stop using it.

http://youtu.be/BzxMXzdaxtI

I enjoyed the mountain metaphor. People often don't appreciate how impractical it is evaluate many claims especially extremely abstract, complex claims like "gods exist."  There is a whole body of literature on that subject alone with over thousand of arguments back and forward.

[robvalue]

Thank you

The idea of claims that are true/false but can't be shown to be so can be a strange concept to grasp.

Even stranger is proving that there are true statements that can't be proven to be true... which has been done in mathematics.

[Edwardo Piet]

Would you still like me to do a vid on the semantics angle, or the analogy one? Or both?

I am a particular fan of the Equivocation Fallacy (when it comes to understanding it, avoiding it oneself when others use it).

But the false analogy one would be interested too.

If you want you can do the false analogy one first since you're ready for that... and then perhaps prepare for and do the Equivocation one for best turtle in your own time

[robvalue]

Sure!

I have a few ideas, I'll keep working on them and do a vid when I have the energy. Turtles are cute!

[Pizza]

This would be helpful.

This is a very common fallacy, but "False Analogy", its common name, is very misleading. Analogies are neither true nor false, instead they come in degrees from near identity to extreme dissimilarity. Here are two important points about analogy:

No analogy is perfect, that is, there is always some difference between analogs. Otherwise, they would not be two analogous objects, but only one, and the relation would be one of identity, not analogy.
There is always some similarity between any two objects, no matter how different. For example, Lewis Carroll once posed the following nonsense riddle:
How is a raven like a writing desk?

The point of the riddle was that they're not; alike, that is. However, to Carroll's surprise, some of his readers came up with clever solutions to the supposedly unsolvable riddle, for instance:
Because Poe wrote on both.

Some arguments from analogy are based on analogies that are so weak that the argument is too weak for the purpose to which it is put. How strong an argument needs to be depends upon the context in which it occurs, and the use that it is intended to serve. Thus, in the absence of other evidence, and as a guide to further research, even a very weak analogical argument may be strong enough. Therefore, while the strength of an argument from analogy depends upon the strength of the analogy in its premisses, it is not solely determined by that strength.