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I have an example which I think most people can understand: All texts are expressed via languages. Languages are man-made. Therefore, all texts are man-made. A religious person, a person who once was religious or a person who understands (one or more) religions will at once grasp the meaning of this
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This article (what with all it's logicianese) seems unnecessarily complex. In the simplest possible terms, is not the fallacy of the undistributed middle the mistake of failing to account for exceptions to the general premise of a syllogism, of which the minor premise is one such exception, leading
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It seemed like this article was lacking the simple answer to the question of what is a undistributed middle term. The pattern section has fancy graphics but only comes near an answer. I added the classical formulation section because it is the answer strictly speaking. I moved it to be the first
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fallacy; The Bible, for example, is believed, for some people, to not be man-made and they will thus grasp the context of the fallacy fairly quickly. Just a thought I had when I read this article.
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Does the example mentioning Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold seem verbose and even disconnected to anyone else? Further, isn't there a name other than "John Doe" that more appropriately fits there?
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As a side note, I have no knowledge on this topic. I found this article because a
Wikipedian pointed out a mistake I made while editing another article; my mistake was related to this topic.
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His mother, unhappy with the outcome, starts to cry. - To me (as a Dane), this is the obvious example of the fallacy. If someone not Danish likes it too, please add it to the article...--
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section because I think it is what people are looking for in this article. I would delete the
Pattern section but did not want to make too radical changes without some consultation.
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Is this correct? If so, I think it would be helpful for the reader to see these diagrams. I just made them in Google Keep, but somebody else could make them more beautiful.
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I agree that these graphics don't help. When trying to understand this, thinking in sets helped me a lot, and as such, Venn
Diagrams might help as an illustration. Take
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Knowledge. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the
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The general premise implied is: All two-legged things are ostriches. One overlooked exception (the second premise: a man) leads to the false conclusion.
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I think using a Venn diagram could clarify these examples by illustrating the first two statements. For the first example, it would be:
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It is hard to believe that this is still regarded as a fallacy for the reason stated: that the middle term is 'undistributed'.
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I'd have thought that Geach's writings on this subject would have laid this haory old logical error to rest by now.
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Is there an example of an undistributed middle fallacy that doesn't result in
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A stone cannot fly. Little mother cannot fly. Ergo, little mother is a stone.
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When it comes to witches, such errors don't count. It's a fair cop. ;-)
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I'm 13 years late, but if you have a citation, why not add it?
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Ostriches have two legs. I have two legs. I am an ostrich.
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It is mistaking a premise of the form "P implies Q" (
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