In yesterday's Star, Bob Hepburn had an interesting article entitled Harper the king of nasty attack ads, an article well-worth reading. It got me thinking about fallacies of reason and the importance of critical thinking, subjects about which I have previously written.
So I decided to make a brief post here on one of the most common fallacies, the ad hominem, followed by video of two attack ads, one from the Liberal Party and one from The Conservatives. I will then leave you to consider whether one or both of the ads fall under the ad hominem label.
About.com offers some interesting insight on the purpose served by the fallacy known as the ad hominem, which means the attack on the person rather than on his/her arguments:
The abusive ad hominem is not just a case of directing abusive language toward another person. . . . The fallacy is committed when one engages in a personal attack as a means of ignoring, discrediting, or blunting the force of another's argument.
An example of an ad hominem would be the following statement:
I can't believe a word that Al Gore says about climate change because he couldn't even keep his marriage together.
You will notice the fact that Gore's marital status has nothing to do with the facts that he has been promoting for many years on global warming, yet the purpose here is for you to dismiss those facts by cultivating a disdain for those who experience marital failure.
Enjoy the videos:
Showing posts with label fallacies of reasoning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fallacies of reasoning. Show all posts
Friday, April 1, 2011
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Fallacies of Reasoning - Absolutisms
This is a strange time , Mister. No man may longer doubt the powers of the dark are gathered in monstrous attack upon this village. - The Crucible, by Arthur Miller.
As mentioned in my last post, after my disillusioning experience with class group think, I resolved to sharpen the focus of the language unit. This meant going beyond one of the core essays, Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and including the "Knowing How to Think” Royal Bank newsletter. The latter opened the door to explore, in detail, fallacies of reasoning. Three of the fallacies I think my students most benefited from were “absolutisms,” “ad hominems” and “appealing to popular passions.” Coincidentally, these seem to be the three most commonly practiced by governments when communicating with their citizens, so there was no dearth of examples to be found for classroom illustration.
Absolutisms: This fallacy is perhaps the easiest to spot. It suggests that there is only one right and wrong answer, that everything is black or white, with no gradations of gray. In a world hungry for simplicity and straightforward answers, the often emotive context of absolutisms makes it easy to fall under their beguiling spell. How else, for example, could George Bush, shortly after the New York terrorist attacks, say to the world: “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists”? Or in my own country, how can Prime Minister Stephen Harper say that those who question the mission in Afghanistan are emboldening the terrorists?
As I said, there was never a shortage of examples to use in the classroom, but I often wondered how the principal would have reacted to a parental complaint that I was somehow being partisan in using these sorts of examples. As I used to tell my students, they can be found on any part of the political spectrum; it’s just that it is so easy to find them from the right wing, given the prominence accorded it by the media.
As mentioned in my last post, after my disillusioning experience with class group think, I resolved to sharpen the focus of the language unit. This meant going beyond one of the core essays, Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and including the "Knowing How to Think” Royal Bank newsletter. The latter opened the door to explore, in detail, fallacies of reasoning. Three of the fallacies I think my students most benefited from were “absolutisms,” “ad hominems” and “appealing to popular passions.” Coincidentally, these seem to be the three most commonly practiced by governments when communicating with their citizens, so there was no dearth of examples to be found for classroom illustration.
Absolutisms: This fallacy is perhaps the easiest to spot. It suggests that there is only one right and wrong answer, that everything is black or white, with no gradations of gray. In a world hungry for simplicity and straightforward answers, the often emotive context of absolutisms makes it easy to fall under their beguiling spell. How else, for example, could George Bush, shortly after the New York terrorist attacks, say to the world: “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists”? Or in my own country, how can Prime Minister Stephen Harper say that those who question the mission in Afghanistan are emboldening the terrorists?
As I said, there was never a shortage of examples to use in the classroom, but I often wondered how the principal would have reacted to a parental complaint that I was somehow being partisan in using these sorts of examples. As I used to tell my students, they can be found on any part of the political spectrum; it’s just that it is so easy to find them from the right wing, given the prominence accorded it by the media.
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