June 2008 – The Pop Culture Philosopher

does the internet really exist?

June 30, 2008 askmeQuestions

I apologize for answering your question in this way –and I tried to find ways to avoid it, but it can’t be helped: It depends on what you mean by “exist”. It seems clear that[…]

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1) The claim “There is extraterrestrial life in the universe, because my father said so” is an example of an appeal to authority. But it can be viewed as an enthymeme, where the hidden assumption is that “my father is always right”. In such a case, there is no logical problem with the argument. Do you agree? 2) Do you think that to say that : “Person A is biased , therefore\what he says is wrong” is fallacious? It can be interpreted as “person A is biased, therefore his information cannot be trusted. Therefore what he says is wrong”. 3) Are errors of logic errors of psychology as well? Or perhaps, only errors of psychology? Appeal to authority besides being a logical fallacy, has a whole psychology and sociology besides it.

June 14, 2008 askmeLogic

1) We must always be careful to distinguish between arguments that are valid and those that are sound. A valid deductive argument has the proper logical structure (where true premises guarantee a true conclusion) but[…]

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