Events

Last week I identified and demonstrated seven fallacies of irrelevant conclusion, by which a person tries to win an argument using language that has nothing to do with the point being argued. Those fallacies actually fall under the larger heading "material fallacies." A material fallacy makes an error of argument, in contrast to a formal fallacy which makes an error of logic. Before I get into specific kinds of material fallacies, let me describe the basic principle of syllogism. A syllogism has a major...

French inventor Franky Zapata piloted a jet-powered hoverboard across the English Channel yesterday, covering 32 km in 22 minutes, including a refueling stop on a boat: Mr. Zapata’s first attempt to cross the English Channel had been intended to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the first flight between continental Europe and Britain, made by the French pilot Louis Blériot. “What I have done is a lot smaller, but I followed my dream, and that’s huge,” Mr. Zapata told the BFM TV channel. His device, a...

No one really knows where the term "red herring" came from, though some speculate it came from the idea that drawing a fish across your path would confuse the dogs tracking you. In epistemology, a red herring is an: Argumentum ignoratio elenchi Literally, an "argument of ignorance of the grab," or an argument of irrelevant conclusion that doesn't fit into the other categories. A person using a red herring will attempt to draw the argument away from anything relevant with a distraction. For examples, I...

Twenty-nine people died and 52 were injured in two mass shootings yesterday. Years of lying about the second amendment to encourage gun sales, and buying votes not only for legislation but also to confirm judges (including on the Supreme Court) have led to this. I believe Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association since 1991, is the person most responsible for our current firearms laws. So far in 2019, he bears substantial responsibility for the 252 mass shootings that have taken 281...

Continuing The Daily Parker's occasional series on logical fallacies, let's look at two more fallacies of irrelevant conclusions. Argumentum ad vericundiam An "argument to awe" uses reputation rather than evidence to score a point. The most common example involves a testimonial, either positive or negative, as when someone argues for or against a premise by pointing to the president's endorsement of the premise. A similar, implicit argument to awe occurs when an advertiser puts a famous actor in a...

First, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott takes a second look at the 1999 film Election: The movie has been persistently and egregiously misunderstood, and I count myself among the many admirers who got it wrong. Because somehow I didn’t remember — or didn’t see— what has been right there onscreen the whole time. Which is that Mr. M is a monster — a distillation of human moral squalor with few equals in modern American cinema — and that Tracy Flick is the heroine who bravely, if imperfectly, resists...

These movements crop up from time to time, and it's not going to happen in my lifetime. But the Tribune did a lengthy report on the latest effort to separate Chicago and the rest of Illinois into two states: Over the past two years, the movement to divide the state of Illinois into two states — Cook County in one, the other 101 counties in the other — has been gaining support. In February, as Gov. J.B. Pritzker was pursuing an agenda for Illinois that included new tax and abortion policies, Halbrook...