Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Week 3 Discussion Question 1

Based on the reading in the Epstein book, “Critical Thinking” Chapter 11 is based on Fallacies.

Explain the fallacy in your own words in which you read in the text book and then give a real world example that you have heard in the past. 

After reading through the different fallacies the one fallacy that stood out the most to me was false dilemma. I thought false dilemma would be used the most because it easy for readers/ writers to get caught up in a false dilemma.

False Dilemma:  False Dilemma is a logical fallacy in which someone is caught up in a situation in which only two topics are being discussed. Thus, there is going to be a dilemma in which it is not true in fact it is false.

Example of a False Dilemma:
When you are comparing two different schools and how much the tuition is at each particular school. One may say that San Jose State University and Harvard cost the same amount for tuition. But in reality Harvard is more expensive then San Jose State University. This is a proven fact. Meaning the speaker/ writer had a False Dilemma.

2 comments:

  1. You did a great job making it easy for the reader to understand the fallacy "False Dilemma". There were a couple of things that I liked about your post. You made it clear to the reader what the definition of a false dilemma is, by highlighting it in red. Another thing that I liked is how you gave an example of what it was. Before reading this post I was a little confused on what a false dilemma is. But after I read your post I am more clear on what it actually is. Keep up the good work!

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  2. Good job on describing the fallacy false dilemma to us readers. You really made it simple to comprehend. I liked the way you first defined the fallacy and then went on to providing a specific example. I was somewhat unclear on what exactly false dilemma was from the reading but you really cleared it up for me. Your example was perfectly clear and I think everyone should be able to point out that San Jose State does not cost as much as Harvard tuition wise. Overall great job on this post I really liked it and I will continue to view your blog.

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