Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32182236-20190721003717/@comment-32182236-20190925192909

Okay, now it's time for the THIRD part of this.

Yes, there's still some more primary fallacies.

For instance, there's illicit major and illicit minor.

Premise 1:All monsters have SOULs Premise 2:No humans are monsters Conclusion:No humans have SOULs.

...As you can see, this is also a case of denying the antecedent, if you look closely at the reasoning here.

And there's also the masked man fallacy. This is more distinct.

Premise 1:We know who Sans is Premise 2:We do NOT know who the River Person is. Conclusion:The River Person is not Sans.

Now, there might be other reasons to believe that Sans is not the River Person, but this argument is not one of them.

Now, at first glance, this might not seem like a fallacy. After all, if we replace "River Person" with Sans, we get a contradiction-So surely, "The River Person" CANNOT be the same as Sans, right?

But really, the mistake here is the amount of information we have on the subject. It's assuming that knowing what a thing is would be the same as knowing every single instance of that thing.

Let's imagine that there are only six monsters in the entire Underground:Sans, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Toriel, and Asgore.

In that case, we can conclude that the River Person must be one of those six.

Now, there are more than 600 monsters in the Underground (I've done the calculations and found a lower bound), but the same principal applies-River Person has to be somebody, after all. (Though it could be a monster we've never seen.)

We know who Sans is. We know who Papyrus is. We know who Undyne is. We know who Alphys is.. We know who Toriel is, and we know who Asgore is.

Using the fallacy, we can rule out ALL of them, meaning that the River Person both is and isn't any of those six, creating a contradiction.

But if you think about it, it's not that whoever the River Person is, we don't know. It's that we don't know WHICH monster is equivelant with the River Person.

Let's try another argument, shall we? Maybe this one should expose the problem for you better.

Premise 1:Everyone knows who Sans is Premise 2:The River Person is Sans Conclusions:Everyone knows who the River Person is.

Are you starting to see why this is fallacious?

And there are informal fallacies I'm missing as well.

I'm sure you're all aware that one should take into account ALL the evidence, and search for it, right? Evidence both supporting your view, and the evidence against it?

Did you want to know what's it's called when you DON'T do that? It's called confirmation bias.

Now it's time for another one:Composition fallacy!

Premise 1:Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen Premise 2:Hydrogen and oxygen are both gases at room temperature Conclusion:Therefore, water is a gas at room temperature

..Okay, this one wasn't Undertale-related. ...I wasn't able to think of a case here.

Anyways, the fallacy is assuming that if parts to a whole have certain properties, then that whole will have these same properties. This is not always the case.

And it's converse is the fallacy of division-The fallacy that if the whole has a certain set of properties, then so do all of the parts.

Then there's the false dillema (also known as false dichotomy). (I'd actually classify it as a factual error, aka false premise, but.. it's considered a fallacy for some reason. I guess it's because the idea is that the false premise isn't supposed to appear in the argument?)

Premise 1 (hidden):Either A is true, or B is true Premise 2:A is not true Premise 3:Therefore, B is true.

...Basically, premise 1 is wrong.

You see, sometimes, it's easy to stop at two possibilities. But before you say that something's true because the main alternative is gone, try and see if it's possible for there to be a third option. Or a fourth. Or a fifth.

...This will make MUCH more sense when we get into the burden of proof.