Fallacy Summary and Application Hasty generalization; Appeal to authority; and Common belief.

Essay by pike1181University, Bachelor'sA+, May 2005

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Fallacy Summary and Application

Every day, minute and second of our lives, we are relentlessly showered by information, information which we need and don't; some true and some false. Television and radio are some of the prime culprit (stoneforest.org, 2005). With the internet, things seem verging out of control, not to mention the nonstop rumbling of those around us such as our employers, friends and relatives. Almost all the time, the information which we receive is set in with arguments; the purpose is to get us to take a stance, suggest a response, make a decision and so forth. These are the reasons we buy shoes of a particular name brand? Why our governments believe more foreign talents are good for our country? Or even why the U.S. thinks that invading Iraq is justified

Logical fallacies are methods of argumentation or persuasion that, in simplest terms, look or sound good but do not stand up to critical analysis.

This paper describes three examples of logical fallacies:

Hasty generalization;

Appeal to authority; and

Common belief.

It defines these fallacies and shows how these fallacies were used at a past occupation of mine with XYZ Traders, Inc.

Hasty Generalization

According to the literature department of the San Jose State University, a hasty generalization is a fallacy in which there are an insufficient number of instances on which to base the generalization. People often commit hasty generalizations because they are bias or prejudice towards something (rdmac.org, 1995). In the year 2000, I was employed by XYZ Traders, Inc.; an import/export company based in Houston Texas. XYZ was a good company to work for; they had good management, great work environment, and all the software and hardware needed for the company to run efficiently. However, there was no growth in the company, or the...