Skip to main content

Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle’s 13 Fallacies, 350 BC


1.     Accent: changing the meaning of a quotation by changing or ignoring the accent on certain words, common journalistic or political spin.
2.     Amphiboly: use of language that has multiple meanings to obfuscate or mislead.
3.     Equivocation: deliberate misuse of language to obscure, confuse and belittle a concept
4.     Composition: Assertion that an overall principal is true when only a part it is true
5.     Division: Assert an overall truth as support that a part of the overall is true also.
6.     Figure of Speech: using the vagaries of language, gender or cases to assert fallacy
7.     Accident: use of a general rule in support of a false specific.
8.     Affirming the Consequent: arguing backwards from a true consequent to a fallacy, used repeatedly by journalists in what can only be called perception management.
9.     In a Certain Respect/Simply; True in small area, therefore true in larger area, as in the application of medical statistics
10.  Ignorance of Refutation: Evidence leads to X, yet conclusion Y is drawn.
11.  Begging the Question: If a topic is not wrong, it is right. If you’re not good, you are bad.
12.  False Cause: X and Y are associated; therefore, X causes Y without any proof.
13.  Many Questions: to change the subject slightly in order to answer a similar question and assert a false or unrelated answer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Utopia

The Devil promises a utopia of worry-free egalitarianism beckoning you to an Orwellian hell of despondency. Its a matter of giving or taking. Work for your family and community supporting the common good, or take from the wealth of those who produce and promise benefits to those who do not and those destroyed by the theft of their own creation.

Inflation

The Fed containing inflation with intrest rates to the point of unemployment, is like treating pneumonia with blood letting. Try treating inflation by reducing the number of government employees. With weekly layoffs, the Fed could adjust the numbers of layoffs from week to week to achieve what higher interest rates could not. Newly ununemployed would be less willing to pay inflated prices. The Fed could thus achieve an end to inflation, and lower interst rates as well. A lower ratio of government employees versus productive employees in the private sector could be a plus as well.