1.  TERMS & USEFUL IDEAS

 2.      FORMAL LOGIC

 3.      SCIENTIFIC & SOCIOLOGICAL

 4.      ARGUMENTS AND FALLACIES

1.  TERMS & USEFUL IDEAS

Propag   Propaganda--(from Latin after an organization established by Pope Gregory XV for propagating the faith)the dissemination of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an insti­tution, a cause, a religion, a belief, an idea or theory, a person, or group.  For those using propaganda the truth is only of secondary importance.  Propaganda often contains emotive language.

Emotiv   Emotive Language--statements which contain word or words which appeal to emotions: the use of evocative language; e.g. , bad instead of incorrect, bitch instead of woman, garbage instead of cheaply made, etc.

Advocacy--a brother of propaganda, often relying upon audience bias to arrive at a conclusion contrary to what the evidence and reason would justify.  Done by lawyers, politicians, priests, and like.

Bold statements--like emotive language is a red flag warning the audience to be cautious.  A classic example was professors Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmanns press release that they had discovered cold fusionthe claimed results would have violated quantum me­chanics.

Sophist--one who lacks the spirit of philosophy, who places success before truth and thus often relies in argument upon subtle, specious reasoning. 

Sophistry--specious reasoning.

Spirit of philosophy--(a phrase used by Plato) the love of truth and wisdom before all other things, and thus the use of logic and rational inquiry to arrive at the truth, as distinguished faith, and group thinking. 

Theology--the quasirational study attempting to arrive at justifications for mans belief about the gods and the ethereal, his religious practices, and his religious experiences.

Category mistake--a type of nonsense, to ascribe to a thing, concept, or re­lationship an attribute that is inappropriate, such as fast apple, hard anger, and  fastidious numbers.  Frequently found in existentialism and theology.

Deism--starting out assumed that there are gods, the application of philosophical inquiry to all other areas of theol­ogy and all other religious questions.

Skeptic--one who believes in each thing in proportion to the body of evidence in support thereof.

Faith--the affirmation of something as true and beyond dispute even though the evidence does not support that affirmation (Thomas Aquinas definition).  Among the common example are:  the divinity of Christ, the superiority of our political system, astrology, that retribution is morally right, abortion is a sin, and that the fetus has a soul.

True believer syndrome--the generalized faith phenomena: the inability of a person to critically evaluate a pet belief, but rather accept it has true and beyond refutation.  This occurs with all beliefs that are held with the tenacity of religious faith.  Common areas for such faith include astrology, psychic phenomena, Freudian analysis, holistic medicine, religion, and environmental and political causes. 

Semantics--the study of the relationships between words and meaning.  Also used to mean that the person has plucked the word or phrase from its meaning and given it new meaningwhich they shouldnt.  Christians for example use of the phrase one god.  What is Jesus?  Was Jesus in their Gospels praying to himself when he invoked the name of his father?  To call Jesus a manifestation of the one god is semantics.  Moreover, what are angels, archangels, saints, the holey spirit, and devils?  Are not demigods, gods?

Audience ignorance--a very common form of specious argument treads upon the fact that the audience will lack sufficient factual background to recognize the false premises.  Often a talk/paper given by a true believer to an audience of like, such as those who believe in UFOs, parapsychology, and special creation.  For example, though the results of the experiments in card reading done during the l940s by Reinhardt and his assistant have been dismissed as unreliable, his assistant was subsequently caught cheating and fired.  Moreover, Reinhardt was unable to duplicate those results.  Yet those results are still cited in articles supporting remote viewing. These articles rely upon the ignorance of the audience as to the fraud in obtaining those experimental results.

Audience bias--where the statements in a book, lecture, film, etc. are blatantly false, yet from the audience there is praise, as with creationism. 

GROUP THINKING--suspension of critical judgment when there is a conflict with the beliefs of the peer group (an example of conditioning being stronger than reason).  Such group can be as small as the family or friends, or as large as the Catholic Church and the nation.  The conclu­sion rests upon social environment rather than reason.  The phrase, group thinking, is often used to indicate spurious and wrong conclusion, one made without fair consideration of alternatives.  For example, few American in 1942 would have compared the Japan­ese conquest of the Philippines with U.S conquest following the close of the Spanish American War. Often the conclusion exists in spite of the evidence; such as the Gospels containing an his­torical account of Jesus.

