A. (pp. 143 - 144

1. Answer in text.

2. False cause (post hoc). They danced, and then it rained. Therefore, the dancing caused the rain.

3. Answer in text.

4. Appeal to ignorance. You cannot show it is wrong to go through a red light at that hour; so it is right.

5. Gambler’s fallacy

6. False cause (post hoc)

7. Answer in text.

8. Hasty generalization. the sample is far too small. Common reasoning

9. Appeal to general belief. “Most people, past and present, have thought public nudity wrong. So it is wrong.” The assumption that people in general are a proper authority on moral matters is unwarranted. (As a straightforward appeal to the beliefs of most people, it is appeal to general belief, not popular attitudes.)

10. Appeal to popular attitudes and emotions. Fear, sense of belonging

 B. (p. 148 – 149)) 

1. Answer in text.

2. Begging the question. The conclusion just restates the premise in somewhat different words.

3. slippery slope.

4. False dilemma.

5. Loaded question. The student’s assumption that she can make up the exam is built into the question.  This is illegitimate unless it has already been agreed that the student can make up the exam.

6. Answer in text.

7. Answer in text.

8. Another loaded question. It is assumed that the person did stab his lover. 

 C. (156 - 157)

1. Against the person (ad hominem). Ms. Grag being a commercial baker does not show that her views on disarmament are false. Since she apparently is not an expert on disarmament, we should not rely on her for truth. (That would be appealing to inappropriate authority.) But we certainly cannot assume that what she says is false.

2. Answer in text.

3. Pooh-pooh

4. 5. Answer in text.

6. Answer in text.

7. You too (tu quoque)

8. Skip

9. Straw man. On Lindsey’s account of what Mr. Carter said, Mr. Reagan has distorted Carter’s position beyond all recognition. The result is a silly sounding view that can be dismissed out of hand. But it is not Mr. Carter’s view.

10. No fallacy.

 D. (pp. 157 – 163)             

1. Loaded words. Any persuasiveness here comes from the strong negative language. But real argument is needed to support the call to action in the last sentence.

2. Answer in text.

3. Appeal to popular attitudes and emotions. We like to think of ourselves as having “noble taste.” So, of course, we are encouraged to think that we must appreciate this Scots Whiskey.

4. The second sentence contains a loaded question.

5. Against the Person. Ryan responds to Oliver with personal insults. Whatever it was Oliver said about O’Brien is not addressed.

6. Appeal to general belief.

7. False alternatives: The alternatives are neither exclusive nor exhaustive: they are not exclusive because  the violence could be both “all that bad” and “the main reason people come to the games.” They do not even give the illusion of being exhaustive. The violence could be good; it could be the reason many do not go to the games; and so on.

8. Straw man. Panetta did not say or imply anything about controlling anyone’s right of free speech.

9, 10, 11. Answer in text.

12a and 12b. Both passages contain loaded questions. (The Meese Commission Report is an invaluable source of examples of fallacious reasoning.)

13. Answer in text.

14. False cause. This is a causal inference from the bites to the disease.

15. Appeal to ignorance. The implication of the question is that there is no reason to doubt that the bad effects occur; i.e., there is no reason to think they do not occur. So they do occur.

16. False cause

17. Against the person. The editorial’s negative sarcastic characterization of Mr. Clinton as “the president who didn’t inhale” is a personal slur that says nothing about the merits of his position on the drug czar’s office.

18. False alternatives. Keating says that pornography does not effect good, so it must effect evil. With the obvious unstated premise the whole argument would be:                               

Either pornography effects good or pornography effects evil.  (Unstated)

                                Pornography does not effect good.

                                ----------------------------------------

                                Pornography effects evil.

The alternatives are not exhaustive. For instance, pornography might have no effects whatsoever.

19. Appeal to ignorance—talked about in class

20. Gambler’s fallacy. Poor Jerry’s recent run of bad luck does nothing to indicate that he will or will not have something good happen soon.

21. Straw man. The suggestion that we do not need these proposed weapons is distorted into the very different and far less plausible one that we should “lay down our arms.”

22. Appeal to general belief.

23. Begging the question.

24. Answer in text.

25. you, too. La Russo seems to be rejecting Hershiser’s charge against Scott on the ground that Hershiser has done the same thing. La Russo’s position is not entirely clear. Certainly he commits some sort of ad hominem fallacy, if not specifically a tu quoque.

26. Definitional dodge.

27. False cause. If the boy was not expected to awaken at all or was not expected to awaken as soon as he did, this would be a simple false cause argument. (The dog nuzzled him; later the boy awoke. So the nuzzling caused the awakening.) The argument is all the worse since the nature of the injuries already led us to expect he would awaken at this time. So we need no further cause of his awakening. In short, we have a poor argument for a specific cause when no (further) cause is required.

28. Hasty generalization.

29. Slippery slope. The argument has a devilish appeal to anyone hooked on cigarettes, M and M’s, peanuts, etc.

30. Appeal to popular attitudes and emotions.

31. Ad hominem. –Against Person

32. Pooh-pooh.

33. Answer in text.

34. Gambler’s fallacy.

35. Hasty generalization. The organization surveyed is most unlikely to be representative of the population as a whole.

36. Appeal to General belief. “We are all aware that” is a way of appealing to what people believe.

37. Appeal to popular attitudes and emotions.

38. Begging the question. The premise and the conclusion are the same statement worded differently.

39. Tu quoque (you too). Elbert attempts to defend his objectivity by saying Dempsey is no better.

40. Straw man. Allowing voluntary prayer is distorted into establishing an official state religion.

41. Appeal to ignorance.

42. Appeal to inappropriate authority. The literature teacher is taken as an authority on a scientific issue. Of course this teacher might in fact be such an authority, but we are given no reason to think so.

43. Loaded question. Unless it has been established that nicotine is being added, this is an inappropriate question. (According to Raspberry, that had not been established.)

44. Appeal to ignorance. Robertson in effect says unless you prove him wrong, he is right about the missiles.

45. Post hoc (false cause).  Sunday School attendance declined, and the social fabric decayed. The first then is the cause of the second.