Philosophy Club Meeting

Four Logical Fallacies That Have Thwarted Human Progress 

We study logic mostly as an abstraction, similar in many ways to how we study mathematics, knowing that it may have some important applications to our thought processes and academic endeavors, but that these are mostly technical and subtle in nature. One of the highlights of the study of logic is the notice of logical fallacies, which are essentially patterns of deception in our reasoning which, if gone unnoticed, ruin the possibility of productive thought, the kind of thinking that allows us to get closer to the truth and to solutions to our problems.

As long as logical fallacies occur randomly and non-deliberately in human thought, whether individual or collective, the damage they do would be limited and even to a large extent corrected by wider exposure and submission to other thought not affected by the same fallacies. The greater damage comes from the programmatic occurrence of logical fallacies.

The question: ”why should logical fallacies ever occur programmatically—that is to say, deliberately and pointedly, rather than by sheerly accidental and innocent error?” is a morally loaded one. For at the heart of it lies the basis of human moral failure: self-deception, thus  prompting another question: why do we, a species uniquely identified as possessing not only organismic—that is to say, survival-oriented—awareness, as do all other organisms, but rational awareness as well—that is to say, truth-oriented awareness, all too often misuse our rational awareness to obfuscate or throw ourselves off the track of truth-claims rather than rigorously investigate them. It seems that we are tempted to suppress notice of whatever truth-claim lies within the scope of our conscious mind that we anticipate might be inconvenient to us if duly investigated and taken stock of. The inconvenience of a claim, of course, has nothing to do with its likelihood of being true, but may have a lot to do with the likelihood of our investigating it in good faith. After all, as organisms, we seek survival by resolving all our immediate survival contexts in the most convenient, least taxing way possible. Lions only kill if there is nothing to steal from the hyenas. So, as creatures endowed both with an urge for immediate convenience and truth, we find ourselves in an ongoing existential conflict our overall response to which determines our moral character. One way is the way of truth and suffering; the other way is the way of self-deception and short-term convenience.

As a result, the study of fallacy becomes not just a matter of logic, but of ethics as well. For the programmatic application of fallacies can thwart human progress and has done so over the course of the centuries. Here I want to discuss four fallacies which have thwarted human progress. Three of them are cases of what I call the Contrarian Fallacy; that is, of treating what are in fact contrary claims as if they were contradictories. The fourth is a case of what I call the Contradictarian Fallacy; that is of treating what are in fact contradictory claims as if they were contraries. Each refers to perennial philosophical debates. The first three, in turn, are about Hedonism, Utilitarianism, and Capitalism; the fourth is about Democracy. (See complete document attached)

The University of Hartford Philosophy Club has an informal, jovial atmosphere. It is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.

Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses.

Come and go as you wish. Bring friends. Suggest topics and activities. Take over the club! It belongs to you! Just show up! - Brian Skelly (bskelly@hartford.edu; 413.273.2273)