Monday, November 24, 2014

Logical Fallacy

In the show It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, there are many different examples of logical fallacies. In this scene "Science is a liar... Sometimes," Mac attempts to explain why his friends should believe in the bible rather than evolution. I think he uses the red herring logical fallacy because he tries to divert the crowd's attention away from evolution vs. the bible, and talk about how smart people are wrong sometimes. I wouldn't go as far as to say that he makes good points in his argument, but you could make an argument that what he is saying is actually helping his case. That is a stretch though. Mac and his gang of friends are relatively dumb compared to the rest of the world and so it is understandable as to how the argument that Mac makes changes their mind about evolution vs. creation. I am not saying that I believe in one thing or the other, just that the reasons that Mac gave would normally not persuade the audience.

Mac uses the red herring fallacy to draw the audiences attention away from what they were initially talking about. Instead, they start to talk about whether you can trust smart scientists to be credible. I think that in a normal court his arguments would not persuade a jury. In this show, however, the gang that he hangs out with is uneducated enough to take his drastic reasons and make them seem like good plausible reasons.

3 comments:

  1. I love the show, just started watching it again. I don't think hes using red herring, but there are signs of a faulty analogy.

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  2. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a great show and the logical fallacy is funny and is a great example.

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  3. Tommy I fully agree with you that this episode has examples of logical fallacies. I think it is essentially the basis for the episode, Reynolds v.Reynolds: The Cereal Defense, because the whole fake court is really just one logical fallacy after another. Wish I'd thought to do this!

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