The Common Fallacies Of Reasoning

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.

Rhetorical fallacies are “errors and manipulation of rhetoric and logical thinking,” as defined by informationisbeautiful.net. Rhetorical fallacies such as affirming the consequent, appeal to pity, and undistributed middle, can be seen in any type of debate, or conversation. Rhetorical fallacies are very apparent in politic related public speaking, as I have observed. This paper will examine three videos from the Meet the Press series and the rhetorical fallacies I identified in these three videos.

Logical Fallacies can be found in many forms of persuasions, in infomercials, political debates, common discussion, everywhere. Although Logical Fallacies are very common, they mar our arguments and should be avoided. In order to avoid them we must first learn to recognize them. To fully understand Logical Fallacies, we will look at the definition of Logical Fallacies, some examples of Logical Fallacies, classifications of Logical Fallacies, and finally why we should, and how we can, avoid them.

After her conversations with Tripp, Monica Lewinsky was subpoenaed by the lawyers for Paula Jones. Lewinsky then under a sworn affidavit, commented by saying that she did not have any affairs with President Clinton. While this is lying and could be used as obstruction of justice, Lewinsky did this in an attempt to avoid having to testify for the Jones case. At this point Clinton's character seems to have changed into being disrespectful and disloyal.

On August 17, 1998, exactly one year after making the statement above, President Bill Clinton prepared to deliver a speech concerning a scandal that had gripped the nation for months. It is needless to say that this was an important moment during the Clinton administration. After accusations of sexual harassment, Clinton addressed the nation and admitted to having a relationship with Monica Lewinsky. In this critical speech Clinton set out to admit to wrong-doings, provide a few reasons for his

When Clinton was running for president a women named Gennifer Flowers opened up to the media about a 12 year affair that Clinton and Flowers had. She told the media that she was given a job in the State House of Arkansas that she was unqualified for while Clinton was president. In a 60 Minutes interview, Clinton admitted to causing “pain” in his marriage but he also said “the allegations are false” (15). This shows Clinton’s “tendency to play with words and

It all started with the Clinton’s desire to purchase 220 acres in Arkansas intended for the building of vacation homes. The deal didn’t work out, and the project lost $40,000. At first, it seemed like a normal failed investment. However, it would later be discovered that it was much deeper than that. It later came to surface that the project was funded by a fraudulent loan of $300,000. David Hale, the man who issued the loan, claimed that Bill Clinton pressured him to do so. Hillary Clinton took care of the legal matters for the entire Whitewater project, which made things more mysterious as billing records for the project went missing for two years and suddenly reappeared. Just days before the Clintons were questioned by investigators, $700,000 was given to former associate attorney Webster L. Hubbell. This money came from none other than the Clintons and a small circle of their friends. Was this an incentive to overlook their wrongdoing? Undoubtedly, as in any government cover-up, there was death involved. Vincent Foster possessed copies of the tax records that had been lost for two years, and planned to expose the Clintons. Before he could do so, he was reported to have committed suicide (Washington

After reading the article, “The dumbing down of voters,” by Rick Shenkman, I was first shocked by his claim that public has an immense lack of knowledge concerning politics. But the more I thought about the claim the more I realised the truth about the statement. Many people in the United States are oblivious to what the government is doing and who is a part of the government. The lack of knowledge from the public is also unsettling because if the public doesn’t know basic knowledge like what are the three branches of government, then the country could take a turn for the worst. Voters are also giving out their votes to presidential candidates that local newspapers focus on because they either are too lazy or ignorant to think for themselves

Candidates have used tools such as lies, misdirection, and emotional appeals to convince voters of a made-up reality. These tools only become powerful in the hands of men when they are used on those who lack the necessary knowledge to discern the validity and merits of such claims. In an era where information is easily available, it is disappointing to see such tools have a prevalence in our society. As it stands now, the media is the platform for which these politicians thrive. Making headlines with controversial comments, candidates manipulate information in order to appeal to the politically illiterate. Such candidates vow to remedy problems that do not exist. The propagation of such “realities” misconstrues the actual nature of the world, thus

Madame Clinton was question about her part on Benghazi, and her emails. She was careless, but nothing was sent classified in order for her to be further questioned or to be taken in. The FBI director James Comey stated “ Hillary Clintons emails were not properly marked Classified, but a small number of emails bore the markings of possibly being classified” thus making them open it even more, but they came to the conclusion of she being careless, but she didn't do anything severe. I understand why so many people in the States may or may not like Madame Clinton, but we have to understand no one is perfect, and in the political world things can and will get tough, you just need to know how to act in those

As I write this book, Democratic and Republican candidates are getting in position to run for the President of the United States in 2016. Hillary Clinton was the first Democrat to throw her hat in the ring and right away the Republican Party began attacking her for using her personal email and business email together.

The importance of illustrating Clinton’s past encounters with scandal is not to show the moral weakness of Clinton’s character; nor is it to show cagey moves of

" That claim is false, according to FBI director James Comey. There were actually 110 emails that contained classified information, on 52 email chains, that the secretary and her team “should have known” to handle properly, emails that didn’t belong on a private server. Once her crony lie was exposed, she then said that Colin Powell told her to use a private email server, along with a private email account. Of course, she’s the only person that has stated this. Once everyone, including Mr. Powell himself, said that that false, she moved onto another lie.

In today’s ever-evolving social media environment, it is impossible to find a single thread of comments that does not involve some sort of heated discussion regarding just about anything that can be debatable. Is this some sort of budding concept that has arisen due to the rise of the Internet, or has this been a pre-existing concept that has only now come to light through social media and the Internet.

As Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. president’s election in November, many people were surprised by this outcome since it is totally opposite to the most mainstream media’s predictions. Connecting to another impressive news happened in British few months ago that British citizens vote to exit the European Union successfully, the major news media there foretell this event correctly while opposite claims are still remarkable. For example, according to Fortune’s report, it is unbelievable that most mainstream media got the wrong election’s prediction because they simply couldn’t trust most people would choose Trump (Ingram, 2016). Additionally, before the event of “Brexit”, many major British news media including BBC, ITV and the Sky all had predicted that the exit would happen, but when the “correct” results came out, many British citizens start to protest the vote and regret their former decision (Fox News, 2016). The two breaking news obviously reveals that there is political bias in the news media, and the debate about how these biases exist in it involves many aspects, which continuing to attract public’s attention. Collectively, the political bias appearing in news media comes from mainly two sides: the media itself and the audience’s interaction with the media.