Is Informal reasoning any more reliable than Inductve or Deductive reasoning?


First off there are already two main fallacies with Informal Reasoning. and Post hoc ergo propter hoc and Ad hominem.

The first one literally translated from Latin to English means: after this, therefore on account of this. An example to make this sound clearer is: just because the murder rate in a country goes up after the abolition of capital punishment, it does not necessarily mean that capital punishment is an effective deterrent to murder crimes. It could mean that capital punishment is an effective deterrent to murder crimes but it could also be explained by other reasons such as a rise in poverty levels or an increase in the availability of guns on the market. Therefore we can see that Informal reasoning is already not a very reliable source of information.

Ad hominem translated from Latin to English quite literally means: against the man. It consists of attacking or supporting the person rather than the argument. For example: you make an argument for a world government, and are told by your teacher or parents that you are too young and idealaistic to know and understand what you are talking abou it shows that they aren't taking your argument seriously because you are too young when age doesn't matter. You could be spot on with your argument but they may still say you are too young to understand worldwide politics.

So as we can see Inofrmal Reasoning is just as unreliable as Inductive and Deductive Reasoning.

1 comment:

gjonss said...

Thank you for these posts Kieran. Some very interesting ideas expressed here. I would like to see more links being made between the topics we cover in class and the various things you experience outside of the classroom/in other subjects. Remember that you have to complete a further 5 entries by the end of this summer term.