Sunday, November 29, 2009
Logic & Fallacies in "Arrested Development"
In “Arrested Development” by James Forman, I noticed several fallacies in logic. The target audience is conservatives, given by the first sentence. This could throw off the reader as to what the article is about, especially if the reader does not agree with this certain ideology. A conservative reader might not agree with the writer’s viewpoint on conservatism either; perhaps the description is flawed. The reader can also discover a possible bias in the article, because the writer happens to work at the school he is defending; it is obvious that he will be on its side. A few statistics are used without citations, which can be thrown out and claimed unbelievable. Later on the article cited statistics are used, and one stood out from the others as odd. From The New York Times, blacks are shown to be more frequently pulled over than other races. This is just by chance, not racial profiling. Drugs or breaking the law were not even involved, but the writer makes the situation seem more prominent to the topic of the article. This quotation stuck out to me: “conservatives are wrong.” Not only does that shut down the conservative audience, but it also mislabels the liberal and conservative ideologies to fit those of the writer. Lastly, rhetorical questions are used towards the end of the article to give the reader some thought as to how this problem can be fixed. Overall, this article established its point, but with fallacies and logical errors was not very persuading.
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