Good starting reference point in video form.

I think QM holds the honor of failing all of these at one time or another.

I get the hives when I see or hear the term "begs the question" used improperly. In fact, outside of a logic textbook, I've yet to see "begging the question" used once in an appropriate manner.

Great post.

I wasn't explicitly exposed to formal logic until my first year at university in a philosophy class and later some of the concepts were revisited in various comp-sci courses. I regularly wondered why it wasn't taught sooner---none of it is difficult to grasp, and the earlier you learn it, the better (imho). Granted, I had previously brushed against many of the concepts, but usually independently of each other and mostly because of my own reading. Has anyone else ever seen it as part of a high school curriculum?

Tags changed from "logic, reason, argument, skepticism" to "logic,reason,argument,rhetoric" by gold star member James Roe.

I think this has less to do with rhetoric than skepticism but ok.

My favorite: False Dichotomie (science and religion don't have to be opposite)

My less favorite n1: Special pleading (hey, the ''god created the world through natural selection'' statement can put believer and non believer agreed, why push it away ?)

Less favorite n2: Ad ignorantum (bouhouhou, is my more efficient argument)

I agree with Gluonium. Logic and rhetoric are two distinct components of language.

Logical fallacies are always fun. I wish the narrator would stop makin those hard P's, though. I've yet to see proper argument, not using a fallacy, for existence of any deity.. therefore none exists. QED

gwiz665: Click here for about 24 or so such arguments. Ironically enough, your own argument is fallacious.

Sorry gwiz. I got lazy and didn't want to re-record many of them. I'll do better next time.

jlee22: Really? It really is? :-)

Hanif: No worries, the heart of the clip, which is the arguments, comes across just fine, so I'm just nit-picking, well, because I can. I still upvote this sucker.

Click here for about 24 or so such arguments. Ironically enough, your own argument is fallacious.

I think that was meant as sarcasm..

Anyway, the 24 arguments.. As usual they reduce to "because there is no explanation for this, God is the explanation" A deeply fallacious argument indeed. in some cases these arguments are just explaining themselves into a corner, like the bizarre "sets" and number arguments, basically reduced to if my mind isnt perfect, there has to be a perfect mind, and thats Gods mind, which is similar to saying "if my car cant go 4000 MPH and travel in time, there just has to be a car that can."


Also the "Why" questions are all fallacious, because they assume there has to be a purpose. Ie: "Why is there anything at all?" is really "HOW is there anything at all?" and God is as always no explanation at all, because God itself requires an even bigger explanation. Its equal in stupidity to releasing a one-word scientific journal on the origin of the universe : Magic. It doesnt actually EXPLAIN anything, its just a (bad) guess.

The great thing about relying on faith is that you can ignore this entire video and go about your day, remaining blissfully ignorant.

(See: ant, downvotes)

Here ya go, Farhad2000: http://begthequestion.info/

What are logical fallacies?
They're whatever you Believe them to be.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
-Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

so wait, what this video for or against god?

And does the Latin give them more... Authority?
Oooh look Mabel, they'e in Latin, they must be true!

lol. they're in latin because they were formalized in antiquity. the ones that weren't, aren't.

I like how everyone on youtube thought this was going to be about penis shaped objects.

Dignant: Neither, as such. If God could be argued without resorting to fallacies such as these, I don't think anyone could be against a god. I'm against bullshit.

Memorare: gluonium is right, of course, except that some of them do have Latin names that I simply didn't know at the time. The finest example of this is the "confusing association with causation" fallacy which is known in Latin as "cum hoc, ergo propter hoc".

And yes, these fallacies are law, assuming that I've made no mistakes in their presentation.

Why does he pronounce "Christian" like "kris-tee-an"?

Because he spent so much time studying rhetoric and logic he forgot how to speak.

It's a British variant. If you think about it, it's more consistent. You don't go around saying cris-chan-ity.

"I get the hives when I see or hear the term "begs the question" used improperly. In fact, outside of a logic textbook, I've yet to see "begging the question" used once in an appropriate manner."

Which begs the question... "What is the appropriate manner?"


BTW, Memorare, logical fallacies are Week One of most Philosophy 101 courses. Pretty basic stuff, and pretty ignorant to imply that the narrator is trying to give weight to his argument by using Latin to speak over your head (way over, apparently).

I taught logic for a couple of years at a university. His idea of rhetorical tautology should be called "circular reasoning" to distinguish it from the useful concept of a tautology in formal logic. Any boolean identity is a tautology. Those are very useful and not fallacious. Those include modus ponens, hypothetical syllogism, DeMorgan's laws, distributive laws, and much more. Every semester some students didn't have enough life experience to reinvent DeMorgan's, and they wrote blatantly wrong things like not(A or B) = (not A) or (not B).

See:
http://www.d.umn.edu/~snorr/ece1315f2/BOOLLAWP.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology

I have the opinion that logic should be drilled into all children in elementary school, because without some understanding of it they can't be relied on to form valid opinions about anything else. They should be rescued with logic before they enter a rut. Boolean algebra and quantifiers should be taught before high school, alongside formal geometry.

jwray: Thanks for pointing that out.

And I agree with you. The need for logic instruction is dire.

*promote

Re-promoting this video to the front page as a VideoSift Classic. Originally published on Thursday 17th May 2007 (promotion called by gold star member karaidl)

Wow someone really did his homework.

Nooooooooooooo

logic should not be drilled into anyone.
Fallacies my ass.
Logic is a machine that's useful to cartesian subjects, not to people.

anyway logic has never been used logically.
it's more of a ego and superego problem. the argument is always won by the man who holds more pwer and the man who would sell a piece of his soul for socio-economic and conformist goals.
thus - comedy.

one hopes you are joking.

No, he's definitely not.

*engineering

Adding video to channels (Engineering) - requested by oxdottir.

*dead

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by eric3579.