Non Sequiturs
A non sequitur happens when a conclusion does not follow logically from the premises used to support it. Our book gives us many examples of a non sequitur and here is one of them:
Premise: All men are mortal.
Premise: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: All men are Socrates.
In this case, the conclusion from the two given premises was not true because all men aren't Socrates because all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, but all men aren't Socrates.
False and Vague Premises
False and vague premises occur when the conclusion follows logically from the given premises but the premises are false, making the conclusion untrue. The example from the book is:
Premise: All people are Catholic.
Premise: My dog is a person.
Conclusion: My dog is Catholic.
In this case, the conclusion that followed the two premises was correct but it was still wrong because one of the premises was misleading or wrong.
Ad Hominem
An ad hominem is when somebody should be attacking a person's argument, but instead they attack a certain quality in the person which is not directly related to the argument itself. The example from our book is as follows:
Premise: William Bennett preaches the necessity of virtues.
Premise: William Bennett is rich, anti-gay, anti-choice, etc.
Conclusion: William Bennett is wrong.
Instead of being smart and pointing out a flaw in his argument, the person tells everybody his flaws to try to win them to their side with little effort. An example in our lives is when a SLUH student is arguing with a kid from Vianney about who the better NFL football team is. The kid from Vianney is giving good facts that would support his decision about the best NFL team and the SLUH kid says, "What would you know...you go to Vianney." I'm not saying that Vianney is a bad school but most people say that we are better than the other high schools. We used to have alot of cheers that would criticize other schools at one of our sporting events. An example of one of these that I remember is, "That's all right, That's OK, you're going to work for us someday.
Begging the Question
A person begs the question when he tries to demonstrate that a certain point is true, but in the process already assumes that his point is true. For example, "I believe God exists becasue He created us." In this statement, the person assumes that God exists by saying in the clause "because He created us".
Red Herrings
A red herring occurs when somebody is losing an argument and decides to say something inflammatory or beside-the-point in order to distract everyone from the real issue. If the person pulls it off he salvages his pride, but the truth is still not served. I was watching "That 70's Show" the other day and i witnessed a red herring. Jackie was confessing to Kelso that she cheated on him and kissed another guy and so to take his anger off of her, she said that his friend eric knew about it all along and did not tell him about it. Jackie was shifting the anger from her to Eric to distract Kelso from the issue that she cheated on him.