综英第五单元的资料

THESIS CONTRARY TO FACT also known as counterfactual fallacy speculative fallacy what if fallacy wouldchuck Description Offering a poorly supported claim about what might have happened in the past or future if the hypothetical part circumstances or conditions were different The fallacy also entails treating future hypothetical situations as if they are fact Logical Form If event X did happen then event Y would have happened based only on speculation Example 1 If you accepted Jesus you would have never watched that R rated movie Explanation This is speculation at best not founded on evidence and is unfalsifiable Maybe if I accepted Jesus I would have watched an X rated movie instead and used the excuse that I had to get the demons out Who knows Example 2 If you accept Jesus you will never be lonely again Jesus will always be right by your side spiritually speaking Explanation Future hypotheticals that are stated as fact are most often nothing more than false promises Maybe I will never be lonely with Jesus or maybe I am the type who likes to keep company with other human beings Regardless if the theists are correct then God is everywhere omnipresent whether we believe in him or not Exception In either or situations general predictions can obviously be made without fallacy If you didn t flip a heads on the coin it would have been tails Here is another example 7 year old If you love me you would never make me eat those broccoli Mom But I do love you Okay you don t have to eat those broccoli Contrary to Fact Hypothesis This fallacy consists in treating a hypothetical claim as if it were a statement of fact by making a claim without sufficient evidence about what would have happened in the past if other conditions had been present or an event that will occur in the future Example Consider the following contrary to fact hypotheses none of which is provided with any support If you had only tasted the stewed snails you would have loved them If I hadn t goofed around my first year in college I would have been accepted at medical school If I had only been there for him last night he wouldn t have killed himself or If only I had practiced a little more on my backhand I could have won that tennis tournament It is not likely that any evidence could be mustered to support such hypothetical claims Therefore they would probably never merit our acceptance If there were reasons to accept them we are rarely if ever given those reasons and even if we were there is still the question of whether they could ever count as evidence Attacking the Fallacy Because the formulation of imaginative constructs is a vital part of planning for the future and understanding the past in no way would I encourage anyone to pounce on every hypothetical construct or to refrain from exercising one s own imagination However if you are confronted with a substantive contrary to fact claim that is highly questionable I would suggest that you find some way of getting the arguer to recognize and to admit to the speculative character of the claim Sometimes the very act of admitting that a claim is speculative will lead one to be more open to counterarguments and to take more seriously the task of supporting the claim One effective way of confronting an unsupported hypothetical claim might be something like this Well you may be right but I would have no way of determining that as I am not aware of your evidence for such a claim There is of course no evidence available but the arguer will at least probably feel obligated to make some attempt to share with you the basis for his or her speculation about the claim and that might get the discussion on a constructive track Attacking Faulty Reasoning By T Edward Damer Contrary Hypothesis to Fact Description From a statement of fact the argument draws a counterfactual claim i e a claim about what would have been true if the stated fact were not true The argument falsely assumes that any state of affairs can have only one possible cause Examples I taught you logic So if I hadn t taught you logic you never would have learned logic at all paraphrased from POISONING THE WELL From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia This article is about the rhetorical device For other uses see Poisoning the well disambiguation Poisoning the well or attempting to poison the well is a rhetorical device where adverse information about a target is pre emptively presented to anaudience with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua 1864 1 The origin of the term lies in well poisoning an ancient wartime practice of pouring poison into sources of fresh water before an invading army to diminish the attacking army s strength Contents hide 1 Examples 2 Structure 3 See also 4 References 5 External links Examples edit If Adam tells Bob Chris is a fascist 法西斯 so don t listen to him then Adam has committed the fallacy of poisoning the well if Bob takes Adam s advice then he is also a victim of the fallacy of poisoning the well Assuming 假设 that Chris isn t merely going to tell Bob that he isn t a fascist then there is a fallacy because it is irrelevant to the cogency 说服力 of Chris argument s whether he is or isn t a fascist It is possible to be a fascist and also to have cogent arguments on some arbitrary matter e g Chris may wish to persuade Bob that the Earth is not flat 地球不是平 的 being a fascist does not preclude the possibility of having a cogent argument that the Earth is not flat Structure edit Poisoning the well can take the form of an explicit or implied 明确或暗示 argument and is considered by some philosophers an informal fallacy 非形式谬论 非正式谬论 A poisoned well argument 辩论 争论 has the following form 1 Unfavorable information 相关信息 be it true or false relevant or irrelevant about person A the target is presented by another e g Before you listen to my opponent 竞 争对手 may I remind you that he has been in jail 监狱 2 Implicit conclusion 隐性结论 Therefore any claims made by person A cannot be relied upon 依赖 A subcategory 范畴 of this form is the application of an unfavorable attribute to any future opponents in an attempt to discourage debate For example That s my stance on funding the public education system and anyone who disagrees with me hates children Any person who steps forward to dispute the claim will then risk applying the tag to him or herself in the process A poisoned well argument can also be in this form 1 Unfavorable definitions be it true or false which prevent disagreement or enforce affirmative position 2 Any claims