Fallacies: A Short Speech Analysis

According to the text, The Power of Critical Thinking, by Louis Vaughn, a fallacy is defined as, “An argument form that is both common and defective; a recurring mistake in reasoning (Vaughn, 561). Fallacies can be found in many places whether it is in the media, the workplace, or around your peers. Some fallacies contain the truth while others at a time can be false or misleading. It is essential to be able to identify fallacies because they can be used in many ways, some good some bad. Fallacies are used every day, whether it is to influence someone's opinion to agree with one side of an argument rather than the other or to draw in others by appealing to their emotions or authority. Today, I will be discussing three important fallacies and give examples of each. These fallacies include Genetic Fallacy, Ad Hominem, and Appeal to Tradition.

A fallacy, by definition, is an argument that uses poor reasoning. Before one uses a fallacy, it’s important to have full understanding or else you risk losing your whole ethos aspect of your argument. Heinrichs gives three important parts to detecting fallacies. “All you have to do is look for a bad proof, the wrong number of choices, or a disconnect between the proof and the conclusion.” (Heinrichs 146)

For my journal entry I choose to read Online Higher Education’s Individualist Fallacy by Johann N. Neem. Johann Neem is a professor of history at Western Washington University and argues that there is a value in “Institutional culture” for the student that attends traditional classes on a college campus. According to Neem, institutional culture is important because learning is a social experience and depends on relationships since under the guidance of a professor a student will prosper, and be inspired by the energy in the classroom setting. Neem also states that professors are able to adapt easily to the needs of the students that are present in the classroom versus those who attend online. Neem, contends that distance learning undercuts institutional learning due to the fact that students are not fully engaged with their professors and can miss out

Throughout this article, he repeats these claims repeatedly there is only one time that he backs up his claim that marijuana can affect short term memory when he uses the National Institutes of Health” research (106). He then goes into trying to use psychology by saying marijuana is a gateway drug to using harder drugs like -cocaine where he says that “marijuana and cocaine use are strongly correlated” (107-108). He tries to manipulate his audience by scaring them saying that using a tiny bit of marijuana will automatically lead to something worse with greater consequences but like before Stimson has no expertise in psychology or does not use a psychologist to support his claims, therefore, he has no right to make claims unless he can support it and has the expertise. The last thing Stimson mentions is how legalizing marijuana can affect the American economy which he says can lead to an increase in crime and black-market sales. Again, Stimson is only an expert in criminology so that is the only thing he should be talking about unless he provides evidence and reliable sources which he does not. He talks about how legalized marijuana will do more harm than good because it would not provide enough tax revenue to cover the health costs of smoking marijuana. In fact, Stimson writes that is “it seems doubtful at best” that it would be “sufficient to cover the cost” so he is not even sure of what he is saying so how can his audience think he is

2. Once they discover that the government has been lying about marijuana, they are less inclined to believe official warnings about other drugs. 3. Once they buy marijuana on the black market, they are more likely to have the opportunity to buy other drugs” (Sullum). There is an obvious connection between pot smoking and other drug use because people who like the “high” that they get from pot, will enjoy a different “high” from another drug. However there is no connection between using marijuana and the desire to use other drugs. It is a matter of personality, environment, and personal influence. Even a National Academy of Sciences panel stated “There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone on the bases of its particular drug effect” in a recent report (Sullum). Many other pro-prohibitionists have stated that marijuana is responsible for a long list of health problems. Although marijuana is connected to immediate lung problems like occasional coughing and phlegm production, and an increased risk for acute chest infections, there has never been a single tie to cancer. The results of studies linking marijuana smoking to lung cancer have also been hindered by small test sizes and subject bias, and the true results are saturated with unconfirmed studies and secret procedures with public results (Buddy). Marijuana is gaining headway with the most recent Gallup poll reported that 48 percent of the population supports decriminalization of marijuana, while

Campos presented a series of questions in his introduction that he used to build his argument. Were the stereotypical effects really caused by the use of marijuana? Why were the stereotypes believed so easily? Why did the media not investigate into the stereotypes? How and where did the

Imagine discovering the cure for cancer, and then tossing the revolutionary discovery into a blaze of fire. This obliteration has happened to rhetoric, a tool of language that donates life to argument and creates a thriving system of communication for the world. Rhetoric used to be an important aspect of education that could assist students with the teachings of argument and human interaction. Today, rhetoric has become a topic of minimal discussion among ideas that have long since been outdated, and considered archaic to the educational system. In reality, rhetoric exemplifies the human genius and must be taught in schools to further the evolution of human expression.

