Chapter 5 Answers - Faulty Reasonings

Exercises Not Answered in the Text Exercise 5-1 1. Those that have irrelevant premises and those that have unacceptable premises. 2. The fallacy of arguing that a claim is true or false solely because of its origin. 3. Yes 5. Arguing that what is true of the whole must be true of the parts, and arguing that what is true of a group is true of individuals in the group. 6. Appeals to the person are fallacious because they attempt to discredit a claim by appealing to something that’s almost always irrelevant to it: A person’s character, motives, or personal circumstances. 7. Tu quoque 8. The fallacy of insisting that someone has no regard for the truth or has nonrational motives for espousing a claim and therefore nothing that he or she says should be believed, including the claim in question. 9. The fallacy of using a word in two different senses in an argument. 11. The fallacy of arguing that a claim must be true just because it’s part of a tradition. 12. One form says that a claim must be true because it hasn’t been shown to be false, and another form says that a claim must be false because it hasn’t been proved to be true. 13. In general, if the claimant makes an unsupported positive claim, he or she must provide evidence for it if the claim is to be accepted. If you doubt the claim, you are under no obligation to prove it wrong. You need not—and should not— accept it without good reasons (which the claimant should provide). Of course, you also should not reject the claim without good reasons. If the claimant does