Obfuscation through abstraction--a way of avoiding criticism by not being understood.  The use of generalizations, theories, and special definitions to lead the reader down a labyrinth.  Applied to certain schools of study, such a Freudian theory and Catholic theology.  The writer should attempt to avoid unnecessary abstractions.

Obscurism--the general failure to communicate because of (a) vagueness of meaning of key words or their usage, (b) jargonism, for which only a select few can understand, (c) the writers own confusion, (d) obfuscation through abstraction, (e) failure to delineate key terms.

Convenient numbers--the pulling of numbers out of the air to fit the ex­ample or proof.

Convenient conversation--in a historical or news reporting article or book, the invention of appropriate conversation. 

Convenient anecdote--in a historical or news reporting article or book, the invention of interesting or humorous incident.

Convenient facts--like anecdotes used to illustrate and like numbers support, when the pieces fit too perfectly, the critical reader will suspect invention, even when there are references, unless there has been peer review.

Trivial knowledge--knowledge, facts, statements that are pumped up as important, but signify little.

Subjective probability--remembering favorable or unfavorable events to support an assumption while failing to recall accurately the magnitude and frequency of those events contrary to the assumption:  a distortion of sample size.

Constant dollars--the adjusting in a comparison of costs for the fluct­uation of the dollar. This failure to adjust for this contra­vening variable in financial comparisons is so common that it merits a separate heading.

Fuzz--the failure to closely scrutinize the issue.  A common test of remote view by believers in this ability is so designed as to permit experimenter bias.  The viewer looks at a photograph of a scene and the subject in a separate room makes statements as to what he visualizes the viewer as seeing.  The experimenter than grades the closeness of the subjects statement to what the viewer observes.  The complex picture, the limitless umber of possible responses by the subject and the imprecise method of evaluation by the experimenter are the fuzz in this experiment.  The broadsweeping claims of Freudian theory have not been subject to rigorous testing by Freudian practitioners.  It is as though those who hold to unscientific beliefs know that their beliefs if rigorously tested by the methods of science will fail the test, and they dont want to fail. 

Story Theory--unscientific suppositions organized into theory which resemble stories, and therefore are embroiled in endless dis­putes. They have objective facts to support the theory; however, their conclusions go beyond the evidence.  One example is the Out-of-Africa theory of origins of modern man.  While the first wave of ape men came from Africa, fossil evidence for a second wave from Africa does not exists and the evidencebased on DNA diversity--can be read in several different ways, depending on which raced is considered oldest.  The story of Homo Erectus coming from Africa fails because there is similar fossil evidence to support him as developing also in Asia. 

Alternative Explanation--one proffered as a replacement for the standard explanation.  It offers a new way of accounting for observable, usually through the addition of new facts and theory.  Demons are an alternative explanation for disease.

Rhetoric--the use of language where style comes before content.  Also used (but not in this context) to mean the study of the elements of written style.  

Science--a branch of studies that is founded upon observations and classification, especially using mechanical and mathematical means of quantification, and also generates theories that are testable, and excludes the social behavior of man.  

Pseudoscience--a branch of studies purportedly forming a body of know­ledge by use of scientific methods and having general theories, but which in fact flagrantly violates those standards; a parasite upon the good name of science.  Examples of such are chiropractics, parapsychology, and naturalistic medicines and treat­ments.

Oversimplification--the stripping of a topic of an essential element(s) the result of which makes the analysis/explanation misleading, what then remains is as a consequence overstated.

Overstatement/verbosity--to be out of balance by assigning excessive significance to derived the desired conclusion.

 Menes--a unit of verbal behavior whose existence is explained by social phenomena rather than by logic--a type of mind virus.  (A term coined by sociologies within the last 10 years).  People, much like a traditional song (Row, Row Your Boat) have learnt certain packages of verbal behavior that are passed on to succeeding generations, such as to praise our democratic government.

