Critical Thinking (Understanding of Fallacies)
Part I
The home environment can be daunting sometimes to those who live and interact with each other in them. For my case, I have experienced some implications of errors of logical fallacies, which has somehow impacted the relationships I have with those around me. Communicating about the errors that have affected my relationships influences me to categorize them into many components. In this case, much of the errors have been occurring in the relationship I have with my parents. I come from an environment whereby my parents are highly traditional in their thinking and behavioural traits.
To start with, the fallacy of red herring has always applied to my life, mostly when it comes to my parents having to use irrelevant information to distract me from the argument. Concerning this, my parents have always thought of making things seem worse in other regions to convince/force me to do something they want me to. Hence, while I was growing up, my parents used to refer to Africa as a den of hunger and poverty. According to their stories, people in Africa starved to death, and their reference focused on children and teenagers. My mother always made me eat by reminding me that children in Africa were starving and that I should not be playing with my food. They did so to force me to finish my meals.
The second category comprises the slippery slope. In this category, I focus on the extreme nature of my parents when it comes to reacting towards some situations that revolve around their reactions. As christens, my parents were always about being upright in action. They constantly preached about individuals, and mostly our family living uprightly. The word of God has always been seen as a foundation of doing the right time at all times. For them, the wrong action undertaken by individuals would lead to sin and ultimately end in hell to burn in Sulphur and brimstone. Therefore, my parents were careful with my dating life. They have always tried as much as possible to convince me that I should wait for marriage. There is this time when I wanted to go out with my girlfriend from our neighbourhood for a date. My father was stern about the whole issue. He frankly told my mother that if they let me go on this date, the next thing would be marriage and babies coming around. Despite the serious look on my parents, I was astonished about their extreme thinking about the issue.
The third category comprises of the straw man fallacy. With this, it was more political for my father than anything else he thought about in his life. This was the beginning of 2017 after the swearing-in of President Donald Trump. Since he was anti-Trump, he did not have anything better to think about the man. He always misbranded him everywhere, including our family meal sessions. He argued about points that had not initially existed despite him refuting the original point that many people made. According to most of his arguments, one was repetitive, which made me feel annoyed despite not being political. My father suggested that President Trump does not care about the middle-class Americans since he comes from the upper echelon in the country. Despite him failing to have evidence about his perception, he always convinced himself that it was true.
The fourth categorization of the logical fallacy includes sweeping generalizations. An application of a very broad to a single premise leads to a sweeping generalization. I have grown up in an environment that has always generalized that the United States has one of the highest divorce rates in the world. According to generalizations, most members of the younger generation, including me, somehow fear getting married. The main reason is that most of them believe that they may only have a 50% chance of survival in marriages. Hence, the younger generation is somehow trying their best not to get married.
Part II
As reiterated in the first part of the assignment, there are different categorizations of fallacies that are applicable in our daily lives. The first fallacy includes the fallacy of red herring (Herring, 2015). The fallacy is only meant to distract individuals using information that seems to be the truth but lacks facts. The fallacy of red herring may prevent individuals in the workplace from doing something because they think doing otherwise would somehow lead to an unwanted outcome. An example may comprise of an example provided to employees that failure to learn about a skill would make another organization better than yours. However, this is not always true, considering that the professional environment has a considerable number of individuals. These individuals have unique skill sets that may replace the one that the person of interest should learn about to promote improvements in the professional environment. The skill of a single individual may be replaced by collaborative developmental frameworks that are instrumental in changing the environment. Hence, the aspect of dealing with such a fallacy entails individuals taking a critical step to unearth facts concerning the involved issue.
Secondly, the fallacy of slippery slope is another serious error in the social and professional lives of individuals. Individuals may be forced to live in constant fear because of the beliefs that their actions may attract negative and damning consequences (Mercier, Boudry, Paglieri, & Trouche, 2017). An example may comprise a person deciding to live his employment position for a venture to start a business. The person believes that business development will be the only power to securing his pockets. The bosses may come to the individual and remind them of the dangerous path they are leading. The bosses may argue that he has good skills that he is wasting by leaving a good position in place of oblivious business decisions. Listening to the bosses may mean failure in the new venture. For the bosses, leaving the organization means signing into failure, which is mandatory as per the forced implications of the decision. However, one has to be convinced that nothing is perfect. However, trusting in one’s intuition means bringing positive energy in the dream of starting a new business. People who give up on things they consider better for dreams should be able to focus on ensuring that they remain strong and diligent. People should not live in fear of their worries and dreams.
For the Straw Man fallacy, going against the truth of facts may influence individuals to miss out on the point and feel stupid. One needs to have facts before coming up with a statement regarding a situation. People have always been conned because of believing in something that may not be the truth. An example includes a person who wants want to buy a phone. Such a person listens to two different opinions from salespersons with two different phones with unique quality backgrounds. The first salesperson has a phone from China that is of high quality compared to the second one with a phone from the United States. Since the customer has this thinking that Chinese products are counterfeits, he may ignore the first salesman. In such a situation, purchasing a second phone may create significant problems than the first. However, for such a situation, preventive mechanisms may include an aspect of looking into the phone, researching over the internet, and taking time to evaluate the features before the purchase. The aspect of having the right information regarding a product is important in influencing the right choices.
The logical fallacy of generalization should be eliminated through dealing with assumptions and asking questions about the issues of interest. People will always doubt issues such as successful marriages because of the wrong data that is based on a few people’s lives existing in mainstream media. The fallacy needs to acquire more substantial data from the concept of research and developments. Individuals experiencing shortcomings due to fallacy of generalization may make bad decisions like giving up on something that may have influenced positivity in their lives. Still, convincing and unreal facts may influence them to ignore continuing with the situation. It is important to confront the truth about facts before making a decision.
References
Herring, M. Y. (2015). Little Red Herrings: Charlie Hebdo and the Moral Equivalence Fallacy. Against the Grain, 27(1), 39. Retrieved from https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7021&context=atg
Mercier, H., Boudry, M., Paglieri, F., & Trouche, E. (2017). Natural-born arguers: Teaching how to make the best of our reasoning abilities. Educational Psychologist, 52(1), 1-16. Retrieved from https://www.newcastle.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/456690/Natural-Born-Arguers-Teaching-How-to-Make-the-Best-of-Our-Reasoning-Abilities.pdf