Looks like support

About this video

A coin can look like gold and still be fake, and you only find out by testing it. Reasons can be like that too. A fallacy is a common pattern of reasoning that seems to support a conclusion but doesn't. Two things make something a fallacy: it is a mistake in reasoning, and it is common and convincing, so people fall for it again and again. Because fallacies come back so often, logicians have given many of them names, and once you know a name you start to see the pattern everywhere.

This short animation draws a fallacy as an argument map whose arrow looks solid and then breaks: "The street is wet, so it rained." Then it lists the three fallacies the course has already met: going backwards (from a wet street to rain), a hasty generalisation (two rainy days, so it always rains here) and after, so because of (the rooster and the sunrise). Each is convincing for a reason, and each goes further than its reasons allow.

The most important thing about fallacies comes last. Finding one tells you that these reasons don't support the conclusion. It does not tell you the conclusion is false. Maybe it really did rain. So the right reply isn't "You're wrong!" but "That reason doesn't show it. Is there a better one?" This video goes with the What Is a Fallacy? lesson of Logic Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00A coin can look like gold, and still be fake.
2. 0:04A fallacy is a reason that seems to support a conclusion, but doesn't.
3. 0:11You've met three. Going backwards. Too few examples. After, so because of.
4. 0:18But a fallacy doesn't make the conclusion false. Maybe it did rain. The reason just doesn't show it.
5. 0:25So say, that reason doesn't show it. Is there a better one?