Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 7/10
February 1, 2012In Part One of this series, I said, “Before this series concludes, you will discover that Sid knew about logical fallacies and may have taken advantage of my ignorance.”
In part four of the debate, Sid said, “In addition to directing the reader toward a particular conclusion, begging-the-question language assumes a premise has already been established.”
According to The Writing Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Begging the Question is a complicated fallacy; it comes in several forms and can be harder to detect than many of the other fallacies we’ve discussed…”
However, “Sometimes people use the phrase ‘beg the question’ as a sort of general criticism of arguments, to mean that an arguer hasn’t given very good reasons for a conclusion…”
If Sid was aware of the complicated logical fallacy known as ‘begging the question’, we may conclude that he knew what he was doing throughout the entire debate, which may explain why he didn’t answer my question of how many books he had read on logical fallacies and why he avoided answering questions other’s asked.
Then there is this pull quote from a comment of Sid’s I deleted on January 11, 2012 at 12:22. “There is no red herring argument here. A red herring occurs when you divert from the main issue to a side issue. But if a side issue has been introduced (i.e. the boiling of water), you introduced it.”
Critical Thinking’s Dirty Secret – Source: The Critical Thinking Academy
However, Sid was wrong. I was not the one that introduced the Red Herring that changed the topic. Sid did that when he said how contaminated China’s rivers were, which had nothing to do with the topic of that post. The topic of the post was which country was doing a better job supplying water to its people—India, a democracy, or China with its one party republic. The only mistake I made was to swallow the bait of Sid’s Red Herring. After all, the goal of a Red Herring is to divert attention away from a topic that is difficult or impossible to prove wrong.
The Writing Center at UNC says of a Red Herring that “Partway through an argument, the arguer goes off on a tangent, raising a side issue that distracts the audience from what’s really at stake. Often, the arguer never returns to the original issue.”
At 14:17, Sid said, “You can quote or copy-and-paste all the fallacy definitions you wish, but you’ll never be able to employ them in argument or rebuttal. You lack the wherewithal.”
However, why would I want to employ logical fallacies in an argument or rebuttal when such tricks are intellectually dishonest? It would appear that Sid meant I could not match his skills using logical fallacies to decieve people. At least, that seems to be what he implies.
At 19:21, Sid said, “I don’t give a shit what those dictionaries say. It’s not called weasal words. It’s called begging the question language, or begging the question reasoning… You might want to learn what those newfound logical fallacies mean before you copy and paste Lloyd.”
In the four previous examples, Sid revealed that he knew exactly what he was doing, and Professor deLaplante, in Part One‘s video, was right when he said, “A fallacy is a bad argument. What makes it bad is certain GENERAL FEATURES that characterize arguments of this TYPE, and arguments of this type can often be MISTAKEN for GOOD argument,” which is what Sid was counting on.
Continued on February 2, 2012 in Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 8 or return to Part 6
Meet the real Sid and learn about him from his own words and the opinions of others
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Communism, Confucianism, cultural differences, democracy, education | Tagged: ad hominem, appeal to ridicule, Associate Professor of Philosophy Kevin deLaplante, begging the question, China, cognitive biases, confirmation bias, Confucianism, Critical thinking, cultural bias, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, Fallacy, India, intellectual dishonesty, Kevin deLaplante, loaded questions, logical fallacies, narcissistic personality disorder, Obsessive-compulsive Personality Disorder, Professor deLaplante, red herring, straw figure, straw man, The Critical Thinking Academy, weasel words | 
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 6/10
January 31, 2012In Part 5 of Associate Professor of Philosophy Kevin deLaplante‘s video series of logical fallacies, he explains the Straw Figure fallacy.
Professor deLaplante says, “The Straw Figure Fallacy involved criticizing a distorted, exaggerated or otherwise misrepresented version of an argument and claiming to have refuted the original argument. It often involves knowing or willful deception and a refusal to ‘play by the rules’.”
“When someone is willing to knowingly misrepresent an argument,” Professor deLaplante says, “they are no longer playing by the rules. They are more concerned with the appearance of winning than with argumentation itself. When you see this going on, you should correct the misrepresentation and get the discussion back on track. If it is an honest mistake and the arguer is willing to correct their misunderstanding, that is great. But if you catch them doing this again and again, then there is probably no point in engaging argumentatively with this person, because they have shown you that they are unwilling to play by the rules.”
Cognitive Biases: What They Are, Why They’re Important – Source: The Critical Thinking Academy
Another example of Sid’sintellectual dishonesty was an argument over Water – the Democracy versus the Authoritarian Republic.
This post compared India and China and what each country was doing to supply water to its people. I asked this question, “Is freedom of expression and of religion more important than water?”
Logically, the answer would be ‘water’ was more important than freedom of expression and of religious choice, because we die within a few days without water but can live a full life without the two abstract freedoms of expression and choice of religion. The post provided evidence that China was doing more than India to supply water to its people, and closed with, “What happens to life when there is no water?”
The logical answer was that we will die quickly without water, but will not die due to limits on freedom of political expression or from a limited choice of religions.
However, the first comment from Sid introduced another Red Herring into the conversation and changed the topic. Sid’s first sentence said, “An estimated 75 percent of China’s river water is not safe for drinking or fishing, according to Rob Gifford, author of China Road.”
Sid says, “Hmmm. Interesting stuff. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people without access to safe water or santitation; a dire warning from the world bank…”
Again, this was not the topic of the post and was misleading. In fact, this was when Sid introduced the Straw Figure Fallacy distorting the argument, as Professor deLaplante says, “with willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules.”
In my reply, I attempted bringing the topic back to the original premise by pointing out that unsafe water was not the issue, because the Chinese boiled their water before drinking it, which common sense says to do with contaminated water.
Sid then claimed that was not the reason why Chinese people drank warm water and then introduced several more topics in rapid succession without evidence to support them, which had nothing to do with which country was doing a better job planning ahead to provide water for its people—contaminated or not.
My next reply said Sid’s comment was a logical fallacy, a Red Herring. Sid then changed the topic again with another Red Herring leading to a series of Straw Figure Fallacies and ended by asking if I had ever read any books on argumentative logic, which had nothing to do with which country was doing a better job of bringing water to its people.
I replied by asking Sid to answer the same question on how many books he had read on argumentative logic, which he ignored in all of his subsequent comments, which I then deleted (a total of eighteen between January 11 – 14). Some quotes from a few of those comments have been used as examples of logical fallacies in this series of posts.
Continued on February 1, 2012 in Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 7 or return to Part 5
Meet the real Sid and learn about him from his own words and the opinions of others
______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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7 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Communism, Confucianism, cultural differences, democracy | Tagged: ad hominem, appeal to ridicule, Associate Professor of Philosophy Kevin deLaplante, begging the question, China, cognitive biases, confirmation bias, Confucianism, cultural bias, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, intellectual dishonesty, Kevin deLaplante, loaded questions, logical fallacies, narcissistic personality disorder, Obsessive-compulsive Personality Disorder, Professor deLaplante, red herring, straw figure, straw man, The Critical Thinking Academy, weasel words | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse
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