Excellent post on an important topic. The problems of bias and defective reasoning are so rampant that it would be a great benefit to your readers (and their acquaintances) if you published a weekly or monthly article like this. Few people receive any rigorous training in correct reasoning, so beliefs are formed more often, I think, according to mere likes and dislikes, to thirsts and aversions.
It's btw that (2) looks like an example of the fallacy of denying the antecedent of a conditional proposition. It has the form
if a, then b;
not a;
therefore not b.
The wrongness of the conclusion can be illustrated by drawing concentric circles and labeling the inner one a and the outer, b.
(2) seems to formulated with unnecessary complexity. Instead:
"Judge Wilson believes that if a living thing is a person, then no one has the right to end its life. She also believes that a foetus is a person. Therefore, Judge Wilson concludes that no one has the right to end the life of a foetus."
So far as I can tell, this preserves the meaning. However, it also seems to me that the argument is logically valid, both in this formulation and the given one. Unless I'm missing some subtlety, e.g. that the opening statement identified a positive right to kill non-humans, but failed to articulate the premise that humans cannot be killed. Perhaps that's the point, but if so that's quite a tricky way to state it, which doesn't seem quite fair as the other 2 (only one of which I'm ideologically in favor of; I'm actually rather neutral on the second) are quite obviously logical.
Excellent post on an important topic. The problems of bias and defective reasoning are so rampant that it would be a great benefit to your readers (and their acquaintances) if you published a weekly or monthly article like this. Few people receive any rigorous training in correct reasoning, so beliefs are formed more often, I think, according to mere likes and dislikes, to thirsts and aversions.
It's btw that (2) looks like an example of the fallacy of denying the antecedent of a conditional proposition. It has the form
if a, then b;
not a;
therefore not b.
The wrongness of the conclusion can be illustrated by drawing concentric circles and labeling the inner one a and the outer, b.
People freak out about eugenics, which they assert is any sort of intentional breeding selection.
...And yet, they don't choose their partners entirely randomly, they're always quite particular. Go figure.
(2) seems to formulated with unnecessary complexity. Instead:
"Judge Wilson believes that if a living thing is a person, then no one has the right to end its life. She also believes that a foetus is a person. Therefore, Judge Wilson concludes that no one has the right to end the life of a foetus."
So far as I can tell, this preserves the meaning. However, it also seems to me that the argument is logically valid, both in this formulation and the given one. Unless I'm missing some subtlety, e.g. that the opening statement identified a positive right to kill non-humans, but failed to articulate the premise that humans cannot be killed. Perhaps that's the point, but if so that's quite a tricky way to state it, which doesn't seem quite fair as the other 2 (only one of which I'm ideologically in favor of; I'm actually rather neutral on the second) are quite obviously logical.