Verbal behavior--the analysis of statements primarily by their behavioral vectors; used frequently to evaluate statements that are clearly false, including those of self-ascription.  The claim that his abuse of alcohol is because of pressures at work can be examined as verbal behavior based upon the responses (reinforcements) of his audience.  The same to for a person saying Jesus so loved mankind that he came to earth and died for the original sin of Adam and Eve.  Statements such as this exist not for their logic, but because of the reinforcers used upon the speaker. 

Mental filigree--the doodling of the analytic portion of the brain using an assortment of related facts, but never sufficiently organ­ized as be logically rigorous.  At best, such an­alysis can be on a topic of interest, contain many interesting facts, contain some insightful statements, and stimulate thought.  Much of the philosophical works of Fredrick Nitshze are examples.  At worst, it is a pointless quagmire of data mining, vagueness, triviality, overstatements, and assorted logical fallacies.

Market orientation--the process whereby the contents is dictated by the perceived audience response (including advertisers).  An example of chasing the dollar.  The slant given to an article based upon advertisers and the need to maintain a specific audience. 

Slovenliness (slovenness)--a comment upon the overall argument in which there is found fuzz, factual errors, selective reporting, straw man, false premises, statistical fallacies, emotive language, obscurism, and like.

 2.  FORMAL LOGIC

Proposition/statement--may be true or false.

Argument--a series of statements made to confirm or prop up a conclusion.

Premise--a proposition found within an argument as distinguished from the conclusion.

Inference--is a new proposition/statement derived--either validly or in­validly--from one or more prior propositions/statements.

Conclusion--final inference in an argument.

Deductive argument--is one in which the conclusion is contained in the premises.  For example, all women like sports; Tina is a woman; therefore, Tina likes sports.

Inductive argument--is one in which the premises provide support for the conclusion but does not contain the conclusion. For example, Tina, Barbara, Helen, Ruta, Connie, et al are wo­men.  They all like sports. Therefore, all women like sports.

Variable--capable of change; said of a feature, such as the attendance at operas varies according to education. Education is a variable to be considered when studying the background of people who attend the opera.

Constant--that which does not change within the parameters of the study.  If for example the ratio of men to woman remains nearly the same for education as to attendance at operas, that it would be a constant.  But if the ratio increased with income for men, then it would be a variable. 

Universality--the requirement that a principle/rule be applied in all similar situations.  The argument from claimed personal-divine revelation of a particular person would permit all such claims to be on an equal footing.  Limits could be set by arguing divine preference of the particular faith, of the clergy of that faith, of certain priests, and of certain content bounds.  If those arguments fail, then all revelations are on an equal footing.  Since they do, each faith has its set of sacred revelations, and there are those outside of faith, such as produced by channeling.  Universality opens the door for all divine revelations.

Necessary cause--a series of two or more events such that B will occur if and only if A occurs (A could be lightning and B thunder).

Sufficient cause--one in which A will follow B, or C, or D, or a combin­ation thereof.  B, C, and D are said to be sufficient causes.  A could stand for war in this century, & B would be the invasions of Poland, C the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, and D the failure of the South Vietnamese government to have the unification election as specified in the Geneva Accord. 

Contributing cause--one which by itself is not capable of producing A, but must occur in conjunction with other causes.  Mere reading the Old Testament is not sufficient to produce Jewish conversion; there must also be a belief in gods and gullibility.

False assumption--the very foundation of a theory is false of the pro­spective is incorrect.  Astrology has the false foundation of slight variations in gravity at birth as being determinate upon personality.  Freud had a fruitless perspective on the cause of neurosis, namely, an imbalance of the subconscious₀

Prima facie--in-philosophy, plain, clear, self-evident.  To stand be­fore other considerations, to be more important.

Tautology--redundancy, to state twice as when the meaning of the subject encompasses the predicate.  The patriotic soldier loves to serve his country.  In Logic, a statement that is true by virtue of its form:  Either it will snow tomorrow or it will not.

Analytic--relating to a truth, a proposition, or a statement that is true for all possible worlds; viz., true independently of facts, by reference to meaning alone, or is logically true or true by definition.

