I had my Philosophy and Reason test today. To be honest, I found the test extremely fun and enjoyable. As enjoyable as slamming your fingers in the car door (something which has happened to me before). Nevertheless, today’s test was about fallacies and we had to identify the fallacy and justify why it was one. Here’s one that was from The Simpson’s used in our test:
Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That’s spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Why thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work. It’s just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: I want to buy that rock, how much is it?
Naturally, I thought that this would be the fallacy of ignorance. This was because Lisa’s case could not be proved wrong therefore Homer believed it. I quickly changed my mind to the cum hoc fallacy. I justified it because of the fact that the presence of bear patrol does not necessarily mean that there will be no bears and it couldn’t be said that the presence of the bear patrol caused it.
Yehh…. The whole test was pretty much like this for every question. My problem is that I doubt myself too much when I write an answer to a question so it means I waste a lot of time on the fence trying to see which side I should take. Stuff like this makes me miss the 11th grade a lot more now because I did not have to worry about assignments nor tests as much (I used to say “Oh, it’s only grade 11 and it’s just a prep course for grade 12″) but now the pressure is on. D:
—– THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS ARE RANTS BECAUSE I’M ALL BITTER INSIDE LOL —–
First part is password protected. n__n
Firstly, majority of the class did badly on part 1 of their Philosophy tests and the teacher was considering letting us look at it today so we could make improvements to it. He changed his mind at the last minute because there was this girl who complained about how it was immoral and unfair for us to see our exam papers again. Seriously, just because you cannot make your paper better because you’re stupid or something does not mean you have to drag down everyone else as well. There are some students who felt pressured against time and did not manage to finish or think through what they wanted to write on the papers. Many students were happy and relieved that we would be able to make some small changes to our paper.
Secondly, there’s this guy at our school who keeps saying “I get to do my eulogy again”, “Time to go practice my eulogy”, “I need to edit my eulogy” and somethings to that effect. The story here is that he always manages to achieve high A5/4 (5 is the highest and 1 is the lowest at our school for the band you’re on: A, B, C, D and E) but when he presented his eulogy he got an A3. Now he’s getting the chance to redo his eulogy to achieve one grade point higher. I mean, it’s all good that he is getting that opportunity without asking for it; however, does he really need it? I mean, he’s getting the A already, what is one numeral higher going to do? Furthermore, by saying that you’re getting to do your eulogy again, you’re not really making many of us who are getting low A’s or high B’s any better. You should be happy with your mark and not sad that the one you received was undesired – I mean, seriously, we can swap marks anyday if you want. Essentially, what you’re doing is “selective updating” where at the teachers discretion you’re allowed to improve a mark when the teacher cannot distinguish whether to award a borderline student the higher or lower mark, but you do not satisfy the requirements for a selective update. Honestly, on what grounds do you have to redo your English assessment? Don’t say because the teacher offered, because that’s not a plausible reason – seriously, like I said, it’s good you get to improve your mark but keep it to yourself and don’t freaking go broadcasting it around the school. FFS ==”
—– END RANT —–
I’m going to start finding fallacies in all conversations now, so if I say your cum hoc’ing, committing a faulty analogy, hasty generalization, slothful induction, etc… I don’t mean to annoy. It’s just constructive criticism.
I have a headache right nowz, which I hope will go away because I’m going to the state library tomorrow to study and was really looking forward to it. LOL