Logic
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Today, as the finale to the entire course, we learn how to argue about the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and alien abductions (among other things). I refer, of course, to fallacies of presumption, which are a kind of logical cheating.
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Some arguments marred by fallacies seem merely weak, whereas others seem to shoot off quite strongly in the wrong direction. In this lecture, we explore the latter group–the fallacies of misdirection.
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We continue our survey of informal fallacies with five ways in which people often try to appeal to our emotions. There’s nothing wrong with that–as long as we recognize the difference between emotional appeal and logical argument–between pathos and logos.
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Generalizations and analogies help us understand how the world is. But what if we want to know why the world is that way? What causes the world to be the way it is? That calls for a different kind of inductive reasoning: reasoning about causation. We’ll take a very brief dip into these very deep
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With certainty off the table for inductive arguments, we speak not of validity or invalidity, but rather of strength or weakness. Here are five key factors to consider in evaluating the strength of any analogy.
Logic Lectures 