I appreciate your feedback on the archives and website as well. I am forever tweaking this thing that I call a website.

After looking at the composition example, I think it can fall in both categories. Thanks for your examples.

Bes,

I wasn’t trying to show examples of what I support and don’t support. I was trying to give relevant, present-day examples of issues.

You’re allowed to expand, quote, or use anything I write about. I have my work under Creative Commons.

“Poisoning the Well”, you should be in Orange County, Southern California. You will hear such things every hour by both girls and guys, if not every 30 minutes.

About “Post Hoc”, I think the information that Amanda has can be used to track down the real reason instead of using it as a final judgment, the way she did in the example.

“Appeal to Emotion”: this one happens almost everyday in many places. I think it depends on the person being told such a quote whether or not they wish to let their emotions control their money. Same thing with so many kids I sometimes see outside banks selling chocolate to support their education.

“Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right”; are you saying boyfriends and girlfriends are obligated to give each other presents? Also, if such an act is voluntary, either person may avoid doing it to prove a point in case there is a disagreement somewhere in the relationship.

“Appeal to Majority”; I heard this one a lot, almost everyday. This applies to both sides of the arguments [e.g., those who support and those who oppose "the" war or any war]. I like your example of many people visiting or downloading something. That does not determine the quality of a product or a service, yes. More people go into Kmart compared to Target. Does that mean Target is not as good as Kmart?

“Begging the question”; I love this a lot, as I see it everyday. And it is also annoying in many cases. I would like to post more on this specific point if I have your permission. I may have already posted something on this.

Should I guess here that the examples used here show things you support and do not support?

Good work Ronald! I am hoping to see more posts like this one.

Straw Man – it doesn’t necessarily have to make the argument personal (although the example does). The Straw Man just takes an argument and takes it to an indefensible extreme. I heard this one recently. A coworker has a dog which is his “baby” (or his wife’s, I forget). This dog just went through surgery on its knee and has a cast that costs about $700 to change. We wondered why he didn’t just put the dog down and he said “You wouldn’t shoot your kid, would you?” Classic Straw Man.

Composition – it is a little clearer to me if Amanda had said “I think all bikers are scary. Those ones at the bar down the street all have tattoos, long beards, and leather jackets.” Hmm. I just checked out this logical fallacy page and this example seems to be more of a Hasty Generalization than Composition. I have a hard time getting the two straight, but Composition takes a characteristic of one or more parts (sodium is toxic, chloride is toxic) and drawing a conclusion about the whole from that (anything with sodium and chloride in it is toxic). Hasty Generalization is the sampling error about drawing a conclusion when having seen only a few representative members of a group.

Begging the Question – Your favorite one, right Ronalfy? I like the example from our old textbook. “Why do you think OJ Simpson is guilty?” “Because he killed Nicole” This is Begging the Question because the question is asking “Why do you think OJ Simpson is guilty of killing Nicole?” and the answer is parroting back the question.

Finding logical fallacies to an argument will help in deconstructing an opponents viewpoint, but convincing them that their argument is fallacious may be another challenge.

cetroyer