Monday, November 24, 2014

Logical Fallicies in the Ferguson Dilemma

The Ferguson situation currently hold a lot of logical fallacies on both opposing sides. This is extremely topical because the jury's verdict will be announced tonight and there is military presence in St. Louis area in anticipation of the results. The argument contains composition/division which is basically assuming that what is true about one part of something, is true for the whole thing. Also the controversy around military presence contains the fallacy of slippery slope.

Composition/Division: In the two overall sides of the argument we have overgeneralizing of black people being criminals/dangerous and all white police officers being racist. Although there are black criminals, there are also many many white criminals and the assumption that all black people mean harm is a dangerous generalization. Same goes for the opposing side, some police officers many abuse their power and let racist tendencies make decisions instead of unbiased reason-- but not all white officers work like this. 

Slippery Slope: When the military got involved it suggested that since there was a protest (a mostly peaceful one) it would turn violent. Having such a strong military presence suggested that there shouldn't be protesters because if they allow A to happen (protesting) then B would happen (violence) and there fore A should not be happening. 

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