The Fallacy of the Slippery Slope Argument on Abortion

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to show that the acorn–oak tree argument against the slippery slope on the personhood of the fetus is valid and William Cooney's attack on this argument fails. I also argue that the slippery slope argument leads to on undesirable conclusion and should not be used as a valid tool in the debate on the personhood of the fetus.     

The Smuggler's Fallacy

Abstract: David Hume has warned us not to endeavor to derive an “ought” from an “is” (1990, 469–70), reprimanding those who attempt to draw value judgments from empirical facts. But Judith Jarvis Thomson refuses to accept that values and facts are logically disjoint in this manner, primarily because of her worry that such a partition of our moral values from the “facts” will place a grave limitation on any ethical system, namely, that its claims apparently cannot be proven. Consequently, Thomson is on the lookout for some provably true facts that can be used, contra Hume, to draw conclusions about moral values. Thomson begins by rejecting all generalist conceptions of the good (specifically, the utilitarian's identification of the good with pleasure) and proceeds to fracture the good into various kinds of “goodness in a way,” hoping to produce by this disintegration some moral facts that can be used to set ethics on an objective foundation. But I will argue that Thomson's so‐called objective facts are actually nothing but disguised moral claims, and that in attempting to sidestep the classic fallacy identified by Hume, she has blundered into another pitfall—the Smuggler's Fallacy, the offense of concealing her moral conclusions inside the premises of her argument.     

The Fallacy of Calibrationism

Calibrationism is an intuitively plausible thesis about the relation between rational credence and expected reliability. But calibrationism is misguided. It relies on the base-rate fallacy, a classic mistake in probabilistic epistemology. Thus while calibrationism is intuitive, it cannot be correct.     

The Comparative Set Fallacy

This paper argues for the validity of inferences that take the form of: A is more X than B; therefore A and B are both X. After considering representative counterexamples, it is claimed that these inferences are valid if and only if the comparative terms in the inference are taken from no more than one comparative set, where a comparative set is understood to be comprised of a positive, comparative, and superlative, represented as {X, more X than, most X}. In all instances where arguments appearing to be of this form are invalid, it is the case that the argument has fallaciously taken terms from more than one comparative set. The fallacy of appealing to more than one comparative set in an inference involving comparative terms is shown to be analogous to the fallacy of equivocation in argumentation. The paper concludes by suggesting a conflation of logical issues with grammatical issues is the core difficulty leading some to consider inferences in the form of A is more X than B; therefore A and B are X to be invalid.     

The Fallacy of Misplaced Presumption

One takes one’s word that p when a source vouches for p and one accepts the word of that source. If the source is reliable in this case, p is acceptable. The reliability of the source is a measure of its plausibility. If a source has the relevant competence, credibility, authority, that word is acceptable. Likewise, the word may be acceptable if accompanied by a cogent argument, but presumption may be misplaced. One may recognize a presumption for a statement when such recognition is not justified, the positive version of the fallacy. One may refuse to recognize a presumption for a statement when there really is a presumption for the statement, the negative version of the fallacy. The essay proceeds to explore various dimensions of when it is justified to take a source’s word for a claim, and when it is justified to reject a claim from a source. The discussion ranges over considerations of sexism and race, cultural differences, and the relationship of presumptions to fallacies. Also considered is the role of trust in taking someone’s word and the factors involved in trusting someone.

     

The Fallacy Fallacy: From the Owl of Minerva to the Lark of Arete

The fallacy fallacy is either the misdiagnosis of fallacy or the supposition that the conclusion of a fallacy must be a falsehood. This paper explores the relevance of these and related errors of reasoning for the appraisal of arguments, especially within virtue theories of argumentation. In particular, the fallacy fallacy exemplifies the Owl of Minerva problem, whereby tools devised to understand a norm make possible new ways of violating the norm. Fallacies are such tools and so are vices. Hence a similar problem arises with argumentative vices. Fortunately, both instances of the problem have a common remedy.

     

个体证券投资者自我效能感对赌徒谬误的影响

赌徒谬误指当某一独立随机事件发生后,人们倾向认为这一结果再次出现的概率降低。如果一连串的随机事件呈现出一定的趋势,人们倾向于认为随机事件将呈现系统性反转。证券市场中的赌徒谬误指在股票上涨（下跌）序列中做出股价将要下跌（上涨）的判断。本研究探讨股票市场特征（趋势长度及方向）及投资者的人格特征（自我效能感）对赌徒谬误的影响。以83名股票投资者为对象,采用多层线性模型进行分析,结果发现：趋势长度主效应显著,短线情境下赌徒谬误频次更高;趋势方向主效应显著,下跌情境下赌徒谬误频次更高;二者交互作用显著,在短线下跌情境下,赌徒谬误频次更高;投资者的自我效能感对股票趋势长度具有调节作用,高自我效能的投资者在短线情境下更容易出现赌徒谬误。     

热手谬误和赌徒谬误心理机制研究述评

在知觉随机序列时,人们倾向于把序列中实际上各自独立的相邻结果看作是存在正相关或负相关的,而出现热手谬误或赌徒谬误,又称为随机序列中的正负近因效应。有关这两谬误最早的心理机制的探索中,Kahneman 和Tversky采用局部代表性启发法对此进行了解释。但是这种解释也存在诸多不足,因此近期的一些模型（因果模型、Urn模型、记忆模型、适应模型和两阶段格式塔模型）分别从不同角度对两种谬误提出了新的解释。最后文章指出研究方法、神经机制、个体差异以及生活中的应用是该领域研究的几个未来发展方向     

对条件克隆人的伦理辨析

目前,我们还要讨论克隆人的原因是,克隆技术仍在进行,假设人的克隆技术发展已经成熟,而且用于人道的目的,这种更加理性化的讨论应该是目前学术界关于克隆人的伦理争议的方向.因此,我们可以在克隆技术已经成熟的假设下更深一步的、有目的地讨论克隆人的伦理问题,当把克隆人的目的缩减在如下较合理的范围中,便可更深一步地、更有针对性地探讨克隆人的伦理问题.     

Arguments for adjuncts

It is commonly assumed across the language sciences that some semantic participant information is lexically encoded in the representation of verbs and some is not. In this paper, we propose that semantic obligatoriness and verb class specificity are criteria which influence whether semantic information is lexically encoded. We present a comprehensive survey of the English verbal lexicon, a sentence continuation study, and an on-line sentence processing study which confirm that both factors play a role in the lexical encoding of participant information.     

对人工流产的道德辩护

人工流产的合理性的伦理学辩护基于两个出发点 :已出生人的利益要优于未出生的人 ;人是目的而不是工具。但是 ,这种伦理辩护会带来的某些问题 ,比如 ,过分强调自由与责任的松懈之间的矛盾。对此 ,伦理学对于权利的辩护无法作出回答 ,但它却是人的生存境况所面临的一种两难抉择。     

Looking for Arguments

How do people find arguments while engaged in a discussion? Following an analogy with visual search, a mechanism that performs this task is described. It is a metarepresentational device that examines representations in a mostly serial manner until it finds a good enough argument supporting one??s position. It is argued that the mechanism described in dual process theories as ??system 2??, or analytic reasoning fulfills these requirements. This provides support for the hypothesis that reasoning serves an argumentative function.