Do you consider yourself a skeptic? That's good. So do I. But I consider my self a real skeptic, not the type of skeptic who never gets to the bottom of things, who only attempts to undermine a proposition or idea with phony arguments. Illogical arguments. And who never actually investigate claims themselves but call for investigations or even the FCC. No, the pseudo-skeptic relies on phony arguments, logical fallacies to win the debate. For those pseudo-skeptics and you know who you are who have run out of logical fallacies I'm going to help you out. Starting with this short list of logical fallacies you are free to use.
Appeal to emotion – where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning. [63]
Appeal to fear – a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument is made by increasing fear and prejudice towards the opposing side[64][65]
Appeal to ridicule – an argument is made by presenting the opponent's argument in a way that makes it appear ridiculous.[68][69]
Appeal to motive – where a premise is dismissed by calling into question the motives of its proposer.
Appeal to novelty (argumentum novitatis/antiquitatis) – where a proposal is claimed to be superior or better solely because it is new or modern.[72]
Appeal to tradition (argumentum ad antiquitam) – a conclusion supported solely because it has long been held to be true.[74]
Appeal to wealth (argumentum ad crumenam) – supporting a conclusion because the arguer is wealthy (or refuting because the arguer is poor).[76] (Sometimes taken together with the appeal to poverty as a general appeal to the arguer's financial situation.)
Judgmental language – insulting or pejorative language to influence the recipient's judgment.
And everyone's favorite, Appeal To Authority,
APPEAL TO AUTHORITY
Explanation
An appeal to authority is an argument from the fact that a person judged to be an authority affirms a proposition to the claim that the proposition is true.
Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood, so no testimony of any authority is guaranteed to be true.
However, the informal fallacy occurs only when the authority cited either (a) is not an authority, or (b) is not an authority on the subject on which he is being cited. If someone either isn’t an authority at all, or isn’t an authority on the subject about which they’re speaking, then that undermines the value of their testimony.
Psychological basis
An integral part of the appeal to authority is the cognitive bias known as the Asch effect.[23] In repeated and modified instances of the Asch conformity experiments, it was found that high-status individuals create a stronger likelihood of a subject agreeing with an obviously false conclusion, despite the subject normally being able to clearly see that the answer was incorrect.[24]
Further, humans have been shown to feel strong emotional pressure to conform to authorities and majority positions. A repeat of the experiments by another group of researchers found that "Participants reported considerable distress under the group pressure", with 59% conforming at least once and agreeing with the clearly incorrect answer, whereas the incorrect answer was much more rarely given when no such pressures were present.[25]
Cheers,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica
Do you consider yourself a skeptic? That's good. So do I. But I consider my self a real skeptic, not the type of skeptic who never gets to the bottom of things, who only attempts to undermine a proposition or idea with phony arguments. Illogical arguments. And who never actually investigate claims themselves but call for investigations or even the FCC. No, the pseudo-skeptic relies on phony arguments, logical fallacies to win the debate. For those pseudo-skeptics and you know who you are who have run out of logical fallacies I'm going to help you out. Starting with this short list of logical fallacies you are free to use.
Appeal to emotion – where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning. [63]
Appeal to fear – a specific type of appeal to emotion where an argument is made by increasing fear and prejudice towards the opposing side[64][65]
Appeal to ridicule – an argument is made by presenting the opponent's argument in a way that makes it appear ridiculous.[68][69]
Appeal to motive – where a premise is dismissed by calling into question the motives of its proposer.
Appeal to novelty (argumentum novitatis/antiquitatis) – where a proposal is claimed to be superior or better solely because it is new or modern.[72]
Appeal to tradition (argumentum ad antiquitam) – a conclusion supported solely because it has long been held to be true.[74]
Appeal to wealth (argumentum ad crumenam) – supporting a conclusion because the arguer is wealthy (or refuting because the arguer is poor).[76] (Sometimes taken together with the appeal to poverty as a general appeal to the arguer's financial situation.)
Judgmental language – insulting or pejorative language to influence the recipient's judgment.
And everyone's favorite, Appeal To Authority,
APPEAL TO AUTHORITY
Explanation
An appeal to authority is an argument from the fact that a person judged to be an authority affirms a proposition to the claim that the proposition is true.
Appeals to authority are always deductively fallacious; even a legitimate authority speaking on his area of expertise may affirm a falsehood, so no testimony of any authority is guaranteed to be true.
However, the informal fallacy occurs only when the authority cited either (a) is not an authority, or (b) is not an authority on the subject on which he is being cited. If someone either isn’t an authority at all, or isn’t an authority on the subject about which they’re speaking, then that undermines the value of their testimony.
Psychological basis
An integral part of the appeal to authority is the cognitive bias known as the Asch effect.[23] In repeated and modified instances of the Asch conformity experiments, it was found that high-status individuals create a stronger likelihood of a subject agreeing with an obviously false conclusion, despite the subject normally being able to clearly see that the answer was incorrect.[24]
Further, humans have been shown to feel strong emotional pressure to conform to authorities and majority positions. A repeat of the experiments by another group of researchers found that "Participants reported considerable distress under the group pressure", with 59% conforming at least once and agreeing with the clearly incorrect answer, whereas the incorrect answer was much more rarely given when no such pressures were present.[25]
Cheers,
Geoff Kait
Machina Dynamica