1. the basic tenets of Puritanism
  2. The desire to have one’s feelings or life changed radically was an experience called grace. Grace involved a cleansing of the individual — a purging of sinfulness. Grace also entailed much self-examination as the Puritan sought signs that God was working within him &mdash a key to understanding Edward’s point of view.
  3. Puritans valued plainness, especially in religion. This extended to their writing. For examples, see in particular, Ann Bradstreet, though is not as clearly seen in writers like Cotton Mather. This insistence on plain speaking shapes much of American literature (Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway, etc.)
  4. City on the Hill
  5. The Puritans were convinced that they were carrying on God’s work in settling the New World. Their lives in the New World were a divine mission (very evident in William Bradford’s writing).
  6. A core belief held by New England Puritans, which may have led to both interpersonal suspicion and conceptions of a secret world, hidden from living humans, was the notion of predestination, the belief that God had already determined who was to be saved and who was to be damned. As He had not made his choices known, however, believers had to rely on clues as to who was among the elect, the souls destined for salvation. Only these people could become full church members and receive communion. Adherence to strict codes of conduct was necessary, but not sufficient, evidence of salvation\
  7. The reasons why "witchcraft" was blamed for the symptoms, rather than psychological disturbance, physical illness, or even religious conversion (the experience of receiving Christ and being saved) have often been sought in the theology of the Puritan inhabitants of Salem.
  8. Another generation of New England Puritans, a little over fifty years later, did interpret a similar outbreak of spasms and hysterias in young girls as "salvation," an event which led to The Great Awakening, The experience of being converted, or born again, began to be actively sought and to become the main requirement for church membership, though one was expected to verify the conversion experience by living a virtuous life.
  9. Belief in a secret world, where the forces of good warred with the forces of evil, both acting out of human sight, prompted a search for visible "clues" that some people were involved in a Satanic plot. This search might be seen as a kind of negative mirror of the search for clues that one was saved. Cotton Mather's guide to the prosecution of witches described some of these clues, including ones familiar to us from the film The Burning Times. They included strange marks on the body (e.g. birthmarks, and extra nipples, which many women have, and which were considered "witches' teats" used to suckle demons). More controversial was "spectral evidence." The afflicted girls and some male witnesses said that they saw "spectres" (normally invisible spirits) of the accused, either in the courtroom or at other times, and that these "spectres" choked them, frightened them, and otherwise tormented them.
  10. A belief in an ongoing battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil can quickly become an excuse for scapegoating in times of real or perceived crisis. And demons need not always be spirits. As we shall see, Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, uses the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for the obsession, in the U.S. during the 1950s, with a vast, hidden communist conspiracy, threatening all that was good in America.
  11. The Great Awakening, referred to above, was one of the evidences of this new opportunity for individuals to actively seek evidence of salvation,. Jonathan Edwards, the minister who diagnosed the Northampton, Massachusetts girls as being visited by divine spirit, rather than bewitched, eventually was dismissed from his pulpit for insisting that only those who had experienced conversion, and not those who simply awaited it with sincerity, might take communion. E a series of mass conversion experiences throughout New England.

. A "feeling" of being saved, and, above all, the ability to convince others of one's status, were important. To some degree, wealth and status in the community counted as evidence of salvation, but there were relatively poor church members and relatively rich non-members. Whether a member or not, everyone was expected to attend Sunday meeting, and failure to do so, as we shall see in The Crucible, could count against one if one were accused of witchcraft.

  1. the four forms of discourse (narration, description, exposition, and persuasion)
  2. narration: telling a story, developing a sequence of events (plot)
  3. description: writing that appeals to the senses
  4. exposition: writing that communicates information
  5. persuasion: writing meant to modify behavio
  6. Edwards clearly demonstrates an awareness of his audience in the way he frames his argument. God’s wrath is compared to a flood, a storm, and an Indian attack. All these images would have been familiar and alarming to an 18th century audience. (There is an opportunity here also to discuss extended metaphor]
  7. Edwards is writing as part of the Great Awakening, and specifically for a revival.

Edwards felt as though the ideals that the new world were built upon were slipping

Unlike some earlier prominent Puritans, Jonathan Edwards uses the “fire and brimstone” approach to confront his congregations with what he feels to be the rage of God. The sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was meant to make Edward’s listeners aware of the fact that their behavior and conduct on earth was far more important than anything else and that certain punishment in hell awaited those who did not adhere to proper religious values as expressed in the Bible.

One of the most prominent themes in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is that of irresistible grace. This idea is based upon the notion that it is always up to God whether he wishes to save or condemn someone and that at any moment, one could be cast away into hell, or in other words, “There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment” (Edwards 499).

