Critical thinking 111
Consider the following passage: "There's no way you can hold us responsible for knowing all this stuff for the exam. Only a crazy person would think we could learn so much in so little time." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Ad Hominem
Consider the following passage: "The Surgeon General issued a report stating categorically that smoking causes cancer. Well, since he is a doctor, that is just what you would expect him to say, so I don't have to take him seriously." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Ad hominem
Consider the following passage: "You can't trust your biology teacher, kiddo. Don't you know she's an atheist? Of course she'll tell you that humans evolved from apes. Crazy." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Ad hominem
Consider the following passage: "We got three bids from contractors to fix our roof. We took the Smith Company bid because Joe Smith told us that his mom recently died, and he's very sad. Getting some business may cheer him up." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Appeal to emotion
Consider the following passage: "There's no way you can hold us responsible for knowing all this stuff for the exam. Just wait until student evaluations get turned in and just see how much you end up thinking we should have to learn all this for the exam." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Appeal to force
Consider the following passage: "Tiger Woods eats Grainos cereal; so, it must be good for you." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Appeal to inappropriate authority
Consider the following passage: "I think crystal necklaces have healing powers. This one makes me look pretty, too—don't you think? To be honest, I think we should all use them. Want to buy one?" What fallacy does it exhibit?
Appeal to motion
Consider the following passage: "The best thing we can do in our lives is to love each other. After all, love is the greatest emotion of all of them." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Begging the question
Consider the following passage: "Evidence shows that approximately 85% of all Americans believe that gun ownership is morally wrong. The sample was drawn from surveys at local Quaker churches across the country." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Biased Sample
Consider the following passage: "America is the fattest country on the earth, therefore all Americans are fat." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Division
An appeal to ignorance fallacy occurs when an audience's emotional response is used to convince them of some claim.
False
The Post Hoc fallacy occurs when someone threatens their audience, rather than making a rational argument for a particular conclusion.
False
Consider the following passage: "Final exams in logic are either difficult or unfair. They're not unfair. So they must be difficult." Which fallacy does it exhibit?
False Choice
Consider the following passage: "Jana has been to San Diego several times, and the sky was always blue and the temperature ideal. The weather must be perfect in San Diego all the time." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Hasty generalization
Consider the following passage: "I told my best friend Ahmed that Jose just broke up with me; then he said I should not really focus on the global political situation, which is much worse." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Red herring
Consider the following passage: "If you start out by drinking only one beer, then pretty soon you will not be satisfied unless you drink two. Then you will need three, and so on. Eventually, you will become an alcoholic." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Slippery slope
Consider the following passage; "No, I cannot give you a makeup exam; if I make an exception for you, pretty soon I will be giving customized exams to everyone any time of day or night." What fallacy does it exhibit?
Slippery slope
Appeal to an inappropriate authority occurs when one trusts the testimony of a person who lacks relevant expertise about the issue at hand.
True
The anchoring bias is our tendency to base estimations on the first data point or piece of information that we are confronted with.
True
The appeal to ignorance fallacy occurs when someone argues that because we do not have evidence that something is false, we have reason to think it true.
True
The sunk cost bias is our tendency to put more resources into an activity in which we have already invested resources.
True
A biased sample fallacy occurs when a generalization is created on the basis of a few instances.
false
The appeal to emotion fallacy occurs when someone's argument is rejected based on the circumstances of the person's life.
false
The division fallacy occurs when someone reasons that the whole thing must have a property because all of its parts have that property.
false
The fallacy of false choice occurs when it is assumed that there is only one possible way for a conclusion to be false.
false
