Morris Engel With Good Reason

 

Logic terms pages 301-306 in With Good Reason by S.Morris Engel. Learn with flashcards, games, and more — for free. Nov 02, 2020 With good reason by S. Morris Engel, 1986, St. Martin's Press edition, in English - 3rd ed.

  1. Here are a few examples of the post hoc fallacy taken from the book, With Good Reason, by S. Morris Engel: Example 1: “Since every major war in which we have taken part during the last few generations has happened when we had a Democratic president, we ought therefore to think twice before voting for a Democrat in this presidential election.”.
  2. Analysing Informal Fallacies 1st (first) Edition by Engel, S. Morris published by Prentice Hall (1980) 5.0 out of 5 stars 1. Unknown Binding. Only 1 left in stock - order soon. With good reason: An introduction to informal fallacies S.
  3. With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies by Engel, S. Morris and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at AbeBooks.com. With Good Reason: an Introduction to Informal Fallacies by Engel, S Morris - AbeBooks.
Taxonomy:

With Good Reason: An Introduction To Informal Fallacies - S ...

MorrisLogical Fallacy > Informal Fallacy

Subfallacies:

Accident, Ambiguity, Appeal to Ignorance, Begging the Question, Black-or-White Fallacy, Composition, Division, Non Causa Pro Causa, One-Sidedness, Overgeneralization, Red Herring Fallacy, Special Pleading, Vagueness, Weak Analogy

Logic Terms Flashcards | Quizlet

Exposition*:

The distinction between a formal and an informal logical fallacy is based on the distinction between form and content, specifically, between the logical form of an argument and its non-logical content. A formal fallacy is a type of argument that is fallacious solely on the basis of its logical form. In contrast, an informal fallacy is, of course, one that is not formal, that is, what makes such an argument fallacious is not purely a matter of logical form.

In addition to non-logical content, the context of an argument is also not a part of its logical form and plays a role in the fallaciousness of many of the informal fallacies. By 'context', I refer to the linguistic or social setting of an argument; for instance, a particular argument may occur in the context of a debate. See the Exposure section, below, for specifics and examples.

Frequently, but not exclusively, informal fallacies occur in non-deductive reasoning, which relies on content as well as form for cogency. Also, because content is important in informal fallacies, there are cogent arguments with the form of the fallacy. For this reason, when forms are given in the entries for individual informal fallacies, this is for identification purposes only―that is, one cannot tell from the form alone that an instance is fallacious, since content is also relevant. Rather, the forms will help to differentiate between distinct types of informal fallacy.

As a logical fallacy, Informal Fallacy is the most general fallacy committed by arguments that are fallacious for informal reasons. However, a given fallacious argument would be classified as an Informal Fallacy only if it could not be given a more specific classification. For this reason, there is no Example of Informal Fallacy given; instead, see the Examples under the Subfallacies, above.

Exposure:

Since an informal fallacy is a type of argument whose content or context is relevant to its fallaciousness, logical fallacies can be informal for the following reasons, among others:

  • Linguistic: 'Linguistic' refers, of course, to language, and a linguistic fallacy is one in which some feature of the non-logical language in which an argument is expressed plays an essential role. For instance, words and phrases are often ambiguous, that is, they have more than one possible meaning. As a result, arguments as a whole may admit more than one interpretation. When the ambiguity of an argument plays an essential role in making a formally invalid argument appear to be valid, it commits a linguistic fallacy.

    Example:Ambiguity

  • Dialectical: 'Dialectic' refers to reasoning that occurs in a dialogue or debate between two or more people. So, a 'dialectical' fallacy is one in which dialogue plays an essential role. The most prominent such fallacy is the straw man fallacy: In a straw man argument, the arguer misrepresents the argument or claim of another participant in the dialogue. Thus, straw man arguments can only occur within the context of such a debate.

    Example:The Straw Man Fallacy

  • Epistemological: 'Epistemology' is the philosophical study of knowledge, so that an 'epistemological' fallacy is one in which the nature of knowledge plays an essential role. For instance, circular arguments are technically valid―that is, if their premisses are true then their conclusions must also be true. However, as should be obvious, circular reasoning cannot advance knowledge, since it ends up in the same place it started. Thus, circular reasoning commits an epistemological fallacy.

    Example:Begging the Question

With Good Reason S. Morris Engel

*Note: For more on informal fallacies, see the following:

With Good Reason By Morris Engel Sixth Edition

  • T. Edward Damer, Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments (Third Edition, 1995). An introductory textbook on informal fallacies, but more advanced than Engel's; see below. It covers more fallacies than Engel but in a drier style.
  • S. Morris Engel, Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language: The Language Trap (1994). This book covers the same ground as Engel's textbook, below, but in a popular, non-textbook style.
  • S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies (Fifth Edition, St. Martin's, 1994). A good textbook for beginners.
  • Douglas N. Walton, Informal Fallacies (1987). This is not a textbook, but a monograph by one of the most prominent scholars of informal fallacies. A more advanced treatment than Engel or Damer.
  1. William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987),Google Scholar
  2. See M. B. Ahern, The Problem of Evil (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1971), p. ix.Google Scholar
  3. See Alvin Plantinga’s, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
  4. For a helpful discussion of this doctrine see Plantinga’s Does God Have a Nature? pp. 95–110.Google Scholar
  5. For a helpful discussion of this doctrine see Plantinga’s Does God Have a Nature? pp. 95–110. Cf. P. T. Geach, Providence and Evil (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 8f, andGoogle Scholar
  6. Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 91f.Google Scholar
  7. W. V. Quine, Methods of Logic (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1950), p. 3.Google Scholar
  8. Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 171. In this context, Plantinga addresses the ‘omnipotence paradox’ introduced by J. L. Mackie in ‘Evil and Omnipotence,’ p. 210. The paradox is started by the question, Can God make things he cannot then control? If we say ‘Yes,’ then once he has made them he is not omnipotent. If we say ‘No,’ then we are admitting that there are things that God cannot do. Richard La Croix argues that it is a concept that is impossible to define, in ‘The Impossibility of Defining Omnipotence,’ Philosophical Studies, Vol. 32 (1977), pp. 181–190.Google Scholar
  9. See S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), p. 145.Google Scholar
  10. Richard La Croix, ‘The Impossibility of Defining Omnipotence,’ Philosophical Studies, Vol. 32 (1977), p. 183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 162.Google Scholar
  12. Here, I am assuming that the omniscient being is within time even though he might be eternal. A very different rendering would be required if the theist were to hold that God is omniscient and atemporally eternal. See Eleanore Stump’s and Norman Kretzmann’s article, ‘Eternity’, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 8 (August, 1981), pp. 429–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. This particular locution is attributed to Elizabeth Anscombe by Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 48, n. 1. The counterexample is supplied by Norman Kretzmann.Google Scholar
  14. J. R. Lucas, The Freedom of the Will (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Reformed theologians, John Murray and Ned B. Stonehouse, and apologist Cornelius Van Til argued that there is such a radical difference, challenging Gordon H. Clark on the matter of God’s incomprehensibility at his ordination examination. See Fred H. Klooster, The Incomprehensibility of God in the Orthodox Presbyterian Conflict (Franeker: T. Wever, 1951).Google Scholar
  16. Cf., John H. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), pp. 21–40.Google Scholar
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  18. René Descartes held to an absolute omnipotence doctrine such that God is somehow supralogical and hence can, ‘if he wants,’ nullify or set aside the canons of logic and make true a contradictory proposition or do something that would be contradictory for him to do. Actually, his position was ambiguous. His writings may be interpreted as supporting either universal or limited possibilism. The former is the view that Descartes’ ‘eternal truths,’ e.g., the truths of logic, mathematics, etc., are not necessary truths. The latter position by contrast affirms that eternal truths are necessary, but they owe their necessity to divine decree. See Alvin Plantinga’s, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), pp. 95–110.Google Scholar
  19. Nelson Pike, ‘Divine Foreknowledge, Human Freedom and Possible Worlds,’ The Philosophical Review, Vol. 86, No. 2 (April, 1977), p. 209. In Divine Nature and Human Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), William Alston argues that God does not have beliefs, pp. 178–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Linda Trinhaus Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 142.Google Scholar
  21. William Lycan, ‘The Trouble with Possible Worlds,’ The Possible and the Actual, ed., Michael J. Loux (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 287.Google Scholar
  22. See Peter van Inwagen’s Material Beings (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), for an interesting account of such things as trees, clouds, and puppy dogs’ tails.Google Scholar
  23. Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness (New York: Schocken, 1970), pp. 121–129, cf., Zagzebski’s The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, pp. 43f., for other criticisms of this view of God’s eternity.Google Scholar
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  25. J. R. Lucas, The Future (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 226.Google Scholar
  26. See Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. vii, 43, 83, 94. The theist, of course, can benefit from some of Hartshorne’s insights, without buying into process theology.Google Scholar
  27. Bruce Reichenbach, ‘Evil and a Reformed View of God,’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 24 (1988), pp. 67–85, particularly pp. 70–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957), I, 15, 8.Google Scholar
  29. Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, p. 166. Cf. pp. 14f., Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Freewill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).Google Scholar
  30. George Botterill, ‘Falsification and the Existence of God: A Discussion of Plantinga’s Free Will Defence,’ The Philosophical Quarterly (April, 1977), Vol. 27, No. 107, pp. 114–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Representing the Western tradition, Henry Mansel and Emil Brunner fall into this camp. Both held to the unknowability of God and so also its corollary the unknowability of his goodness. See Emil Brunner’s God and Man (London: SCM Press, 1936), pp. 59, 60, 76–84.Google Scholar
  32. Cf. G. Stanley Kane, ‘The Concept of Divine Goodness and the Problem of Evil,’ Religious Studies, Vol. II, No. 1 (March, 1975), 49–71. Kane includes Karl Barth, see Barth’s Church Dogmatics, II. 1, pp. 188,189; II. 2, pp. 631–636 (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1936). Barth also clearly affirms God’s knowability, see Church Dogmatics II. 2, pp 4f., 147ff., 156f., 158ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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  34. For a more detailed discussion of the concept of analogy see, James F. Ross, ‘Analogy as a Rule of Meaning for Religious Language,’ Inquiries into Medieval Philosophy, James F. Ross (editor), (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 35–74.Google Scholar
  35. Frederick Ferré, Language, Logic and God (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), p. 75. The terms neo-orthodox and reformed do not designate two clearly distinct groups, since some neo-orthodox theologians would be comfortable with the designation, ‘reformed.’Google Scholar