Synthetic--relating to a truth, a proposition, or a statement that is not necessarily true, but is determined by the facts:  President Buchanan was a bachelor.

Intuitionism--the reliance upon the gut reaction for determining what to oppose or support; and similarly for determining right or wrong in ethics.  It is the objection to or affirmation of an proposition, theory, or statement that is not based upon the logical analysis, but rather upon the existing personal prejudices; relied upon by people with little logic.

Teleological definition--from the Greek teleio meaning ends, in the sense of purpose.  The kidneys are for the removal of wastes from the blood.

3.                  SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIOLOGICAL

     Control group--a group selected for comparison; e.g., in a study of the effects of smoking, nurses that didnt smoke were the control group.

    Matching study--one where the control group is paired with the group being studied for listed contravening variables.  A 1980 study of over 35,000 veterans who smoked cigarettes was paired with a con­trol group for nine contravening variables, including alcohol, diet, blood pressure, and stress.

 Practitioner bias/Experimenter effect--a type of imperfect gathering of data by the one involved in generating the data.  Often done unintentionally due to a belief in the outcome.

Delibe    Deliberate bias--manipulating the data gathered in a study so as to arrive at the desired conclusion.  For example, Sidney Cohen (a well known antidrug researcher funded by the U.S. government) manipulated the control group so that his study demonstrated that LSD caused chromosome break­age.  He did this by dropping from the control group those whose chromosome breakage was attributed to coffee drinking or viral infec­tionnone were dropped from the LSD users.  This bias as to the selection of the control group was listed in a footnote of his study.  Moreover, the sampling size was 9 LSD users.  The results of the study made headlines reading LSD Causes Chromosome Breakage (another example of how unreliable a source of information the press is).  The testing of drugs for pharmaceutical companies is done with a purpose.   

Place  Placeboo effect--where a medication (such as sugar pill) or treatment known not to be in itself capable of causing a physical improvement is reported as so do.

Doubleblind study--A study in which the experimenter and subject remain ignorant of who is receiving the placebo and who the actually medicine.  This prevents the caregiver from inadvertently indicating to the subject whether he is being medicated or not.  Across a wide spectrum of treatments, there of those receiving a placebo, 30% will report significant improvement.  Furthermore, to avoid the placebo effect, the placebo must in essential ways mimic a medication.  Studies of Prozac, a mood-altering drug, have been criticized because of the inert placebo used. 

Contravening variable--a factor that has an impact upon the results of a statistical study because of being more (or less) present among the group studied than the control group.  In studying the health consequences from cigarette smoking, it was found that smokers were more likely to be heavy drinkers (a contravening var­iable).  And in the study of vegetarians, it was found that their increased length of life is for the main part attributed to their lower incidence of smoking and percentage of fat in their diet-- the significant contravening variables.

Sampl   Sampling size--the statistical significance (confidence) of a study increases with size.  For example, a study of LSD users showed that they had about twice the rate of spontaneous abortions as the gen­eral public; however, the sample was only 72 women.  One LSD user had 6 spontaneous abortions.  If she were dropped from the study, then the rates would be comparable.

Peer    Peer review--where a body of experts in the field review and edit articles submitted for publication.  This is done to assure that the article will not be slanted, and all speculative parts are clearly and accurately stated to be speculative, and often, conflicting evidence is developed within the article so that the reader comes away with a balanced view of the topic.

New results--They dont prove the old results or theory false, but rather in proportion to its certitude, it makes the old results less certain.  David Hume, the best of English philosophers, elo­quently stated this for when examining miracles: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force which remains after deducting the inferior.

Occams (Ockams) razor--If two ex­planations are offered that are both equally adequate, the simpler one is preferred.  After William of Occam, a 13th century theologian and philosopher who was burnt by the Church.  Keplers mathematical account of the motion of the planet Earth and the sun was simpler than Ptolemys mathematical account, where Ptolemy held that the sun traveled around the Earth.

