Essays on Fallacies

One of the major themes in Donald Trump’s inauguration speech was the focus on his future plans as a President. The President is trying to send a message to his audience that from now on he will put America first and all the American people will come first. His main strategy is “to buy American, hire American” (Trump Web). There was a number of logical fallacies that were used by Mr. Trump. One of them is hasty generalization: “America will start winning again, winning like never before” (Trump Web). It is the first day of his presidency and ...

Philosophy

A logical fallacy, in a broad sense, can be viewed as an error of reasoning. A fallacy is committed when a person tries to influence another person to take a particular position, based on flawed logic. Fallacious reasoning restrains people from thinking critically and knowing the truth, hence, making then susceptible to constant manipulation. As such, it is important to have the ability to recognize logical fallacies in the thought processes of other people to avoid making similar mistakes. In this paper, I will focus on one of the 17 logical fallacies that I provided in my initial presentation-argumentum ...

A fallacy is considered as a poor logical statement or an invalid reasoning which could be used by some people to persuade, deceive and manipulate other people due to its appealing nature. In some cases, other people are committed to believe in the fallacies unintentionally due to the lack of knowledge or awareness about the validity of the logic or reasoning used in these arguments. Fallacies are common and could be recognized in advertisements of products, political debates and several arguments which are used in schools or other institutions. In general, most people, including me, are affected by fallacies ...

Stephen West in his podcast spends sometime trying to explain different kinds of fallacies and how they work and give examples of how each kind of fallacy could be used in an actual conversation or argument. One of the most interesting fallacies which West discusses is the slippery slope fallacy. The slippery slope fallacy works on the premise that one event or one major change to the way that things are done can cause a series of events which will lead to a horrible outcome. This fallacy is commonly used by opponents of certain changes that they think will ...

Critical Thinking in Communication: Detecting Media Bias

Critical Thinking in Communication: Detecting Media Bias The issue of illegal immigration has been discussed for decades. State and federal legislation has been drafted in order to respond to the issue, however, these policies have had an insignificant effect on the flow of people coming into the country illegally. In addition to the anemic effect that laws related to illegal immigration have on solving the problem, politicians will commonly leverage the issue as a means to manipulate their own popularity. The divisive nature of the issue is such that the nature of proposed response can influence the voting decisions ...

The three logical fallacies will be taken from the speech at Trump Tower from Republican Nominee Donald J. Trump in June 2015 to declare himself as a candidate for the position of President of the United States of America (Trump, 2015). The first logical fallacy delivered in the speech was related to Trump claiming that his opponents declared themselves in the position of the President of US from rooms where Air conditioners were not working and these candidates are unsuitable to work as the executive head of the country and they would fail to defeat ISIS. This is clearly ...

Introduction

The United States is one of the most developed countries, but it is also one of the countries with the highest level of income inequality. According to research, more than half of the nation’s income goes to only 5% of the population, while the remaining half is shared by the 95%. One way of measuring a nation’s income inequality is through the Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient measures income inequality on a scale of 0 to 1 wherein 0 corresponds to total equality; a scenario wherein everyone is earning the same amount while 1 corresponds to total ...

Academic Critique: Intergenerational Conflict in Arab Families: Salient Issues and Sale

In Rasmi and Daly article “Intergenerational Conflict in Arab Families: Salient Issues and scale development” (2015) the two authors explore various types of conflicts that affect most Arab families. Sarah Rasmi is a professor at the American University in Dubai, UAE. Over the past years, she has been involved in culture conflict research focusing on the neglected Arab world by other researchers. Together with her co-author Timothy Daly, who is a professor at the United Arab Emirates University, they have published various articles about Intergenerational Conflicts, Conflict Management and Perceived Parental Rejection and Adjustment. In my opinion, the clear ...

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For the millennial female workers of today, some employees already have a solution to free them of their worries regarding their biological clock – making egg freezing part of their health care package. Egg freezing is defined as a “method used to preserve reproductive potential in women,” which is also called mature oocyte cryopreservation (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2016). Through this technology, women who intend to delay pregnancy for whatever personal reason can do so. In 2014, Apple and Facebook were two of the companies who announced that they would include egg freezing in their surrogacy benefits. It was ...

The article on Teenage Drug Abuse-Surviving Teenage Drug Abuse by Juliana Breckinridge seeks to give reasons on why some teenagers decide to engage in drug abuse. It also seeks to highlight the challenges that parents of such children go through in trying to make them stop the habit and some of the strategies that they can employ to successfully accomplish this. The article also gives some of the reasons why it is not easy for parents to achieve this mainly because they have to raise their children in a world where drugs are highly available and they can be ...

What is an argument? What is the difference between a deductive and an inductive argument? When is an argument valid?

An argument refers to set of statements consisting of premises that lead to deductions. Arguments are often presented in the form statements aimed at reading a particular conclusion. The premises of the arguments tend to act as a guide towards making a conclusion about the argument. A deductive argument is a proposition by the arguer meant to assert the validity of the conclusion. The intent is to provide the guarantee that a particular assertion is true. Inductive argument refers to the arguments in which the truth asserted by the premises does not guarantee the truth of conclusions. However, they ...

Pseudo-History

Pseudo-history can be defined as an alternative take on historical facts and accounts based on speculation, and not on primary sources. Pseudo-history relies on facts that cannot be adequately explained by neither historians nor scientists. Pseudo-science is usually used to bolster pseudo-history. Pseudo-history makes sensationalist claims that cannot be backed by conclusive evidence (“How Thinking Goes Wrong: Common Fallacies in Pseudo-Science and conspiracy thinking,” n.d). There is usually a lot of distaste in accepting logical explanations. Unlike history, pseudo-history seeks to explain everything for how it is today. Pseudo-historians pride themselves in being revolutionary thinkers who see the world ...

The expression of personal opinions can lead to the emergence of truth or fallacious claims. The way people chose to speak determines the reaction of the listener in various ways. Logical fallacy or formal fallacies mean a flaw in reasoning or thought about something. It means coming up with reason but lacks enough arguments to support the reason. In logical fallacies as scare tactics, it means using fallacies to inflict fear. Logical fallacies used as scare tactics and appeal to force are common in day to day lives from childhood to adulthood. The logical fallacy for scare tactics has ...