Lit Review Two: Fallacy Boogaloo

This time we turn our attention towards, not an article, but a webpage. In particular, this webpage is meant to teach people logical fallacies that are commonly practiced. So let's take a look.

Who

The page was written and designed by David McCandess with help from Tatjana Dubovina on the design front. Marley Whiteside, Kathryn Ariel Kay, and Peter Ayres did the main research for the project.

What

Rhetological Fallacies: Errors and manipulations of rhetoric and logic thinking

When

The project was put up sometime in April, 2012.

Where

The page can be found here

Gist

Show a wide swath of different logical fallacies that are commonly committed in everyday life and examples of what they are.

The Good

- Wide variety of fallacies commented on

- Simple examples of said fallacies

- Split up into the different related types of fallacies

The Bad

- The page is fairly bland outside of the fallacies, which are just sort of listed

- There is nowhere to go to learn more directly on the page

- The simple examples can confuse some of the more complex fallacies like Sweeping Generalization

Questions

- Why were certain fallacies left off?

- Why choose to use this style to provide the information?

- Will the group continue to add to this document?

Final Thoughts

Things like this are important as is anything that raises public awareness and intelligence. The logical fallacies brought up are so common in basic discourse, it is hard to not commit one or two every once and a while. If we are aware of them though, it helps make us better in discerning when arguments aren't very good. All in all, a valiant project and one I greatly appreciate. 8/10 gavels