Chapter 1: Philosophy and You.  1.3: Thinking Philosophically

In our everyday lives, we accept many false arguments e.g. reasons for Iran/Israel fighting.  However, true philosophers believe that everyone should abide by the rules of logic at all times.  However, frequently a triumph of emotion over reason is used to convince us.  Critical reasoning should be taught in schools to help provide resistance against misinformation in social media. 

We enjoyed the fallacious reasoning section.  A logical fallacy is a faulty argument, not based on reasoning or logic, made on purpose or by mistake.  The Straw Man, the misrepresentation of a person's views, is used frequently by politicians.  Some felt that we need to label fallacies to identify them, others that it is sufficient just to recognise that an argument is fallacious.  Calling someone e.g. a "racist" or "left wing extremist" is used shame someone to close down an argument and not engage with it.  A fallacy not included in the book is the Appeal to Ridicule, where someone mocks an argument to make it seem absurd or laughable, rather than addressing it.  

We discussed the Employment Rights Bill which is currently in Parliament, which could have implications for philosophy groups meeting in pubs, as it plans to "Introduce an obligation on employers to not permit harassment of their employees by third parties".  "Harass” includes overheard remarks.  It was felt that warnings should be given to unruly pub goers and the test of the law will be in employment tribunal cases. In upholding and regulating free speech, how much responsibility do social media platforms have? 

It was felt that this quite challenging section of the book did its job and we will be better able to identify strong or weak arguments and common fallacies.  We will try to keep logical fallacies in mind at future meetings.