Problem Set 05
Instructions
This problem set is due, per Alex's enthusiastically received suggestion, Thursday, 10/04. Again, I do not mind students working on the problem sets in groups--it is, in fact, encouraged--but your answers must be your own. If you have any question, puzzle, or require clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me (berkich@gmail.com; 3976 office, 944-2756 mobile--texts strongly preferred).
Fallacies
Going by the list of fallacies we have discussed, consider each of the following passages. If a passage contains or describes fallacies in one or more of the ways we discussed, briefly explain (no more than a paragraph should suffice) the fallacy or fallacies at issue in each passage. Each question is worth 5 points.
1. On the campaign trail, [John Kerry]'s in favor of raising taxes on everybody who makes over $200,000 a year. Unless, of course, he's the one being asked to pay more, in which case, forget about it.
We know this because of a little whoopee cushion recently inserted into the income tax forms of his home state of Massachusetts. …[A]n anti-tax group managed to place a line on the tax form giving Bay Staters the option of paying at the old, since-repealed 5.85 percent rate, rather than at the current 5.3 percent rate.
For two years now, John Kerry has had the opportunity to pay his "fair share." But…the Democratic Party candidate for president has taken the money and ran.
"Why do you even call asking about this?" his spokesman, Michael Meehan, said Saturday morning. "He has made the same decision as 99.9 percent of his fellow Massachusetts residents."
--Howie Carr, "A Flying Squirrel", New York Post, 4/19/2004
2. The case of the ecologist who linked the cycles of the Canadian lynx and its prey, the snowshoe rabbit, with the sunspot cycle is instructive. The ecologist analyzed records of the Hudson Bay Company, which had been collecting pelts of the two species since 1735; he found that the two populations fluctuated up and down, displaying a periodicity of approximately ten years. Not surprisingly, the variations in the predatory lynx population tended to follow the ups and downs in the rabbit population with a time lag of a couple of years.
Then the ecologist superimposed the two curves atop a similar graph representing the concurrent sunspot activity: voilà! The three cycles approximately coincided over a good portion of their range. The ecologist leaped to the conclusion that the annual fluctuations of the lynx and rabbit populations were controlled by the eleven-year sunspot cycle….
--Lawrence E. Jerome, "Astrology: Magic or Science?", in Objections to Astrology by Bart J. Bok & Lawrence E. Jerome (Prometheus, 1975), p. 57.
3. How do we know that we have here in the Bible a right criterion of truth? We know because of the Bible's claims for itself. All through the Scripture are found frequent expressions such as "Thus says the Lord," "The Lord said," and "God spoke." Such statements occur no less than 1,904 times in the 39 books of the Old Testament.
--Gilbert W. Kirby, "Is the Bible True?" Decision, Vol. 1, Jan. 1974, p. 4. Cited by S. Morris Engel in Analyzing Informal Fallacies, Prentice-Hall, 1980, p. 55.
4. "We need safe storage laws." False. States that passed "safe storage" laws have high crime rates, especially higher rates of rape and aggravated assault against women.
--"The Media Campaign Against Gun Ownership", The Phyllis Schlafly Report, Vol. 33, No. 11, June 2000.)
5. [The Mayor] said the biggest problem for the city administration has been fighting people who have protested such things as industrial development.
"We've had people fight highways, the school corporation and county zoning," he said. "I didn't notice any of these people coming up here on horses and donkeys. They all drove cars up here, spewing hydrocarbons all over the place."
--Terre Haute Tribune-Star
6. In 1995 a classic Dobson firestorm broke out on the pages of a highly respected magazine within Dobson's religious community, Christianity Today. A member of the academic community questioned the belligerent battle language used by some Christian political activists like Dobson in an article….
John D. Woodbridge, Ph.D., author of the first article…offered five examples of why he had come to believe that warfare rhetoric in the political arena is hurting the work of the Christian church:
"First, culture-war rhetoric can be self-fulfilling prophecy, exacerbating the very conflicts it seeks merely to describe. … Second, culture-war rhetoric leads us to distort others' positions, to see enmity in place of mere disagreement. It leaves no room for nuanced positions, or for middle ground. Third, culture-war rhetoric distorts our own position too…. Fourth, culture-war rhetoric plays into the hands of extremists on the Left…. Fifth, culture-war rhetoric tends to create division among Christians…."
Several issues later, Christianity Today published Dobson's rebuttal.
[Dobson:]"…there are those who wish we would ignore the social issues altogether and seem to resent our refusal to do so."
Several issues of Christianity Today went by and then came the Woodbridge response to Dobson.
"In my article, I cited Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family as an example of a Christian leader who has chosen to use warfare rhetoric to describe the "ongoing civil war of values." But neither Dr. Dobson nor Focus on the Family was the focus of the article. … But like a man who sees his profile transformed beyond recognition in a distorting mirror, I did not recognize a number of Dr. Dobson's characterizations of my essay."
--Gil Alexander-Moegerle, James Dobson's War on America (Prometheus Press, 1997), pp. 75-8.
7. " . . . I've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot tower, and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool."
--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
8. Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.
--George Santayana, Egotism in German Philosophy
9. A press release from the National Education Association (NEA) begins with the following statement. "America's teachers see smaller classes as the most critical element in doing a better job, a survey by the NEA indicates." . . . But the NEA, of course, is interested in having as many teachers in the schools as possible. For example, in a 3,000-pupil school system with 30 pupils assigned to each class, the teaching staff would be approximately 100. But if class size were changed to 25 the total number of teachers would rise to 120. And in a time of shrinking enrollments, that is a way to keep teachers on the public payroll. . . .
It is unfortunate that an organization with the professional reputation the National Education Association enjoys should be so self-serving.
--Cynthia Parsons, Christian Science Monitor Service, February 1976
10. "I'm all for women having equal rights," said Bullfight Association president Paco Camino. "But I repeat, women shouldn't fight bulls because a bull-fighter is and should be a man."
--San Francisco Chronicle, 28 March 1972
A Puzzle(?)
Consider the following thought experiment:
You have been chosen to colonize a new planet, but, because of the particular kind of propulsion we must use, the trip will entirely erase all of your memories and you and any other colonists who might join you will be sterilized upon arrival. Before you go, and because the whole enterprise is fantastically expensive, we offer you two choices.
If you choose Option 1, you'll be sent to a colony where you'll be the only real person there. You'll have company, of course--lovers and friends--but they will all be androids. You'll never remember this fact because your memories of having made this choice will all be gone, but you will also never be able to discover that the androids are just androids (with no real thoughts, feelings, or subjective experiences of their own), because they are so well-constructed they are behaviorally indistinguishable from ordinary persons. The advantage to Option 1 is that we're able to send all manner of resources, tools, shelters, entertainments along with you, so that you will live a long, comfortable, engaging, and enjoyable life exploring the world with your android cohort.
If you choose Option 2, you'll be sent to a colony with other people. Your company—lovers and friends—will have their own thoughts, feelings, and subjective experiences. The difference is that life under Option 2 will be extraordinarily challenging. Survival is not guaranteed, and you will have to figure out shelter, food, and protection from wild (alien!) animals without the resources we are able to send you under Option 1. Your life could turn out to be uncomfortable, challenging, and, perhaps, full of despair—pretty much as it could be now.
Which option should you choose, and why? Use no more than 1 side of 1 page, double-spaced, with a reasonable font (min. 10pt) to answer this question. (25pts)