The Art of Logic · Part 16 · Fallacies: the bridge to rhetoric · B2–C1
Fallacies of Language
Part 16 of The Art of Logic: some arguments fail not because the reasoning is wrong but because the words are slippery. Aristotle counted six ways in which language itself can deceive. Avoiding ambiguity (where to put a modifier, where to put a comma, which word to stress), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight we begin the fallacies: arguments that look valid and are not.
Yes, the four terms, the undistributed middle. Aristotle divided the fallacies into two families: those that come from language, and those that come from thought. Tonight, language.
In his book On Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle lists six fallacies that depend on words. Equivocation: one word used in two senses (Part 2). Amphiboly: a sentence whose grammar allows two meanings. Composition: arguing that what is true of the parts is true of the whole. Division: arguing that what is true of the whole is true of each part.
Accent: a change of stress or emphasis that changes the meaning. Figure of speech: being misled by the form of a word, as when someone thinks “inflammable” means “not flammable” because “in-” often means “not”. Sister Miriam Joseph adds that these are fallacies of grammar wearing the clothes of logic.
The best defence is the one this whole course has taught: ask what each word means, and how the sentence is built.
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