Question

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What is the fallacy in this book?

A book by a so-called scholar (actually a doctoral candidate) states that since an African-American woman in the 1950s has vague aches and pains that cannot be explained by medical science of the day, and since women in colonized parts of Africa experienced the same aches and pains, then this woman is "colonized."

Carrying the argument further, the article states that this woman shares being colonized and being driven mad by a male dominated society without this being taken into consideration as the cause of her being driven insane, and then institutionalized like another group of African-American women in North Africa under French colonization in the early to mid 1800s when the French were introducing a medical model on a population that believed in possession as the cause of mental illness.

I know that this is intuitively just "wrong-minded," but I just don't know the exact fallacies involved because its been 50 years since my course in logic!

Thanks,

Art
(C. Arthur Ellis, Jr., Ph.D.)
asked on Monday, May 18, 2015 07:56:59 PM by

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Answers

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Bo Bennett, PhD
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Hello Art,

The formula appears to be as follows: X (one particular woman) has the characteristic Y (aches and pains), and Y is part of the group Z (colonized), therefore, X is a member of group Z. First, I like to test with another example to demonstrate the fallaciousness:

Since Frank Sinatra (X) was a great dancer (Y), and since members of '90s boy bands (Z) are great dancers, then Frank Sinatra (X) was a member of a '90s boy band (Z).



The fallacy is in assuming necessity. Clearly, just because Sinatra can dance does not necessitate his membership into a group that comprises others who can dance. Likewise, because an African woman has aches and pains and colonized women have aches and pains, the African woman is not necessarily part of the group "colonized women".

In a more general sense, this is an example of the Extended Analogy, suggesting that two things, both analogous to a third thing are, therefore, analogous to each other. Both the African woman and colonization are analogous to aches and pains, therefore the African woman must be analogous to colonization (fallacious conclusion).
answered on Wednesday, May 20, 2015 06:25:59 AM by Bo Bennett, PhD

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