Respond: Faulty Analogy
RESPOND •
1. Examine each of the following political slogans or phrases for logical fallacies.
“Resistance is futile.” (Borg message on Star Trek: The Next Generation)
“It’s the economy, stupid.” (sign on the wall at Bill Clinton’s campaign headquarters)
“Make love, not war.” (antiwar slogan popularized during the Vietnam War)
“A chicken in every pot.” (campaign slogan)
“Guns don’t kill, people do.” (NRA slogan)
“Dog Fighters Are Cowardly Scum.” (PETA T-shirt)
“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” (attributed to Harry S Truman)
2. Choose a paper you’ve written for a college class and analyze it for signs of fallacious reasoning. Then find an editorial, a syndicated column, and a news report on the same topic and look for fallacies in them. Which has the most fallacies — and what kind? What may be the role of the audience in determining when a statement is fallacious?
3. Find a Web site that is sponsored by an organization (the Future of Music Coalition, perhaps), a business (Coca-Cola, Pepsi), or another group (the Democratic or Republican National Committee), and analyze the site for fallacious reasoning. Among other considerations, look at the relationship between text and graphics and between individual pages and the pages that surround or are linked to them.
4. Political blogs such as Mother Jones and InstaPundit typically provide quick responses to daily events and detailed critiques of material in other media sites, including national newspapers. Study one such blog for a few days to see whether and how the site critiques the articles, political commentary, or writers it links to. Does the blog ever point out fallacies of argument? If so, does it explain the problems with such reasoning or just assume readers will understand the fallacies? Summarize your findings in a brief oral report to your class.