PHI 1101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Loaded Question, Ad Hominem, Penknife

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1101
• Professor: Mark Brown

Document Summary

The existence of ghosts has never been disproved. Alice argued forcefully again the expansion of the highway, but you shouldn"t listen to her; after all, she had her license suspended for speeding. Certain types of defective arguments happen so frequently that they have been given names. These are known as fallacies, and such arguments are said to be fallacious". They are psychologically persuasive, though logically powerless. We study fallacies because we need to be able to detect them. Make sure you know these because you will need to be able to spot them and name them when you see them. Appeal to ignorance: arguing that a lack of evidence proves something. In one type of this fallacy, the problem arises by thinking that a claim must be true because it hasn"t been shown to be false. No one has shown that ghosts aren"t real, so they must be real. ".