without first agreeing with above definitions are automatically dismissed POISONING THE WELL DISAMBIGUATION 消消 除歧义除歧义 From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Redirected from Poison the Well Poisoning the well or to poison the well is a logical fallacy 逻辑学的驳斥形势 Poisoning the well may also refer to Well poisoning the literal meaning of the phrase Poisoning the Well a Stargate Atlantis episode Poison the Well band a hardcore band from Florida formed in 1997 This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title If an internal link led you here you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article Poisoning the Well Etymology 词源学词源学 The phrase poisoning the well ultimately alludes 暗示 提及 to the medieval 中世纪的 European myth 神话 that the black plague 黑死病 黑 色瘟疫 was caused by Jews poisoning town wells a myth which was used as an excuse to persecute 迫害 Jews The phrase was first used in its relevant sense by Cardinal John Henry Newman during a controversy with Charles Kingsley W hat I insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his in his concluding pages to cut the ground from under my feet to poison by anticipation the public mind against me John Henry Newman and to infuse into the imaginations of my readers suspicion and mistrust of every thing that I may say in reply to him This I call poisoning the wells I am henceforth in doubt and fear he says as much as any honest man can be concerning every word Dr Newman may write How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe 盲从者 容易受骗的人 of some cunning 奸诈的 equivocation Well I can only say that if his taunt is to take effect I am but wasting my time in saying a word in answer to his foul calumnies We all know how our imagination runs away with us how suddenly and at what a pace the saying Caesar s wife should not be suspected is an instance of what I mean The habitual prejudice the humour of the moment is the turning point which leads us to read a defence in a good sense or a bad We interpret it by our antecedent impressions The very same sentiments according as our jealousy is or is not awake or our aversion stimulated are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum and that when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment the only remark he elicited in answer was How naturally he talks you would think he was in his senses Controversies should be decided by the reason is it legitimate warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and to its dislikings Any how if Mr Kingsley is able thus to practise upon my readers the more I succeed the less will be my success The more triumphant are my statements the more certain will be my defeat Source Source John Henry Newman Apologia Pro Vita Sua Type Type Argumentum ad Hominem Example I wish it were possible for men to get really emotionally involved in this question abortion It is really impossible for the man for whom it is impossible to be in this situation to really see it from the woman s point of view That is why I am concerned that there are not more women in this House available to speak about this from the woman s point of view Source Source House of Commons Debates of Canada Volume 2 November 30 1979 p 1920 Analysis Exposition To poison the well is to commit a pre emptive ad hominem strike against an argumentative opponent As with regular ad hominems the well may be poisoned in either an abusive 恶语的 or circumstantial 间 接的 way For instance 1 Only an ignoramus 笨蛋 would disagree with fluoridating 氟化物氟化物 以防儿童蛀齿以防儿童蛀齿 water Abusive 2 My opponent is a dentist so of course he will oppose the fluoridating of water since he will lose business Circumstantial Anyone bold enough to enter a debate which begins with a well poisoning either steps into an insult or an attack upon one s personal integrity As with standard ad hominems the debate is likely to cease to be about its nominal topic and become a debate about the arguer However what sets Poisoning the Well apart from the standard Ad Hominem is the fact that the poisoning is done before the opponent has a chance to make a case Exposure Poisoning the Well is not strictly speaking a logical fallacy since it is not a type of argument Rather it is a logical boobytrap set by the poisoner to tempt the unwary audience into committing an ad hominem fallacy As with all forms of the ad hominem one should keep in mind that an argument can and must stand or fall on its own regardless of who makes it Analysis of the Example This is a common type of circumstantial poisoning of the well which claims that men should either not make a judgment about abortion or should keep it to themselves if they do This illustrates the effect that poisoning the well tends to have which is to forestall opposition in debate It also shows the mistake underlying all poisoning of the well since the sex of the arguer is irrelevant to the merits of the argument No doubt one could always find a woman to advance the argument whatever it is Sources S Morris Engel With Good Reason An Introduction to Informal Fallacies Fifth Edition St Martin s 1994 pp 206 209 Douglas N Walton Informal Fallacies Towards a Theory of Argument Criticisms John Benjamins 1987 pp 217 222 Acknowledgment The skull and crossbones magnet is available from AllPosters PoisoningPoisoning thethe wellwell is a rhetorical technique and logical fallacy that uses the association of negative emotions to distract a subject from actual evidence in an argument The usual method is to point out the unpleasant nature of the person making the opposing argument in which case it is a special case of a personal attack or ad hominem In general to poison the well means to pre provide any information that could produce a biased opinion of the reasoning positive or negative It can be done subtly or quite blatantly A subtle way of poisoning the well would be to use particular adjectives in introducing something that would influence people who are about to hear an argument In a more blatant display someone can make an outright personal attack in an introduction For example asking people to remember that a person has been in prison before listening to their statements the well is now poisoned because people are likely to distrust a person making an argument knowing that they re a convict regardless of the reasoning that they put forward Poisoning the well Judith comments on her frustration in joining a new website Sorry I do not provide passwords or birthdate I would have like to have joined oth