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From: colonel@sunybcs.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: what is a fallacy?
Message-ID: <940@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Sep-86 10:41:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.940
Posted: Wed Sep 17 10:41:40 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Sep-86 02:11:35 EDT
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Organization: Save the Dodoes Foundation
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I tried to mediate this argument by posting an explanation to net.philosophy,
but that group seems to be on its deathbed.  Here it is again:

> > Well, appeal to emotions is considered a fallacy in logic.
> 
> Logic has to do with the drawing of true conclusions from
> true premisses, and the kind of inferences that license this.
> A fallacy is the use of a non-valid inference (one that does
> not guarantee the truth of a conclusion given the truth of
> the premisses) to infer the truth of a conclusion from the
> truth of some premisses.
> Given this, can anyone explain what the above quoted sentence
> is supposed to mean?

You two were obviously trained differently.  Mathematicians and formal
logicians use "fallacy" in the above, restricted sense.  "Classical"
logic, as it was taught years ago in colleges (and perhaps is still
taught in some of them) studied what might be called fallacies of
argument, as distinguished from fallacies of reasoning.  The argument
_ad hominem_ is probably the best known example of a fallacy of
argument.  See any 1930's college text on philosophical logic for
a list of other such fallacies.

Now, I hope that neither of you will start to argue that your definition
is the "right" one!  Both definitions are useful, in their places.


	"My opponent is a 3 and a 6."  --Lafferty
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
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