PHIL 1180 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Sarcasm, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Syllogism
Document Summary
The easiest way to respond is to object one of the premises. A valid syllogism must have at least one premise in universal form (a and e) Universal form statements can be proven true with a single counterexample. Another way to object is to object their reasoning. With deductive arguments an objection means it is invalid. Typically, the response will be like that"s illogical. The fallacy of equivocation occurs when a word or phrase in an argument is used in two distinct senses. These statements are invalid because they don"t have three pairs of terms. If they provide a consistent definition of the term that works for the whole argument, then it is not equivocation. If the response is vague, then it probably is equivocation. This commits equivocation because sinner means two different things. We should not make claire the treasurer of our organization because claire is a thief.
