Reason, Logical fallacies

Key words to remember:

Assumptions- making personal judgements containing guesses and biases, can be accurate but lead to errors being made

Fallacy - a mis calculation in thinking, an error in the making..

The incident in the store exercise we looked at was demonstrating that when it comes to recalling incidents, with our memories we tend to tell a story. This is problematic in Law courts and for us in TOK it highlights one issue with Reason as a source of knowing. Different storytellers see different things in the same incident, so who to believe? This is the narrative fallacy. This is a problem in History/ historical record.

The list of argument or inductive fallacies is lomg, I like this clip here. It aims to demonstrae some key fallacy terms using the debate as to whether God exists. Always a good TOK topic!



Can you give your own examples of Straw man, Red herring and circular reasoning? Slippery slope or ad hominem arguments? Any other?


As we looked at sample essays this week you should attempt to craft the opening sentence for one of the TOK essays, then build up the first paragraph. Plan the rest. This is the process we will follow so get on with this when you havve the confidence to begin. We are only two terms in but I believe a number of you can attempt this now.