30 More Fallacies by LaBossiere Michael

Author:LaBossiere, Michael [LaBossiere, Michael]
Language: fra
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-15T22:00:00+00:00

The X in the form above can be many sorts of assessments, such as being a good idea, being of great significance, being a bad idea, being easily foreseeable, and so on.

This sort of reasoning is a fallacy because it is an error to infer that people in the past would (or should) see the events of their time from the perspective of those in their relative future. Obviously, the people in the past do not have the benefit of hindsight that those looking back possess.

It is not a fallacy to analyze past events from a present perspective, provided that the analysis is done in a way that attributes to those involved only the information they could reasonably be expected to have at the time. For example, suppose that Sally marries Bill and he seems fine until he becomes dangerously unstable. In this case, it would not be a fallacy to claim that it turned out to be a bad idea for Sally to marry Bill. It would be a fallacy to judge Sally as if she knew then what she only learned now. To use another example, if Sally did have adequate evidence that Bill was (or would become) dangerously unstable, then one would not commit this fallacy if one were to argue that she made a bad choice when she married him.

It also is not a fallacy to be critical of a person for what they reasonable should have known. For example, if Sally did not know about Bill being a psychopath because she married him a week after meeting him, it would be reasonable to argue that she made a poor choice in not getting to know more about him. This does not require having a perspective available only from the future and hence would not be fallacious.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.