Showing posts with label Fallacy: Scope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fallacy: Scope. Show all posts

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Scope

The scope fallacy is caused by improperly changing or misrepresenting the scope of a phrase.

Example:

Every concerned citizen who believes that someone living in the US is a terrorist should make a report to the authorities. But Shelley told me herself that she believes there are terrorists living in the US, yet she hasn't made any reports. So, she must not be a concerned citizen.
The first sentence has ambiguous scope. It was probably originally meant in this sense: Every concerned citizen who believes (of someone that this person is living in the US and is a terrorist) should make a report to the authorities. But the speaker is clearly taking the sentence in its other, less plausible sense: Every concerned citizen who believes (that there is someone or other living in the US who is a terrorist) should make a report to the authorities. Scope fallacies usually are amphibolies.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Every and All

The fallacy of every and all turns on errors due to the order or scope of the quantifiers "every" and "all" and "any." This is a version of the scope fallacy.

Example:

Every action of ours has some final end. So, there is some common final end to all our actions.
In proposing this fallacious argument, Aristotle believed the common end is the supreme good, so he had a rather optimistic outlook on the direction of history.

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