Help identify this logical fallacy

  • Thread starter Thread starter Scottgun
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
S

Scottgun

Guest
I’ve seen this one so many times, it seems like there should be a specific name for it. Examples of the fallacy are:

–Celibate men should not be telling women about the morality of reproduction.

–Unless you were a US soldier poised to invade Japan in '45, you should not be offering arguments that bombing Hiroshima was wrong.

–I’m not bothering with opinions of a white man on the unjustness of affirmative action.

These it seems to me are species of *ad hominem. *That my lack of being in a certain race/gender/class/or have a certain experience somehow invalidates my arguments. It also implies an appeal to authority. (That because I am in that race/gender/class blah blah blah it means my arguments are valid).

I was wondering if there is a more specific term for this fallacy.

Thanks,

Scott
 
Correlation implies causation-
A occurs in correlation to B.
Therefore, A causes B.

In this type of logical fallacy, one makes a premature conclusion about causality after observing only a correlation between two or more factors. Generally, if one factor (A) is observed to only be correlated with another factor (B), it is sometimes taken for granted that A is causing B even when no evidence supports this. This is a logical fallacy because there are at least four other possibilities:

Examples
  1. Sleeping with one’s shoes on is strongly correlated with waking up with a headache. Therefore, sleeping with one’s shoes on causes headache.
 
Verita said:
I believe it is Ad Hominem. Ad Hominem focuses on the arguer, not the argument.

logicalfallacies.info/personalattack.html
Click to expand...
Yes I agree. I was wondering if there was a more specific term. Like in the genetic fallacy, there are the more specific post hoc ergo proper hoc and *similis hoc ergo propter hoc *fallacies. Or even a more colloquial term like the fallacy of “resemblance equals dependance.”

Scott
 
Hi Scottgun,

These are simply gratuitous statements. One can only reply : Why not?

However, on the practical side, they are in a way true. It is more effective for a woman to speak about abortion than it is for a man.

Verbum
 
Verbum said:
Hi Scottgun,

These are simply gratuitous statements. One can only reply : Why not?

However, on the practical side, they are in a way true. It is more effective for a woman to speak about abortion than it is for a man.

Verbum
Click to expand...
Yes, they might be more persuasive. No argument there. But their arguments are either valid or invalid, and class/gender etc do not bear on that. Meaning a valid argument is one that can stand up no matter who makes it.
 
Scottgun said:
I’ve seen this one so many times, it seems like there should be a specific name for it. Examples of the fallacy are:

–Celibate men should not be telling women about the morality of reproduction.

–Unless you were a US soldier poised to invade Japan in '45, you should not be offering arguments that bombing Hiroshima was wrong.

–I’m not bothering with opinions of a white man on the unjustness of affirmative action.

These it seems to me are species of *ad hominem. *That my lack of being in a certain race/gender/class/or have a certain experience somehow invalidates my arguments. It also implies an appeal to authority. (That because I am in that race/gender/class blah blah blah it means my arguments are valid).

I was wondering if there is a more specific term for this fallacy.

Scott
Click to expand...
It is the ad hominem.
The term is often misused by those protesting about abusive posts. Though abuse can be an ad hominem argument, most abuse you read on newsgroup (not our august Catholic Online) doesn’t rise to that level. And it is perfectly possible to make the ad hominem fallacy whilst being perfectly couteous.

Ad hominem isn’t entirely a fallacy - some people have more knowledge or intellectual ability than others. I would dismiss a five year old child’s story of a little elf at the bottom of the garden, not Professor Dawkins’ claim to have seen the same.
 
Malcolm_McLean said:
Ad hominem isn’t entirely a fallacy - some people have more knowledge or intellectual ability than others. I would dismiss a five year old child’s story of a little elf at the bottom of the garden, not Professor Dawkins’ claim to have seen the same.
Click to expand...
Whereas I think I would trust a 5 year old over him. 😉
 
Malcolm_McLean said:
It is the ad hominem.
The term is often misused by those protesting about abusive posts. Though abuse can be an ad hominem argument, most abuse you read on newsgroup (not our august Catholic Online) doesn’t rise to that level. And it is perfectly possible to make the ad hominem fallacy whilst being perfectly couteous.

