Ethics and Fallacies

In class this week, we discussed ethics and common fallacies. In high school I learned about ethics and common fallacies in my world religions class, but never went into detail about them. In class we talked about asking the right questions. For a fallacy to be true the premises should make the conclusion true. One cannot just state facts. We must be able to back those facts up. For Example: All streets in New Orleans are paved with gold. Wall Street is a street in New Orleans. Wall Street is paved with gold. This is a false analogy. Always question the validity of the premises. Philosophy is a way of life; it’s not just stating your beliefs or preferences. At the end of class we discussed common fallacies people make. Some of these fallacies include false dilemma, argumentum ad ignorantiam, slippery slope, complex question, argumentum ad baculum, argumentum ad misercordian, prejudicial language, appeal to popularity, attacking the person, appeal to authority, hasty generalization, false analogy, irrelevant conclusion, and straw man. We went over these different fallacies in high school, but I hope this class will help me better identify the errors in reasoning.