The goal of this series of posts is to help others learn how to recognize faulty reasoning and the use of misinformation designed to mislead. The key word here is “help” because this isn’t a class. However, there will be embedded videos with links to sites and books that may better educate about intellectual dishonesty.
The book description of Crimes Against Logic by Jamie Whyte [formerly a lecturer in Philosophy at Cambridge University where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy], says, “In the daily battle for our hearts and minds–not to mention our hard-earned cash—the truth is usually the first casualty. It’s time we learned how to see through the rhetoric, faulty reasoning, and misinformation that we’re subjected to from morning to night by talk-radio hosts, op-ed columnists, advertisers, self-help gurus, business ‘thinkers,’ and, of course, politicians.”
If you watched the embedded video in Part One, “Introduction of Fallacies” by Kevin deLaplante, the Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, you may remember that he talked about what a fallacy was and provided more than one example. 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 arguments.” He then used the following example.
1. Computers are products of intelligent design.
2. The human brain is a computer
Therefore, the human brain is a product of intelligent design.
However, because a computer is designed by an intelligent designer, that does not mean the human brain is the product of intelligent design. In the Part 1 video, Professor deLaplante teaches how this logic is a fallacy, provides examples and says people need to be trained to recognize these fallacies.
Confirmation Bias the the Evolution of Reason. Source: The Critical Thinking Academy
When Sid said, “You can bar me from commenting. All hopeless CCP apologists are censors. It’s inevitable that you would try something like that. You lack the intelligence to argue, so you ban.” Source: in the comment posted January 13, 2012 at 09:02
Sid’s opinion is an example of the same logical fallacy that Professor deLaplante warns us about in “Introduction to Fallacies” in Part 1.
If we break down the logical fallacy in Sid’s reasoning, you will discover a similar pattern.
A. Lloyd censored Sid from commenting on this Blog.
B. People that censor lack intelligence to argue.
C. All hopeless CCP apologists are censors.
A + B + C = D
D. Therefore, Lloyd is is a hopeless CCP apologist that lacks intelligence to argue, which is why he banned Sid from commenting on this Blog.
However, that is not the reason why some of Sid’s comments have been deleted from this Blog — it has to do with Sid’s use of logical fallacies and his intellectual dishonesty during and after the debate as you shall discover.
In addition, I have never apologized for anything Mao or the CCP may have done since 1949. Anyone that knows the difference between an explanation supported with valid evidence from reliable sources and the definition of an apology would know this isn’t the case.
Another way to discover Sid’s intellectual dishonesty is to compare what he writes to other arguments. To start, I suggest reading the Letters section of Foreign Policy magazine and compare the style of those arguments with Sid’s alleged intellectual dishonesty.
In fact, if Sid had avoided using logical fallacies to support his argument, some of his comments wouldn’t have been deleted.
Continued on January 28, 2012 in Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 3 or return to Part 1
Meet the real Sid and learn about him from his own words and the opinions of others
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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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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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