Logical Fallacies & Fantasy Politics

Phil & Matt talk about cooking. Matt tells us his secret ingredient to making a killer bechamel sauce and Phil gives us his take on sweet n’spicy BBQ chicken and homemade turkey stock. Warning: this intro will make you hungry! Admittedly, it was a meat heavy conversation. Phil’s pasta sauce can be made vegan, which is how he normally likes it.   

Logical Fallacies & Fantasy Politics (15:09)

Mel settles in to talk about logical fallacies, truth tables & syllogisms. Matt & Phil find out that they could either be a podcast, be on the internet or are the internet. It got a bit confusing to the non-initiated, but Mel does a good job at walking us through the details of logically sound v.s. empirically false arguments. Our baseball team fandom differences are put aside as we go off the rocker and talk fantasy fiction and politics in the era of Trump. Mel brings up The West Wing episode titled Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc as we go down the rabbit hole on this one. Aye yai yai! Mel’s favorite fallacy is Ad hominem (Tu quoque), which is the “you too” argument. Matt goes meta on us, Phil wants to see more civility in arguments and Mel simmers us down, bringing the conversation back on point. We make connections around emotions, oratory and politics, revealing the shortcomings and limits of truth tables and logical expressions.

Mel makes a strong argument that all undergraduates should take a course in philosophy to hone critical reasoning and argumentation skills. Stronger writing will result. Matt & Phil couldn’t agree more, especially in the current political climate.

We end on a connection between works of fiction and logic. Phil asks how logic can operate in a fantasy world. Mel sheds light on how the world building that is done in fantasy (and high fantasy) needs to create the conditions for logical arguments, while not being factually or empirically true according to our earthly world. Sarah J. Maas’s ‘Throne of Glass’ series is an excellent example of this, according to Mel. Phil realizes that Plato and Aristotle had creativity and the arts in mind the whole time.

Mel’s tips: find a passion, discuss a counter point, debate openly and follow a sound structure. This, especially in writing and arguing, is a good thing. Trust us.

Links

• Purdue OWL has a good primer on fallacies: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/
• “Brief” description from Stanford on Syllogisms: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/#SubLogSyl
• There is so much about truth tables on so many places. This Wikibooks page is the most succinct, if you accept that: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Sentential_Logic/Truth_Tables

Recommendations (1:07:43)

• Delhi2Dublin, the song we played was Apples (They’re Canadian too, ey!): http://www.delhi2dublin.com/
• Riverdale, a show based on the Archie comics that Mel loved as a youngin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverdale_(2017_TV_series)
• Sarah J. Maas’s ‘Throne of Glass’ series: http://sarahjmaas.com/throneofglass/
• Girl Guides Canada: https://www.girlguides.ca/web/
• International Organizations: https://www.wagggs.org/en/
• Bath & Body Works lotion: http://www.bathandbodyworks.com/p/eucalyptus-tea-body-lotion-021720066.html

Concluding thought: Slippery slopes are greased with logical fallacies.

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Music: Song "Soul Challenger" appearing on "Cullahnary School" by Cullah

Available at: http://www.cullah.com

Under CC BY SA license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/