Living in the Media Age (Fallacies) Chapter 1 (Unit A) Living in the Media Age (Fallacies)

Essential Question What can we believe in the media? How does the media deceive us?

Definitions LOGIC: The study of methods and principles of reasoning ARGUMENT: A conclusion together with the premises that support it PREMISE: set of facts or assumptions; reason offered as support for another claim FALLACY: deceptive argument, fails to make a compelling case for its conclusion and may contain some error in reasoning. Fallacies are often persuasive

Common Fallacy: Appeal to Popularity The fact that large numbers of people believe or act some way I used inappropriately as evidence that the belief or action is correct Example 1: “Lots of people have that phone, it must be good” Example 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2YMbRnx3qs

Common Fallacies: False Cause One event came before another is incorrectly taken as evidence that the first event CAUSED the second event Example 1: I ate poptarts for breakfast and got an A on my test so poptarts make me smarter Example 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pUQNrn4yns

Common Fallacies: Appeal to Ignorance Lack of knowledge about the truth of a proposition to conclude the opposite Example 1: You can’t prove that ghost don’t exist, so it’s reasonable that I believe they do Example 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXa8PGCAmTc

Common Fallacy: Hasty Generalization Conclusion is drawn from an inadequate number of cases or cases that have not been sufficiently analyzed Example 1: I’d like to use you as my TA, but you had a lot of suspensions in eight grade and statistics show that once a trouble maker, always a trouble maker Example 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pem_FwggPsM

Common Fallacies: Limited Choice Artificially precludes choices that ought to be considered; “you’re wrong, so I must be right” Example 1: “You don’t like math so you must be junk at school”

Common Fallacies: Appeal to Emotion Attempt to evoke an emotional response as a tool of persuasion Example 1: There must be objective rights and wrongs in the universe. If not, how can you possibly say that torturing babies for fun could ever be right. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eMmcMK_3Ao

Common Fallacies: Personal Attack Resort to attacking the person you are arguing with rather than arguing logically Example 1: Don’t listen to Kaji’s arguments on studying, she’s an idiot Example 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqASXGI_9j0

Common Fallacies: Circular Reasoning Premise and conclusion say essentially the same thing Example 1: The Bible is the word of God. We know this because the Bible itself tells us so.

Common Fallacies: Diversion (AKA Red Herring) Attempts to divert attention from the real issue by focusing on another issue Example 1: Accused of cheating a husband says, “nothing I ever do pleases you. I spent all last week repainting the bathroom and then you said you didn’t like the color.”

Common Fallacies: Straw Man Based on a distortion of someone’s worlds or beliefs If a teacher doesn’t really enforce the dress code because they believe other things are more important and another teacher says, “That teacher may not think girls dressing like prostitutes is a problem, but I do.”