Logic 101

FALLACIES I

Fallacies of Relevance

Argumentum ad Baculum

Force and threat;  “might makes right”:  “Anyone who denies that six million Jews died in the Holocaust should be eliminated from the teaching profession.”

Argumentum ad Hominem (attack on the opponent)

  1. Abusive:  “You’re a White man and therefore automatically racist and wrong in everything you say!”
  2. Circumstantial:  referring to the special cirumstances of the opponent.
    1. Opponent’s special interest (“poisoning the well”):  “How can Christians refuse to support Israel, when their own sacred scriptures show that Palestine was promised to the Jews by Yahweh himself?”
    2. Charge of inconsistency, either among the opponent’s beliefs, or between his preaching and his practice:  “You Whites claim to be all for equality, but you don’t want to let your own daughters have black babies.”

Argumentum ad Ignorantiam

True simply because not proven false:  “The U.S. Congress has refused to fund any research on race-based intelligence, so there isn’t any officially approved documentation on the subject;  therefore there are no genetically determined IQ differences between the races.”

Argumentum ad Misericordiam

Appeal to compassion:  “The poor, downtrodden Negroes were enslaved for centuries;  so affirmative action must now suppress the White man to help them.”

Argumentum ad Populum

Snob appeal, band wagon:  TV shows that Whites have always persecuted poor, noble people such as Negroes and Jews, so you should feel guilty just like all the other White viewers do.”

Argumentum ad Verecundiam

Appeal to authority;  “testimonials”:  “Einstein proved that the Jews are the smartest race.”

Accident

Insisting that the general rule is always applicable, even when a case’s “accidents” make that case an exception:  “America has the right to go to war to defend its way of life and that of its friends.  Therefore it has a right to destroy other nations who threaten its cheap oil, even if such destruction would cause global catastrophe.”

Converse Accident

Jumping to conclusions about general rules from a restricted number of cases within a class;  hasty generalization:  “There were errors in early IQ tests particularly when applied to Negroes and Hispanics;  therefore all IQ tests are wrong.”

False causenon causa pro causa or post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Mistaking what is not the cause for the real cause, or assuming a preceding event to be the cause of a following one merely from the fact that it precedes:  “Negroes are almost all poor, while the average White has an income above that of Negroes.  This shows that the Whites are the cause of the Negroes’ poverty.”

Petitio Principii  (“Aiming at the beginning [of the argument]”)

“Begging the question” or circular reasoning, in which the point to be proved, or major parts of it, is/are (often tacitly) assumed at the beginning (this is the main problem with all computer modeling):  “We know that people who want to avoid genosuicide are racists, so since you Whites don’t want any more people from the Third World, you’re obviously racists.”

Complex question

Two or more (often hidden or tacitly assumed) sections in a premiss, combined in such a way that any conclusion from or to the one seems to entail a statement regarding the other:
  1. One premiss hidden:  “Why are Whites prejudiced against Negroes?”
  2. All premisses clearly stated:  “Do your patriotic duty and support the war against terrorist Mohammedans and anti-Semitic Nazis!”
  3. Question-begging epithets:  “You’re not a rightist extremist, are you?”

Ignoratio Elenchi  (Lit., “Ignorance of [which] argument.”)

Argument not to the point:  “Jews have been persecuted by non-Jews throughout history.  Jews therefore have a right to make themselves secure by perverting the laws of White nations so as to incarcerate “holocaust-deniers” and by destroying those who have differing interpretations of World War II.”  Or:  “Americans unjustly invaded Afghanistan;  therefore Mohammedans are fully justified in killing French citizens who make fun of Mohammedanism or French Jews who support Israel.”

Tu quoque  (“You too.”)

Replying to a charge by making the same charge against the accuser or others:  “Jews shouldn’t be singled out for influencing Congress through the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee and similar agencies.  After all, other ethnic and interest groups do it, too.”

FALLACIES II

Fallacies of Ambiguity

Equivocationsemantic ambiguity

Double meaning, or relativity of meaning, in individual words:  “The founding fathers meant America to be the land of freedom.  To live up to this principle, America should ensure that every immigrant has free housing, food, transportation and other amenities, which will make him free of want.”

Amphibolysyntactical ambiguity

Double meaning, or relativity of meaning, in the sentence taken as a whole:  “Many congressmen are bribed by political action committees and paid under the table.  This reality shows that such congressmen actually have lower earnings than normal legislators.”

Accent

Deception caused by placement of the emphasis:
  1. Double meaning due to difference in sentence stress.  Jewish tabloids often run headlines such as “WHITE SUPREMACISTS TO ATTACK SYNAGOGUES,” and then, in much smaller type, add the words “Jewish leaders fear.”
  2. Quoting out of context:  “The writers of the American Declaration of Independence were grossly insensitive to women’s feelings when they wrote that ‘all men are created equal’.”

Composition

From the part to the whole;  also, from attributes distributively true of members of a class to attributes predicated collectively of the class as a whole.  “There is no pollution threat to the earth from Third World overpopulation.  For the average Third World person does not pollute the earth as much as the average American.”

Division

From the whole to the part;  also, from the properties of a collection of elements to the properties of the individual elements themselves:  “The White race made the modern world, and therefore each White man today has the responsibility of accepting the guilt for all of its problems.”

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Deus vult ! — Þeedrich ( Inscriptio electronica:   )
Dies immutationis recentissimæ:  die Lunæ, 2015 Jan 12