Buttercups, GNP's and Quarks: Are Fallacies Theoretical Entities?

Hamblin held that the conception of 'fallacy' as an argument that seems valid but is not really so was the dominant conception of fallacy in the history of fallacy studies. The present paper explores the extent of support that there is for this view. After presenting a brief analysis of 'the standard definition of fallacy,' a number of the definitions of 'fallacy' in texts from the middle of this century – from the standard treatment – are considered. This is followed (...) by a review of the definitions of 'fallacy' in the earlier history of logic books, including those of Aristotle, Whately, Mill and De Morgan. The essay concludes that there is scarcely any support for Hamblin's view that this particular definition of 'fallacy' was widely held. (shrink)

I begin by formulating the problem of the nature of fallacy in terms of the logic of the negative evaluation of argument, that is, in terms of a theory of logical criticism; here I discuss several features of my approach and several advantages vis-à-vis other approaches; a main feature of my approach is the concern to avoid both formalist and empiricist excesses. I then define six types of fallaciousness, labeled formal, explanatory, presuppositional, positive, semantical, and persuasive; they all involve arguments (...) whose conclusion may be said not to follow from the premises, that is, they involve the logical evaluation of relationships among propositions. I also provide a set of data consisting of four historical cases or nine specific instances of fallacious arguments; these all pertain to the Copernican controversy about the earth's motion in the seventeenth century. I end with a discussion of further problems and inquiries that deserve attention. (shrink)

1As an editor of this journal, John Woods and his distinguished contributions to logic, reasoning, and argumentation need little introduction. However, this book is partly a fruit of his relatively recent collaboration with Dov Gabbay, which deserves some elaboration. They have co-edited some monumental reference collections, e.g.: Handbook of the Logic of Argument and Inference: The Turn toward the Practical and Logic: A History of Its Central Concepts. And they are co-authoring an ambitious multi-volume work collectively entitled A Practical Logic (...) of Cognitive Systems. The first two volumes, Agenda Relevance: A Study in Formal Pragmatics and The Reach of Abduction: Insight and Trial, each contain contributions by both authors, such that Woods wrote the philosophical conceptual parts and Gabbay the formal mathematical parts. However, due to a change of publisher and the excessive length of the earlier volumes, they decided to publish the third volume as two separate single-authored bo. (shrink)

This is a critical appreciation of Govier’s 2006 ISSA keynote address on the fallacy of composition, and of economists’ writings on this fallacy in economics. I argue that the “fallacy of composition” is a problematical concept, because it does not denote a distinctive kind of argument but rather a plurality, and does not constitute a distinctive kind of error, but rather reduces to oversimplification in arguing from micro to macro. Finally, I propose further testing of this claim based on examples (...) involving public vs. private debt in economics; oligarchic tendencies in politics, and the emergence of societal wholes in sociology. (shrink)