Monday, February 28, 2005

So you think learning logic is boring?

Maybe you have the wrong teacher. Try learning from Beavis and Butthead.

Learn Logic with Beavis and Butthead!

A work in progress, where our two friends exemplify logical fallacies, types of causation and other cool stuff. Quotations are from memory, and so may not be entirely accurate, e.g. I may have substituted "buttmunch" for "buttknocker"....

Circular definition

This is where you include the concept you are defining in the definition of that concept.

Butthead: Shut up, bunghole!
Beavis : What's a bunghole?
Butthead: A bunghole is what you are, bunghole!

Fallacy of Accident

Assuming that a generalisation will hold in every case.

Butthead: They must be cool, they're from Seattle.
Converse Fallacy of Accident(?)

Making a generalisation from insufficient evidence.

Storekeeper: Hello, Maximart. We've got a robbery in progress
Police : Are they armed?
Storekeeper: Er...of course they're armed. Aren't all kids armed?

Equivocation

Equivocation means many things, but is often taken to mean using a word in a different sense to that which was intended. In fact the word "equivocation" is pretty equivocal.

(Beavis, under the influence of a music video, is "dancing" on the sofa.)

Butthead: Get down, Beavis!
Beavis : I am getting down!

Circular causation

A chicken and egg situation. Not always the result of faulty logic, of course - life is often like that, as Butthead demonstrates here....

Beavis : How come Tom Petty's on TV?
Butthead: Coz he's famous, dumbass.
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's famous?
Butthead: Coz he's on TV, buttmunch!
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's on TV?

and so on....

Beavis on the philosophy of language

Words suck.

2 comments:

David said...

So it may seem that logic is something important for almost any situation in life. Maybe the purpose of this series is to teach the true importance of logic, or just "entertain" people

Dave said...

If it is not the purpose of this series to teach the true importance of logic, then it is just to entertain people.

-or-

It is not the case that it is not the purpose of this series to teach the true importance of logic and not just to entertain people.

-or-

If it is not to entertain people, then it is the purpose to teach the true importance of logic.