Friday, September 17, 2010

Violating the Principal of Rational Discussion


I chose to discuss begging the question. In the book it says “the point of an argument is to convince that a claim is true. So the premises of an argument have to be more plausible than the conclusion.” If you make an argument and someone does not understand what you said, then there is a fallacy. An example would be “you should turn off the stove before you leave the house.” If the person you are addressing has to ask “why?” then you are violating the principal of reasoning.  By simply making your argument more specific, you can eliminate the question. “You should turn off the stove before you leave the house to avoid a fire” avoids the question because it answers it. A misleading example could be Bob saying “Steve died yesterday” to Emily. Emily could ask “What do you mean he is dead? I just saw him an hour ago.” What Bob meant to say was that Steve died in the video game that they were playing. Bob is not lying, just misleading because he left out the video game part.

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