FOL-ly

We the Contributors, in order to avoid repeating ourselves, have created a section devoted to explicating the Fallacies of Logic into which all arguers fall from time to time.

The Declaration against Ignorance

When in the Course of human thought it becomes necessary for one group to deny any facts which could connect them to truth and to assume among the fantasies of religiosity, the separate and lesser cognition to which Religious Dogma and Claims of a God drive them, disrespect for the knowledge attained by mankind requires that they should deny the evidence which impels them to prevaricate.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans make errors, that they are endowed by evolution with certain unalienable propensities, that among these are Lies, Taking Liberties with Facts, and the creation of Mythologies.

...... with apologies to the Founding Fathers and to that sensible Englishman whose political philosophy they appropriated.

A Fallacy of Logic, or "FOL-ly", is, very generally, an error in reasoning. There are several very good websites that deal with fallacies.

The following fallacies, amongst many others, are commonly encountered in intelligent [sick] design theory and other peeve-topics on this website:
ɷ ad hominem
ɷ Argument from Ignorance
ɷ Argumentum ad antiquitatem
ɷ Argumentum ad nauseam
ɷ Argumentum ad numeram
ɷ Appeals to Emotion
ɷ Appeal to False Authority
ɷ Argumentum ad novitatem
ɷ Circular argument
ɷ Fallacy of Composition
ɷ Denial
ɷ Doublespeak
ɷ Fallacies of Association
ɷ Fallacy Fallacy
ɷ False Dichotomy
ɷ God of the Gaps
ɷ Irrelevance : ignoratio elenchi
ɷ Misleading Quotes
ɷ Red Herring
ɷ Shifting the Burden of Proof
ɷ Shifting Etymons
ɷ Slippery slope
ɷ Straw Man Fallacy
ɷ Sweeping generalization

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Empiricism

Empiricist philosophers take the position that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge. By contrast, rationalist philosophers make the claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience.[1]

David Hume : John Locke

Jean Piaget's research into the development of cognitive schemas provides empirical support for the empiricist position. Piaget's experiments demonstrated that children incorporate experience to generate a progressively more logical construct concerning the operation of reality. That is, during the development of cognitive rationality, experiential information is assimilated and accommodated in a progression through increasingly more accurate reality-representational stages.

1. Markie, Peter, "Rationalism vs. Empiricism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL.

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Hume

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish empiricist philosopher, economist, essayist, and historian. Hume is best remembered for "Humean skepticism". Hume considered philosophy to be the inductive, experimental science of human nature and considered himself chiefly as a moralist philosopher.

Hume built upon John Locke's epistemology and adapted the scientific method of Sir Isaac Newton as his model. He attempted to describe the operation of the mind in acquiring knowledge and concluded that there can be no knowledge of anything beyond experience. Hume raised the skeptical philosophical objection that inductive reasoning might fail whenever the past cannot be taken to be a reliable guide to the future.

"Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries." ~ David Hume, Letters

Websites : Hume: Empiricist Naturalism : Hume texts online : David Hume: Writings on Religion : Hume on Religion : quotes from Hume's writings : philosophical skepticism : Skepticism :

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) was a British empiricist philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher.

Locke is probably best known for his anti-authoritarian, humanist political philosophy, which inspired the American revolutionary ideology.

Locke's epistemology was partly a response to Descartes' insistence upon the rationalist supremacy of innate ideas. Locke countered with the concept of the tabula rasa – the mind as a blank slate that is writ upon by experience.

Links: Works by John Locke at Project Gutenberg : Free, full-text works by John Locke : John Locke Manuscripts : Essay Concerning Human Understanding : Second Treatise of Government : John Locke’s Theory of Knowledge : Locke SEP : John Locke Bibliography :

Quo Vadis?
...section index...