PROBLEM SET 2-ANSWER SHEET
TEXTBOOK (HURLEY, 13TH ED.):
Check the EXCERCISE
Section 3.1: # 2, #6, #8
2. Informal f1allacy
6. Formal fallacy
8. Informal fallacy
Section 3.2: #3, #6, #8, #11, #15, #18
3. Red herring. The issue is whether the schools are in need of repair. The arguer
changes the subject to whether the students spend too much time on their computers.
6. Argument against the person, abusive. The exercise assumes that philosophy consists
of arguments.
8. Straw man. The arguer distorts Senator Barrow’s argument (which is about Social
Security benefits) by making it appear that the argument promotes socialism.
11. No fallacy. The argument is deductively valid, and probably sound.
15. Accident
18. No fallacy. This is not an ad hominem. Ad hominem attempts to discredit an
argument. Höss has not made any argument.
Section 3.3: #3, #5, #11 #12, #14, #15
3. Appeal to unqualified authority. The stated experts are authorities in matters related to
physics—not psychic phenomena.
5. No fallacy
11. No fallacy. This is not an appeal to ignorance. The claim is not that some nameless
nobody has failed to prove something but that qualified experts have failed to find
something.
12. Slippery slope
14. Appeal to ignorance
15. False cause (non causa pro causa)
Section 3.4: #3, #9, #11, #21, #23
3. Equivocation (on “good”)
9. Suppressed evidence. The argument suppresses the fact that the trees are much larger
today than they were twenty years ago.
11. Complex question
21. Composition. There were only two atomic bombs dropped during World War II, but
hundreds of thousands of conventional bombs.
23. Amphiboly. What’s in the book, the errors or the warning?