All cats are selfish?

All cats are selfish?

The existential fallacy

November 24, 2016 article edited for an entry on academia.edu on January 8, 2023

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cat_hiding_in_the_sofa-700x560 anything.net 2016

PIRIE, MADSEN (2006)(2015) How To Win Every Argument, Bloomsbury, London.

Note

A formal fallacy is concerned with presenting a logical form to avoid being fallacious, and an informal fallacy occurs when there are errors in reasoning with a premise (s) and conclusion.

Existential Fallacy 

Logically fallacious website referencing...

GOODMAN, M. F. (1983) First Logic, University Press of America, USA.

Cited 

'Description: A formal logical fallacy, which is committed when a categorical syllogism employs two universal premises (“all”) to arrive at a particular (“some”) conclusion. In a valid categorical syllogism, if the two premises are universal, then the conclusion must be universal, as well. The reasoning behind this fallacy becomes clear when you use classes without any members, and the conclusion states that there are members of this class -- which is wrong.'

Cited

'Logical Form: 

All X are Y. 

All Z are X. 

Therefore, some Z are Y. '

Cited 

'Just because the conclusion might be true, does not mean the logic used to produce it, was valid.'

This website is discussing a formal fallacy as problematic. Pirie too documents this as a formal fallacy (219).

PIRIE, MADSEN (2006)(2015) How To Win Every Argument, Bloomsbury, London. 

It is a curious feature of logic that statements that refer to a whole of a class do not actually tell us whether there are members of that class.' (100).

'All cats are selfish.' (100).

Pirie explains that this documents that there are creatures known as cats. Being cats in themselves does not imply that they are selfish. (100). Rather the statement explains that some cats are selfish. It is a statement about a class and not necessarily each member of that class. (100).

It is a fallacy, according to Pirie to draw universal conclusions (100) in making that statement:

'All cats are selfish'. Rather, a more careful statement would be to state that some cats may demonstrate that they are selfish.

This fallacy brings me back to my United Kingdom academic training and the use of assertions versus arguments which would be premise (s) and conclusions. It would be a mere unproven, unsubstantiated assertion to state that 'All cats are selfish'. Instead a reasonable and sound argument is required.

This fallacy consists of placing something into a conclusion, which was not significantly offered as evidence in a premise (s). (100).

Admittedly, in academia, even in a PhD, at times assertions are used as each and every point in a dissertation cannot be argued in a limited space; but key ideas and points needs to be presented in valid argumentation.

Using the Langer text:

∃!=There exists
K=creatures
c=cats
$=selfishness

Below are more reasonable statements than 'All cats are selfish.' These are more reasonable assertions:

∃!=K (Creatures exist)
∃!=c (Cats exist)
∃!=$ (Selfishness exists)

Selfish creatures do exist, but not necessarily, universally cats.

BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

CONWAY DAVID A. AND RONALD MUNSON (1997) The Elements of Reasoning, Wadsworth Publishing Company, New York. 

GOODMAN, M. F. (1983) First Logic, University Press of America, USA. 

LANGER, SUSANNE K (1953)(1967) An Introduction to Symbolic Logic, Dover Publications, New York.

PAPINEAU, DAVID (Gen. Ed) (2016) Philosophy: Theories and Great Thinkers (2016), New York, Shelter Harbour Press.

PIRIE, MADSEN (2006)(2015) How To Win Every Argument, Bloomsbury, London.

SZUDEK, ANDY & TORSLEY, SARAH (2018) The Little Book of Philosophy, Landau Cecile (Ed), London, DK Publishing.

WALTON, DOUGLAS (1996) ‘Informal Fallacy’, in Robert Audi, (ed), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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