Modus operandi--mode of operation; an explanation of how something happens, such as how muscles contract.  A purported causal relationship which lacks a plausible modus operandi is suspect. For example, how does the position of the planets and sun at the time of birth de­termine ones personalitythe explanation of gravity is not plausible, the gravitational pull of the nurse standing next to the neonate is greater than that of the moon.  The moons effect upon tides is visible because of the size of the body of water.  Moreover, is there a special section of the brain receptive to gravity? what evolutionary advantage would this confer? and why at birth?

Impossible standard--in a criticism, to make unreasonable demands.  For example, that there be a complete fossil record of the development of man from apesnearly complete does not suffice.  Moreover, the critic will rely upon audience ignorance as to how close to complete the fossil record is.  An example is to point at that Evolution is only a theory, and thus not proven.  Here they use the ordinary meaning of theory, as a thing that is tentative.  However, scientists have amassed such a large and varied body of evidence so as to amount to a proof.

Complex argument/analysis--one where a number of premises give support to a particular conclusion X, often inconclusively.  The form resem­bles that of econometric modeling but without the numerical quantification of each premise and factor, and just like in econometric modeling not all factors necessarily support the conclusion are listed, but the key one should be. 

Survey slanting:

Questionnaire bias--in the gathering of data through questioning of people, the question is slanted so as to favor a particular result, such as belief in God.  For example asking Do you believe that a God could exist rather than Do you believe that God exists. 

Method bias--defects in the sampling method which favor a particular result, such as having police officer give out and collect a questionnaire on drug usage. 

Comparison/sampling bias--where a variable of the study has changed yet the results are reported as the same.  The comparison to prior surveys where the questions are different.  If a current survey asks  Have you smoked marijuana in the last week? and its results are compared to a prior survey that asked Have you smoked mar­ijuana in the month year?  Or the groups differ, such as in one study doing it only at public schools and the next year at Parochial and public schools. 

Reporting bias--where the standards of reporting vary over time, for example; the number of police stations reporting crimes to the national agency gathering such data.

Participants lying--with certain issues, such as drug usages, homosexuality, and theft the participant is likely to lie.  In a Danish study of abortion in Demark, where the State provides it for free and keeps a tally, a phone survey revealed that fully 30% of the Catholics denied their abortion. 

Data mining--the technique for building predictive models (including the effects of drugs, diet, etc.) by searching for patterns.  The more variables included in the search by the computer the greater the chance to find an odd pattern.  The method is subject to abuse.  For example, it was found that there was in a few communities a high incidence of leukemia among those who lived within 100 yards of a high-tension power line.  For all communities, however, the average was within the norm.  Measure­ments of the Egyptian pyramids has been mined successfully for recurrent numbers supposedly indicating their knowledge of certain principles of mathematics and knowledge of astronomy. 

Evidence--the data upon which a conclusion or judgment is based.

Collecting Data--Much of science proceeds by first by co11ecting a body of facts, which are then later organized. The classic example of that is the work of Carolus Linnaeus (17071778), a Swedish naturalist who categorized plants by their flowering parts.  His taxonomy of plants and animals, based on Aristotles idea of essential features.  His work pro­vided the orderly groups which permitted Charles Darwin to recog­nize the plastic nature of class, order, genus, and species.

Experimentation--the artificial manipulation of variables to either see if it will produce a predicted result or simply to observe the effect of the manipulation.  A classic example of such experimentation is the bombardment of a target within a detector with high energy beta particles to both produce predicted and unsuspected subatomic particles.

Empirical law--based upon numerous observations (which can include those from experimentation) a relationship between two or more variables that is expressed as being lawlike.  Such law can be as mundane as the relationship of lightning to thunder or as arcane as BellS Exper­iment that shows the relationship between observer and results.  Light has both the properties of a particle and a wave which bizarrely is affected by the method of observation; it will appear as either a wave or particle. 

 Vector Argument--the summation of forces acting upon an object/person/group will have a particular unique outcome (result).

Scientific theory--a general theory--distinguished from empirical lawthat unifies the relationship between various empirical laws and predicts certain conditions.  They may be expressed essentially in mathematical terms, such as Quantum mechanics, or in observational terms, such as the theory of evolution. 

Hypotheticodeductive model--arises when a theory/proposition is set down and then a series of observations are made either to confirm or challenge the theory/proposition.  Popularized by Isaac Newton.