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Is this a fallacy?Imagine there is a rulling to be made at the supreme court. Four vote no and five vote yes. The yes's win. Afterwards a newspaper singles out one of the yes's as the person who broke the tie. But let's assume that all votes were made at the same time and no one knew what the other person voted. No one knows who was the tie breaker. The notion of there being a tie breaker does not even make sense because all votes were made at once.
Here is another example. This happens to me often at coffee shops. I buy coffee for myself and a friend. I have a stamp card which I can turn in for a free drink. I tell my friend that the free drink is theirs and I paid for mine. This doesn't make any sense because either one could have been the free one. Is this a fallacy? |
| asked on Monday, May 13, 2019 01:30:15 AM by noblenutria@gmail.com | |
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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.
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No, and no.
In the first instance, it doesn’t matter when the vote was cast, or who made it. The fact of it being a tiebreaker could be made objectively at any time after the vote just by reviewing the record. The second situation is purely a subjective viewpoint perhaps even a tad manipulative, but it is not an error in reasoning . |
| answered on Monday, May 13, 2019 02:26:52 AM by mchasewalker |
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I see a slight difference in the two scenarios you present. In the first, it is a false statement with possible deliberate deception (trying to make of the justices look like a hero), since as you point out, there was no tiebreaker vote (definitionally). In the second, one was the free coffee, and you may or many not have specified which when you bought the coffee. I see no fallacy with either but I have more of a problem with the first scenario than the second.
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| answered on Monday, May 13, 2019 06:30:02 AM by Bo Bennett, PhD |
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