Identify and explain the fallacies of ambiguity

Question

• Exercise 3.1, passage A4

 Which of the various functions of language are exemplified by each of the following passages?

1)      Moving due south from the center of Detroit, the first foreign country one encounters is not Cuba, nor is it Honduras or Nicaragua or any other Latin American nation; it is Canada.

• Exercise 3.1, passage C10

For the following passages, indicate what propositions they may be intended toassert, if any; what overt actions they may be intended to cause, if any; and whatthey may be regarded as providing evidence for about the speaker, if anything.

1)  There are three classes of citizens. The first are the rich, who are indolent and yet always crave more. The second are the poor, who have nothing, are full of envy, hate the rich, and are easily led by demagogues. Between the two extremes lie those who make the state secure and uphold the laws.

 

• Exercise 3.2, pair 2

Identify the kinds of agreement or disagreement most probably exhibited by the following pair

a. Our country: in her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!

-Stephen Decatur, toast at a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, April 1816

b. Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.

-Carl Schurz, speech in the U.S. Senate, January 1872

• Exercise 3.4, exercise A

In summary, we have distinguished five ways in which definitions are used.

Thus any definition may be categorized in accordance with its principal function: Stipulative, Lexical, Precising, Theoretical and Persuasive

A. Find examples of definitions that function in each of the five ways distinguished

and explain, in each case, how the definition serves that purpose.

 

• Exercise 3.5, exercise C1 ("actor")

C. Define the following terms by example, enumerating three examples for

each term:

Actor

• Exercise 3.5, exercise E9 ("infant")

E. Give synonymous definitions for each of the following term:

Infant

• Exercise 3.6, exercise B4

B. Criticize the following in terms of the rules for definition by genus and difference.

After identifying the difficulty (or difficulties), state the rule (or rules) that are being violated. If the definition is either too narrow or too broad, explain why.

4) "Base" means that which serves as a base.

 

• Ch. 4 of Introduction to Logic

 

• Exercise 4.3, passage A2

A. Identify and explain the fallacies of relevance in the following passage

2) Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.

• Exercise 4.5, passage 2

Identify and explain any fallacies of defective induction or of presumption in the following passage

A national mailing soliciting funds, by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), included a survey in which questions were to be answered "yes" or "no." Two of the questions asked were these:

"Do you realize that the vast majority of painful animal experimentation has no relation at all to human survival or the elimination of disease?"

"Are you aware that product testing on animals does not keep unsafeproducts off the market?"

• Exercise 4.6, passage A1

A. Identify and explain the fallacies of ambiguity that appear in the following passage

1. . . . the universe is spherical in form . . . because all the constituent parts

of the universe, that is the sun, moon, and the planets, appear in this

form.

-Nicolaus Copernicus, The New Idea of the Universe, 1514