Ad hominem isn’t entirely a fallacy - some people have more knowledge or intellectual ability than others. I would dismiss a five year old child’s story of a little elf at the bottom of the garden, not Professor Dawkins’ claim to have seen the same.
Click to expand...
Interesting, beacuse an atheist anti-Christian debating site I went to used this fallacy on me based on the idea that others had more degrees in biological sciences than I do. I noticed any personal information I gave at all tended to be used against me (which to me says I must have been doing well:D ).

Can someone post a link that goes more into causality vs correlation? For instance. Smoking causes cancer. Strong correlation, no definitive proven causality? Atheists argue against God by saying that miracles may correlate with prayer, but that fact does not prove causality, and it could be due to other factors such as mindset/placebo effect, etc.

The main thrust of Dawkins’ arguments are fallacious. What does he base the idea that God must at least be as complex as His creation on? He seems to have plucked that out of thin air (a priori, assumption) He is not a theologian. I put down a Paul Davies book which lloked really interesting. Thumbing through it, before I got to the register, I already had spotted theo flaws. Great astrophysicist, poor theologian. Just like Dawkins. Oops. Ad hominem!😃

As for the OP, the statements you mentioned are logical based on experience:
  1. The woman who uses or choses not to use contaception is responsible for her decision, and will live with the consequences of that decision. Now the same woman may hold religious beliefs, eg that God speaks through the Catholic Chuch’s Magesterium. As such she may chose to make her decision submissive to the Church’s teaching. This is also a choice. I hope that makes it clear that one way or another she will decide what she wants to do, based on the factors in her experience.
As for others like it, it is an **appeal to authority **based on experience. As such:

logicalfallacies.info/appealtoauthority.html

Great website, Veritas.🙂
 
Scottgun said:
I’ve seen this one so many times, it seems like there should be a specific name for it. Examples of the fallacy are:

–Celibate men should not be telling women about the morality of reproduction…

These it seems to me are species of ad hominem…
Click to expand...
It strikes me as relativistic. It assumes that morality cannot be objectively determined.
 
It’s a species of ad hominem known as a circumstantial ad hominem; where the unique circumstances of a person’s life is used to persuade rather than the merits of the position.
 
tdgesq said:
It’s a species of ad hominem known as a circumstantial ad hominem; where the unique circumstances of a person’s life is used to persuade rather than the merits of the position.
Click to expand...
Correct. A simple ad hominum would resort to totally unrelated remarks about the person themselves – their personal characteristics or failings, for example.

Something like: “What do you know about the Bible? Aren’t you the one who doesn’t call their mother on her birthday?”
 
tdgesq said:
It’s a species of ad hominem known as a circumstantial ad hominem; where the unique circumstances of a person’s life is used to persuade rather than the merits of the position.
Click to expand...
A good point, but would not a greater onus be upon someone in the positions described (Pope, civilian, white man) to justify their position, over someone who is or was actually in the situation? For instance if I were a black person who had experinced racial discrimination at work, wouldn’t my POV be of more value than someone who looked at it from afar, unless that person was say a reseach expert on the subject?

Is logic completely separate from experience?
 
davidarlette said:
A good point, but would not a greater onus be upon someone in the positions described (Pope, civilian, white man) to justify their position, over someone who is or was actually in the situation? For instance if I were a black person who had experinced racial discrimination at work, wouldn’t my POV be of more value than someone who looked at it from afar, unless that person was say a reseach expert on the subject?

Is logic completely separate from experience?
Click to expand...
This is the point. Most logical fallacies are comitted because they are good general rules.

A white man who benefits from racial discrimination is going to have a different attitude to a black man who suffers from it. A British person like me, who lives in a culture much less sensitive to race than America, will have a different attitude still.

In a sense I am much better qualified to speak about race relations in America than an American. The logical fallacy come when you say “Malcolm is British and therefore he must be right and the other two, who are clearly self-interested, must be wrong.” Not necessarily so.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top