Recognizing fallacies of failed induction and presumption: Find one video or car
ID: 3112077 • Letter: R
Question
Recognizing fallacies of failed induction and presumption:
Find one video or cartoon example of one of these fallacies on the Web. The example must take the form of a video/cartoon (check out YouTube, for instance, or search for the fallacies in cartoon banks). The Cartoon Network, Family Guy, Stephen Colbert, or even just plain old cartoon websites are good places to look. (need link)
Explain why you think this is a good example of the fallacy. To receive credit for this assignment, you must reconstruct the fallacious argument (using standard reconstruction format) that the video or cartoon presents by identifying its implicit premise(s) and conclusion.
Explanation / Answer
Critical Thinking: False Cause Fallacy Example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5xrr4RyqaE
From Sesame Street:
, Ernie is seen holding a banana in his left ear. Because something like this is out of the ordinary, Bert asks Ernie why he's doing it. He replies that it keeps the alligators away from him and out of Sesame Street.
when Bert brings up that it there aren't any alligators on Sesame Street anyway, Ernie says "Right! It's doing a good job then isn't it, Bert?"
Explanation of the fallacy in Ernie's claim: (1) Attributing a cause to an unrelated effect--in this case, claiming the absence of alligaotors is due to holding a banana in his left ear
(2) The fallacy becomes more transparent as Ernie could have claimed the same effect by (i) replacing the banana by any other substance or (ii) saying that his NOT HOLDING a banana in his right ear keeps the alligators away!
Another classic example of fallacious reasoning from Lewis Carroll:
The Red Queen's race is an incident that appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and involves the Red Queen, a representation of a Queen in chess, and Alice constantly running but remaining in the same spot.
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" [1]
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