Calling something a \u201cbullshit argument\u201d is just a vulgar way of rejecting an argument. What is an argument? And what are the reasons for rejecting arguments?<\/p>\n
An \u201cargument\u201d is a group of statements \u2013 two or more \u2013 of which one statement is allegedly supported by the other statement or statements. The allegedly supported statement is called the \u201cconclusion\u201d of the argument, and the allegedly supporting statement or statements are the \u201cpremise\u201d or \u201cpremises\u201d of the argument. I say \u201callegedly\u201d because the conclusion may not, in fact, be supported by the premises. However, whether the premises do or do not support the conclusion, an argument exists because the premises are offered<\/i> in support of the conclusion.<\/p>\n
If the premises do not, in fact, support the conclusion, we can say that the argument is a bad argument, i.e., a bullshit argument.<\/p>\n
Logic is the discipline which studies the nature and the goodness of arguments. There are very many good textbooks on logic, and I have nothing to add to what they cover.<\/p>\n
However, in logic books written by philosophers, there are sections which are called \u201cfallacies\u201d which present a problem. The problem is this. On the one hand, a fallacy is simply a bad argument. In that case saying that the argument is unsound or uncogent should end the matter. [A deductive argument which is invalid<\/i> or has a false premise is unsound. An inductive argument which is weak<\/i> or has a false premise is uncogent.] But, on the other hand, various utterances are called fallacies which aren’t even arguments. So, it seems that under the category of “fallacies” is subsumed something other than arguments, and this needs explanation.<\/p>\n
An excellent explanation was given by C. I. Hamblin in his book Fallacies<\/i><\/a>. The gist of his explanation is that we have to understand fallacies from the standpoint of formal debates as practiced in antiquity and in the middle ages. Fallacies, from this perspective, are the fouls which can occur in formal debates.<\/p>\n ******************************<\/p>\n An interesting collection of fallacies is found in\u00a0W. Ward Fearnside and William B. Holther, Fallacy: A Counterfeit of Argument<\/em><\/a>, 1959.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Calling something a \u201cbullshit argument\u201d is just a vulgar way of rejecting an argument. What is an argument? And what are the reasons for rejecting arguments? An \u201cargument\u201d is a group of statements \u2013 two or more \u2013 of which one statement is allegedly supported by the other statement or statements. The allegedly supported statement … Continue reading “Bullshit Arguments”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bullshit-arguments-fallacies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ditext.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}