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As you start to list properties that the animal lacks to justify eating them, you begin to realize that some humans also lack those properties, yet we don’t eat those humans. Is this logical proof that killing and eating animals for food is immoral? Don’t put away your steak knife just yet.
In Eat Meat… Or Don’t, we examine the moral arguments for and against eating meat with both philosophical and scientific rigor. This book is not about pushing some ideological agenda; it’s ultimately a book about critical thinking.
* This is for the author's bookstore only. Applies to autographed hardcover, audiobook, and ebook.
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In my view the OP poses a perfectly good question, though this is masked by the responses I’ve seen from this Forum to date, all of which seemed unable to correctly assess the relevant issue.
The issue at hand is one of Logical Grouping, i.e., whether objective criteria apply to such grouping, and if they do, what constraints on such criteria (if any) exist and whether violation of such constraints constitute a logical fallacy. The OP’s statement: “There is a cultural club alliance in our university. There are sports clubs, social clubs, debating clubs, id est, clubs those are not considered 'cultural' (singing, dancing etc), in the alliance too. So, when asked about the validation of alliance membership of those clubs, the replied logic is: Sports is a part of 'our culture', so is debating, blood donation etc.” The OP goes on to question whether some of the ‘clubs’ belong in the alliance (i.e., with others that implicitly do belong) and whether lumping these clubs in with the others may somehow be logically fallacious. Most of us probably recall early childhood ‘grouping’ questions, where you are asked to look at pictures of e.g., a dog, cat, bear, mouse and a fish and select ‘the one that doesn’t belong.’ The widely-accepted correct answer, ‘fish’ reflects the consensus that this set of creatures, unlike the others, is GENERALLY cold-blooded, live/swim in the water, breathes through gills, and has fins for limbs. However, there are numerous exceptions. ‘Lungfish’ breath air without requiring conventional gills. The ‘Opah’ fish is warm blooded. (It can consistently keep its entire body around 5 degrees Celsius warmer than its environment.) There exists a host of ‘fish’ that also exhibit ‘walking’ characteristics and some can exist out of water for days. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal. . . So, what’s the point, you’re probably asking? The point is that widely-accepted ‘Grouping’ norms need not contain the precision or exactitude for logical fallacies to apply to perceived exceptions, or deviations. I would argue this club/alliance ‘Grouping’ issue is related to, and possibly an example of INDUCTIVE REASONING (IR). IR “is reasoning in which the premise(s) are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a DEDUCTIVE argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is probable, based upon the evidence/criteria given.” IR arguments are thus uncertain and are often judged as strong or weak, depending on the assessed probability of the conclusion being true. Full Circle: ‘CULTURE’ (club) is a extremely broad descriptor. The implied ‘Premise’ is that clubs comprising this Alliance share the common denominator of comprising or contributing in some way to the ‘Culture’ of club members (or perhaps to University Culture or even to ‘Culture’ generally.) The ‘Conclusion’ is that Club X meets these criteria and belongs in the alliance. Without further refinement, this can easily be validated to include most all of the clubs the OP listed (sports, social, debating, singing, dancing, etc.). I have a harder time accepting “Blood Donation” constituting a ‘Culture’ club (except perhaps for Transylvanian transfer students) but even this must be allowed under Inductive Reasoning-type inexactitude. Thus, given the broadness of the solely-listed Premise/criteria, Culture, IMOP no logical fallacy applies to mentioned clubs admitted to the alliance. |
answered on Monday, Jan 09, 2017 01:01:03 AM by modelerr |
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