False Premises and Relevant Detail

Warm Up  In your journal, brainstorm what you think false premises in persuasive writing might be

Upcoming Events  X Day:  Benchmark 2 on 10/31  Vocab Quiz 4 on 11/5  Y Day  Crucible Vocab 3 due 10/24  Persuasive Essay 10/24  Act I & II Exam 10/24  Benchmark 2 on 10/30  Vocab Quiz 4 on 11/6

Objective and Agenda  SWBAT demonstrate their understanding of false premises in persuasive writing by using their notes to create examples of each type.  SWBAT demonstrate their ability to detect irrelevant details in a paragraph by reading a paragraph and identifying relevant vs. irrelevant details  Warm Up  Objectives  False Premises  Relevant Details  Irony WS (If applicable)  Continue The Crucible

What is a False Premise?  A false premise is an incorrect proposition that forms the basis of an argument or syllogism. Since the premise (proposition, or assumption) is not correct, the conclusion drawn may be in error.

Ad Hominem  Latin for “to the man”  Does not argue the issue, instead it argues the person  Example:  Person A makes claim X.  Person B makes an attack on person A.  Therefore A's claim is false

Red Herring  A fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic.  Format:  Topic A is under discussion.  Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).  Topic A is abandoned.  Example: "I think there is great merit in making the requirements stricter for the graduate students. I recommend that you support it, too. After all, we are in a budget crisis and we do not want our salaries affected."

Straw Man  The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position  "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."

Begging the Question  A logical fallacy that occurs when the conclusion of an argument is used as a premise of that same argument; i.e., the premises would not work if the conclusion wasn't already assumed to be true.  Example: Happiness is the highest good for a human being, since all other values are inferior to it.

Post Hoc  From the Latin phrase “post hoc ergo propter hoc”  Literal meaning: “after this therefore because of this”  The post hoc fallacy is committed when it is assumed that because one thing occurred after another, it must have occurred as a result of it.  Example: An athlete who adopts a pre-match ritual because one time he did something before a game he got a good result. The reasoning here is presumably that on the first occasion the activity preceded the success, so the activity must have contributed to the success, so repeating the activity is likely to lead to a recurrence of the success.

Slippery Slope  Slippery slope arguments falsely assume that one thing must lead to another. They begin by suggesting that if we do one thing then that will lead to another, and before we know it we’ll be doing something that we don’t want to do. They conclude that we therefore shouldn’t do the first thing.  Example: "You can never give anyone a break. If you do, they'll walk all over you."

Now You Try:  On a loose-leaf piece of paper, create an example of each type of false premise:  Ad Hominem  Red Herring  Straw Man  Begging the Question  Post Hoc  Slippery Slope

A Note About Relevant Detail  Remember, each paragraph should have ONE main idea, and the details you provide within the paragraph should relate to that main idea  Irrelevant details distract from the main purpose of your writing, which means that readers may lose sight of your argument

Example: Identify the Irrelevant Details When I was growing up, one of the places I enjoyed most was the cherry tree in our garden. At the back of our garden was an alley and then more houses. Every summer when the cherries began to ripen, I used to spend hours high in that tree, picking and eating the sweet, sun-warmed cherries. My mother always worried about my falling out of the tree, but I never did. But I had some competition from the birds that enjoyed them as much as I did and would perch all over the tree, devouring the fruit whenever I wasn’t there. I used to wonder why the grown-ups never ate any of the cherries; but actually when the birds and I had finished, there weren’t many left.