The Fallacy of Nonsense Essay - 1906 Words

The Fallacy of Nonsense Lewis Carroll was a professor of logic, writing among his well known works of fiction, treatises on the subject of logic and even a textbook, Symbolic Logic. â€Å"It is the function of logic to classify and formulate fallacious forms of argument as well as valid ones.† (Burks 367) So is it some of the functions of Carroll’s tales of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Presenting different puzzles, riddles, or what appears to be on the surface nonsense, Carroll in these books present many questions of logic and indirectly their solutions, challenging the ability of the reader to believe what has been presented. All his nonsensical puzzles can be either proved or disproved using some†¦show more content†¦Carroll may have chosen to use this particular example to demonstrate a fallacy due to the fact that the reader already knows that Alice is not a serpent, leaving it to logic to prove why. Another fallacy is presented in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the mad tea party. On the two propositions â€Å"I say what I mean† and â€Å"I mean what I say,† (Carroll A/T 61) Alice concludes equivalence, applying the symbolic logic rule of conversion. Translated into a form which can be applied, the first proposition becomes â€Å"All I say is what I mean†, notated â€Å"All S is M†, by definition a universal proposition. The second, assumedly a conversion of the first, is translated â€Å"All I mean is what I say† and is notated â€Å"All M is S†, also a universal proposition. However, the conversion is invalid, because a universal proposition converts to a particular proposition. The valid conversion would be â€Å"All S is M† to â€Å"Some M is S†, or â€Å"Some of what I mean is what I say†, according to the symbolic rules of conversion. (Copi 194) Now it is clear that the two propositions are not necessarily equivalent, and the following propositions as stated by the Mad Hatter, â€Å"I see what I eat [and] I eat what I see,† the March Hare, â€Å"I like what I get [and] I get what I like,† and the Dormouse, â€Å"I breathe when I sleep [and] I sleep when I breathe† (Carroll A/T 61) are inferentially invalid, and allowedly so considering this demonstration of a fallacy. In her interview with Humpty Dumpty inShow MoreRelatedBarack Obama s Speech On The American Job Act869 Words   |  4 Pages In this essay I will demonstrate how Barack Obama used these five emotional fallacies; bandwagon, Confidence, repetition, the command and the manufactured problem, to persuade his audience in the speech about â€Å"Jobs† also known as the â€Å"American Job Act†. 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