Chris O. Cook’s ENG 101

BMCC Spring 2014

Fallacy Journal Prompt

The Fallacy Journal works like so: you are to list examples of Logical Fallacies in numbered paragraph form. A typical entry would consist of the following: what was said, the explanation of what’s wrong with it, and the name of what’s wrong with it, if the problem has a specific name (e.g., “slippery slope,” “ad hominem fallacy,” etc.). But you should worry as much about whether your explanation of the problem is accurateas about getting the name of the fallacy right. If you just write down the name with no explanation, and you’re right, then I know you understood and can give you credit—but if you just write down the name with no explanation, or an inaccurate explanation, and you’re wrong, then there’s no way to give you any credit (it’s like how you’re supposed to “show your work” on a math test—the name of the fallacy is like the answer to a math problem, and the explanation is like the math you do to get the answer). There’s nothing wrong with saying something like “I think this is either the ad baculum fallacy or begging the question, but I’m not sure which.” In short, there’s no reason to pretend like you understand something if you don’t—put down what you do understand, and you’ll get as much credit as that part deserves.

I know you’re probably dying to ask me how long an entry needs to be, but this isn’t high school, so you don’t get automatic points for length: an entry needs to be however long it takes you to put down the right answer. If the item involves a simple problem and you can explain it in four lines, okay… and if an item involves a complex problem and it takes you half a page, okay. And while it is sometimes a good idea to explain the setting of the exchange, we don’t need a lot of extraneous information—you can begin an entry by saying “I was at a party at my racist uncle’s house and he said…,” but you don’t need to tell us why he was having the party, or what his house is like, or what he does for a living, etc.

Here’s how the journals will be graded. Each entry receives a point score from 0-3. 3 points if the item is brilliant (a complex problem figured out perfectly), 2 points if the item is good (a complex problem with a mistake or two in the explanation, or a simpler problem with no mistakes), 1 point if the item is acceptable (has several mistakes, or has no mistakes but is extremely obvious), and 0 points if the item is completely incorrect. Once again, remember that “the wrong name” is not a point deduction as long as that is the only mistake in the item, but you need the right name to get a 3-pointer.

The correlation of point totals to letter grades is as follows:

A+ = 29 points or higher

A = 27-28 points

A- = 25-26 points

B+ = 23-24 points

B = 21-22 points

B- = 19-20 points

C+ = 17-18 points

C = 15-16 points

C- = 13-14 points

D+ = 11-12 points

D = 9-10 points

D- = 7-8 points

F = 6 points or lower

Finally, here are some samples of what items might look like:

  1. Some friends and I were arguing about who the most influential person of the 20th Century was. When I said that I thought it was Sigmund Freud, one of the people called me a sexist. This is a false dilemma, because it presents the viewpoint that either you dislike Freud or you are a sexist, which is not true, because only a few of Freud’s theories were sexist—he also came up with a lot of brilliant ideas that have nothing to do with gender; for the same reasons, it is also a straw man argument, since the person was only concentrating on the sexist things Freud said and ignoring everything else; it is also the ad baculum fallacy, because it implies that someone who is sexist can’t possibly be influential—but we weren’t talking about who the best person of the 20th Century was, only the question of who changed the world the most—someone else at the table said the answer was Hitler, and no-one got mad at him!
  1. Severalyears ago, the Bush administration allocated lots of taxpayer money to an advertising campaign to promote marriage in low-income communities. The reason they did this was because they noticed that crime and other problems were more prevalent in these areas, and concluded that it was because the people who live there weren’t getting married. Even though it is true that marriage rates are lower in these communities, this is an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy—just because low marriage rates correlate with crime, that doesn’t mean that this is what’s causing the crime; it could be the case that simply being poor is causing both of these things, since poverty often drives people to crime and money problems are often a reason why people don’t get married.
  1. Someone on a political paneldiscussion show was arguing that homosexuality is immoral based on the fact that rates of certain sexually transmitted diseases are higher in the gay male community. This is a non sequitur—just because something is riskier, that doesn’t mean that it is morally inferior: you have a higher chance of getting into an accident in a car than you do on the train, but that doesn’t mean that driving is morally inferior to taking trains; the argument also involves individualizing probability—just because certain people in the gay community are driving up those statistics, that doesn’t mean that every single gay person engages in risky behavior. It’s no different from saying that everyone who lives in New York City has a greater chance of getting an STD than everyone who lives in Kansas, because those figures areoverall higher in NYC—if an individual in New York City avoids risky behavior and an individual in Kansas engages in such behavior, than the individual in Kansas is at greater risk. Plus, this was clearly asurrogateargument: rates of STD infection are higher among gay men than among straight people, but they are lower among lesbians than among straight people—so, for her logic to be consistent, this person would have to say that being a lesbian is morally superior to being straight, but she thought it was just as “bad” as being a gay man (which proves that her real reason for not liking gay people has nothing to do with STDs).

The Fallacy Journal is due in my mailbox in N751 by Office Closing Time on Wednesday 5/21, along with your revisions of the first two papers (if you are doing revisions) and Paper #3 (if you are doing Paper #3) in the Final Portfolio. The Fallacy Journal must be typed and should be single-spaced with spaces between items. It is not graded on grammar per se, but obviously I need to be able to understand you.