Not only is Newhouse’s opening statement, “No one has ever died from simply using marijuana” an incorporation of pathos, but it is also an incorporation of logos, another very powerful rhetorical strategy (1). In his statement, he implies that of the many people who have used marijuana, not one person has died. Newhouse’s opening statement is subtle and appears to be numberless, but it is a statistic nonetheless. Throughout his article, Newhouse makes references to many different statistics, all referring to marijuana.

Donald Trump often time attack other politicians with his inaccurate evidences. He stupidly attacked President Obama on his birth certificate because one had to be born on American soil to become a president. At the end, the state of Hawaii released President Obama birth certificate proved that he is American, put an end to Trump’s birther movement (Nakaso). Another one from Trump’s attack was on Clinton’s emails while she was a secretary of State, even though nobody knows about the emails but he shouldn’t be pointing it out because it is her privacy and he said that she should be put in jail for them(Collison). Donald Trump’s attack connected deeply in the play The Crucible in a lot of way. When the judges demand John Proctor to sign his confession so they could nail it on the church said that Proctor is dealing with the devil, but Proctor signed it and ripped it apart because the confession was a lie. Proctor rather died than let a lie shattered his pride (Miller 1231). Proctor’s wife also accused for witchcraft because the doll found in her house. Abigail and Marry Warren set Elizabeth up so she would end up in jail

I will begin by discussing Trump’s argument. I will then analyze each premise and the final conclusion of his argument. Several premises and the conclusion of his argument contain a fallacy. Additionally, a premises in Trump’s argument is a false premise. Because of these holes in his argument I will conclude that Trump’s conclusion about Senator Warren is unjustified. Finally, I will consider a possible objection to my argument, but I will show why this objection doesn’t work.

Again, it is necessary for him to capitalize upon pre-existing beliefs of the audience in order to construct an argument that appears sound to them. His goal is not necessarily to connect facts to reality, but to lead the audience to his conclusions based on their shared perception of reality. This approach lends itself readily to logical fallacies such as straw man and ad hominem fallacies, which one could argue O'Reilly readily embraces. By misrepresenting other people's positions in one case, and using their own words against them, he furthers his point while simultaneously demonizing his opposition. O'Reilly employs rhetorical sleight of hand to ease the way in establishing how his conclusion naturally proceeds from his premise by focusing our attention on people rather than

One of the author’s main reasons to support his view is that he believes the new generation of drug users are constantly trying to self medicate with drugs instead of getting help for any emotional or mental health issues. Another reason is that he advocates for the decriminalization of marijuana, which is different from legalization, as it regulates the quality and quantity, as well as place other restrictions on it like age restrictions. One of his

The premise is the fact that marijuana is easy to get. Now while the above statement doesn’t give the cause of this reasoning the larger context of the statement does: it links this ease of access to the fact that marijuana can be easily grow anywhere and quickly made into

In the article, Why I Changed My Mind On Weed, the author, Dr. Sanjay Gupta says, “We have been ‘systematically misled’ on marijuana, it does

There are also many diverse kinds of fallacies. Some include, appeal to the popular, meaning to urge the listener to accept a position because a majority of people do it or believe in it. For example, the majority of people like soda. Therefore, soda is good. Or everyone else is doing it, so why can 't I? Another common fallacy is poisoning the well, this occurs when negative information is presented about a person before he/she speaks. In order to redirect the person 's point of view of that person. an example is, Frank is disagreeable, arrogant, and thinks he knows everything. So, let 's hear what Frank has to say about the subject. There are many more kinds of fallacies.