Critical Thinking—Project
Project will be to find TEN examples of fallacies from a real life sources (newspapers, magazines, nonfiction books, political speeches and interviews, political magazines)—NOT OTHER LOGIC TEXTS,
NOR WEBSITES DEVOTED TO ADS OR FALLACIES. They can be the same type of fallacy, or
different. You can look for any of the fallacies discussed in the course. For each, write it up (must be typed):
label it, and explain why it’s a fallacy.
Project is worth 100 points
Go to the library or on the internet, and find a debate, interview, article or speech by any political figure,
on any serious topic, and in any venue. Or find advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Or go to the
letters to the editor. Or look at a contract (say, for an insurance policy or auto loan).
The fallacies can be any discussed in class.
Photocopy or print it. Tape it to your paper describing the fallacies, WITH THE RELEVANT PASSAGE
HIGHLIGHTED. (I don’t want to have to read a twenty page speech to find what you are alluding to!)
Number those passages as you label them.
Online, you can search under “political speeches;” you can visit websites that print newspaper columns;
you can visit e-magazines such as Salon.Com or FrontPageMagazine.com; you can visit the websites for
interview programs such as “Meet the Press,” “Charlie Rose,” etc. BUT AGAIN, NO ON-LINE ADS OR
STUFF FROM FALLACIES WEBSITES.
At the library, you can look at anthologies of political columns or articles by author (Paul Krugman,
George Will, etc.); you can get present or past copies of opinion magazines (NY Review of Books; National
Review; the Nation; The Progressive; The American Conservative and a million others).
Do not select any of my writings, because you would then possibly suspect my grading. Also, it would be
too easy to just pull stuff off my website.
In any political debate, remember that it is not necessarily attacking the person if one debater criticizes
his/her opponent’s record…that can be legitimate, relevant reason for the audience to not support the
person—it depends on how it’s done.
Pick a recent specimen, from our political system or (if you are not a native student) the political system
with which you are most familiar. However, if you pick a period or figure or system with which you are
unfamiliar, you may find it hard if not impossible to identify the unspoken premises that the audience
would recognize and accept, so you might see fallacies where there are none.
Be careful not to select someone you dislike to analyze, because you may start arguing with the
claims that political figure makes rather than any errors in reasoning they commit.
Remember the difference between arguing and stating. If someone says, “Bald men are evil,” for
example, but just asserts it in passing, there is no argument hence NO FALLACY. Remember,
“fallacy” means a mistake in reasoning, not a mistaken belief.