Idea for week of Sept. 8

A fallacy is faulty or unsupported reasoning that is used to make an argument. Faigley identifies several on pages 18-19. There are several kinds of fallacies in the Monty Python sketch we looked at last Friday, including:

• name calling -- "she's a witch" 
• begging the question/restating the claim to pass it off as evidence -- the accusers say the woman is a witch because she looks like a witch...but admit under questioning that they dressed her to look like a witch; regardless, they all pile on the bandwagon of "Burn her anyway!"
  
• false analogies -- Sir Bedevere the Wise comes up with such a litany of false analogies that it's hard to keep track. Each depends on a degree of resemblance of one thing to another, but fails to acknowledge significant differences. Eventually, even the accused woman thinks it is fair that she is judged a witch because she weighs about the same as a large duck on Bedevere's dubious scales.

While the use of fallacies may be in fun in The Quest for the Holy Grail they are used with serious consequences in many arguments, and especially easy to find online or in viral emails that warn, slander or perpetuate urban legends. One that leaps to my mind immediately is the viral email campaign that warned of President Obama's Muslim heritage. This link takes you to Snopes.com, which is a good place to check out such emails and urban legends before passing them on and becoming part of the viral fallacies.


What are some fallacies that you found?