Homework

For your analysis of an advertisement,:

A one two page analysis that includes:

  • Identify the speaker (company, spokesperson, etc.) and address his’her credibility? (Ethos) Why was this person chosen?
  • Correctly identify the target audience? What is the relationship between the targeted audience for this advertisement and the publication in which it appeared?
  • Determine if this advertisement is dependent on a particular occasion, and if it is, how is that apparent? Or is it a nonspecific occasion?
  • Correctly identified the means of persuasion Pathos logos ethos and at least four logical fallacies the ad useswith detail to support your argument( appeal to fear, emotion belief, limited opportunity, bandwagon, sex, popularity, status, etc.)
  • Make you sure you knowAd Hominem Begging the Question
  • False DilemmaGambler's FallacyGenetic Fallacy Straw Man Slippery SlopePoisoning the WellTwo Wrongs Make A Right

Index
  1. Ad Hominem
  2. Ad Hominem Tu Quoque
  3. Appeal to Authority
  4. Appeal to Belief
  5. Appeal to Common Practice
  6. Appeal to Consequences of a Belief
  7. Appeal to Emotion
  8. Appeal to Fear
  9. Appeal to Flattery
  10. Appeal to Novelty
  11. Appeal to Pity
  12. Appeal to Popularity
  13. Appeal to Ridicule
  14. Appeal to Spite
  15. Appeal to Tradition
  16. Bandwagon
  17. Begging the Question
  18. Biased Sample
  19. Burden of Proof
  20. Circumstantial Ad Hominem
  21. Composition
  22. Confusing Cause and Effect
  23. Division
  24. False Dilemma
  25. Gambler's Fallacy
  26. Genetic Fallacy
  27. Guilt By Association
  28. Hasty Generalization
  29. Ignoring A Common Cause
  30. Middle Ground
  31. Misleading Vividness
  32. Personal Attack
  33. Poisoning the Well
  34. Post Hoc
  35. Questionable Cause
  36. Red Herring
  37. Relativist Fallacy
  38. Slippery Slope
  39. Special Pleading
  40. Spotlight
  41. Straw Man
  42. Two Wrongs Make A Right
/ Dr. Michael C. Labossiere, the author of a Macintosh tutorial named Fallacy Tutorial Pro 3.0, has kindly agreed to allow the text of his work to appear on the Nizkor site, as a Nizkor Feature. It remains © Copyright 1995 Michael C. Labossiere, with distribution restrictions -- please see our copyright notice. If you have questions or comments about this work, please direct them both to the Nizkor webmasters () and to Dr. Labossiere ().
Other sites that list and explain fallacies include:
  • Constructing a Logical Argument
Description of Fallacies
In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. Very briefly, an argument consists of one or more premises and one conclusion. A premise is a statement (a sentence that is either true or false) that is offered in support of the claim being made, which is the conclusion (which is also a sentence that is either true or false).
There are two main types of arguments: deductive and inductive. A deductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) complete support for the conclusion. An inductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) some degree of support (but less than complete support) for the conclusion. If the premises actually provide the required degree of support for the conclusion, then the argument is a good one. A good deductive argument is known as a valid argument and is such that if all its premises are true, then its conclusion must be true. If all the argument is valid and actually has all true premises, then it is known as a sound argument. If it is invalid or has one or more false premises, it will be unsound. A good inductive argument is known as a strong (or "cogent") inductive argument. It is such that if the premises are true, the conclusion is likely to be true.
A fallacy is, very generally, an error in reasoning. This differs from a factual error, which is simply being wrong about the facts. To be more specific, a fallacy is an "argument" in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support. A deductive fallacy is a deductive argument that is invalid (it is such that it could have all true premises and still have a false conclusion). An inductive fallacy is less formal than a deductive fallacy. They are simply "arguments" which appear to be inductive arguments, but the premises do not provided enough support for the conclusion. In such cases, even if the premises were true, the conclusion would not be more likely to be true.
Examples of Fallacies
  1. Inductive Argument

Premise 1: Most American cats are domestic house cats.
Premise 2: Bill is an American cat.
Conclusion: Bill is domestic house cat.

  1. Factual Error

Columbus is the capital of the United States.

  1. Deductive Fallacy

Premise 1: If Portland is the capital of Maine, then it is in Maine.
Premise 2: Portland is in Maine.
Conclusion: Portland is the capital of Maine.
(Portland is in Maine, but Augusta is the capital. Portland is the largest city in Maine, though.)

  1. Inductive Fallacy

Premise 1: Having just arrived in Ohio, I saw a white squirrel.
Conclusion: All Ohio Squirrels are white.
(While there are many, many squirrels in Ohio, the white ones are very rare).