> realize that the presence of an informal fallacy in an argument does not imply that the argument is either invalid or that the conclusion is false. To give two examples: ad hominems are frequently used in moral characterizations, and most moral analogies are functional strawmen by virtue of exposing the circumstances under which a particular claim is weakest.
I love this. I did a few extracurricular courses in philosophy in university (a rather broad "General Overview" and another course on Ethics in particular). Super interesting stuff. What I learned in Ethics is useful to me almost every day (more days than not, anyway).
One thing I took from these courses is that philosophy is not quite the scientific study of learning the Great Answers to The Great Questions. It's not even quite about learning the Great Answers proposed by historical Great Thinkers.
No, The Great Questions don't really have any single correct Great Answers to go with them.
Philosophy is about learning the counterarguments to any of the proposed Great Answers by Great Thinkers, recognizing their shapes in other proposed answers, cementing the Great Questions to stay questions (which might seem disingenuous, but is only when applied without rigour).
I like your post because it applies this idea on a meta-level to the field of philosophy concerned with fallacious arguments (Logic and Eristic dialectic, if I'm not mistaken)--you provide a counterargument to the dialectic strategy of pointing out a fallacy! Nice one :)
I love this. I did a few extracurricular courses in philosophy in university (a rather broad "General Overview" and another course on Ethics in particular). Super interesting stuff. What I learned in Ethics is useful to me almost every day (more days than not, anyway).
One thing I took from these courses is that philosophy is not quite the scientific study of learning the Great Answers to The Great Questions. It's not even quite about learning the Great Answers proposed by historical Great Thinkers.
No, The Great Questions don't really have any single correct Great Answers to go with them.
Philosophy is about learning the counterarguments to any of the proposed Great Answers by Great Thinkers, recognizing their shapes in other proposed answers, cementing the Great Questions to stay questions (which might seem disingenuous, but is only when applied without rigour).
I like your post because it applies this idea on a meta-level to the field of philosophy concerned with fallacious arguments (Logic and Eristic dialectic, if I'm not mistaken)--you provide a counterargument to the dialectic strategy of pointing out a fallacy! Nice one :)