Fallacy Summary and Application

Running head: FALLACY SUMMARY AND APPLICATION

Fallacy Summary and Application

Pablo Mejia

University of Phoenix

Rob Inglis

January 25, 2012

Fallacy Summary and Application

Disagreement and arguments are common in the workplace. Management should be able to listen to both sides of the argument, and understanding fallacies management can determine and be able to separate facts and opinion. Fallacies are used to put judgments, opinions and facts to the one side. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, fallacy is defined as kind of error in reasoning. However, fallacies have been studied since the times of Aristotle.

Aristotle listed thirteen different types of fallacies, and after the Dark Ages, fallacies were studied again in Medieval Europe and is one of the reasons that many of the fallacies have Latin names. The most recent period of time when fallacies where studied was late 20th century to the present. Thanks to modern business that has interest from the disciplines of philosophy, communication studies, psychology and many different filled of study; and in this paper will look at a few of the fallacies, because trying to write about all of them would make this a book and not a paper. However, deciding what fallacies to use was not an easy choice, but being a business student the decision is clear.

The Appeal to Authority, at the workplace and in advertisement of the same company; the appeal to authority does not have the same meaning, for example, John Elway’s car dealership, he claims that at his dealership there is a “NO HASSLE POLICY”, but it does not mean that all dealerships should do the same. The “NO HASSLE” policy was set up for the customers benefit so they can come to John Elway’s dealership and the customer won’t be bothered by a salesman. However, if one of the salesman took one of the showroom cars and ran it into another car it does not mean that salesman is not going to be hassled by the manger or the owner. This scenario can be seen as a fallacy, but let’s take a look at the first fallacy.

Ad ignorantium otherwise Appeal to Ignorance; the definition to this is according to Wikipedia.com fallacy is informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is "generally accepted", and Philosophy.lander.edu has the same definition. What it means is that in business situations an argument can be made that a loss to the business cannot happen or problems cannot arise is like saying that