One of the primary reasons of the fallacies of weak induction is not when the premises are irrelevant but when the premises are not strong enough to support an argument, it usually happens during the course of induction and sometime due to emotional grounds as we can see in many religious arguments (Hurley 31). Following are the kinds of fallacies of weak induction with suitable examples from our daily lives.
Appeal to the unqualified authority: As we can see unqualified authority is involved here. It is true, why? Because somebody says so. For example in bible God says the following:
‘Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.’ (Psalm 137:9)
Hence, one can charge this kind of argumentation as an appeal to the unqualified God who ordered Israel to dash their infants against rocks.
Similarly, false effect falsely take up an effect from a cause. For example for centuries, the Roman Catholic Church charged people with heavy amount of money in order to compensate their loved from limbo to heaven.
As we have seen that the fallacies of weak induction depend upon inductive arguments if there is something illogical that may seem logical to many but in fact it is inherently irrational and illogical as we have seen in the above examples.
- The text categorizes the various kinds of informal fallacies under specific headings; for example, “Fallacies of Relevance.” Explain why the various fallacies fall under their specific heading. Include all the fallacy categories (headings) from the text.
Informal fallacies are the ways of reasoning that are inherently flawed and incorrect. Different names had been given to these fallacies by the medieval and renaissance scholars who identified these fallacies, some of them have Latin names (Bennett 23).
Fallacies of Relevance: The name suggests ‘relevance’ while in fact this fallacy is concerned with the irrelevance of information provided in the argument, fallacies of irrelevance appeal to the emotions rather than reason and logic (Vleet 43).
Fallacies of presumption: This kind of fallacies involve presumption of truth without evidence, as it deals with false presumption, hence, falls under the fallacies of presumption.
Fallacies of ambiguity: As we can see, the heading itself indicates the nature of this kind of fallacies. Ambiguity, lack of clarity, and more than one meanings of a statement produce this kind of fallacies.
Works Cited
Vleet, Van J. E. Informal Logical Fallacies: A Brief Guide. Lanham: University Press of America, 2012. Internet resource
Bennett, Bo. Logically fallacious: the ultimate collection of over 300 logical Fallacies (academic edition). eBookIt. com, 2012.
Hurley, Patrick. A concise introduction to logic. Cengage Learning, 2005.
