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The wax argument or the sheet of wax example is a thought experiment that René Descartes created in the second of his Meditations on First Philosophy. He devised it to analyze what properties are essential for bodies, show how uncertain our knowledge of the world is compared to our knowledge of our minds, and argue for rationalism .
Argument to moderation (false compromise, middle ground, fallacy of the mean, argumentum ad temperantiam) – assuming that a compromise between two positions is always correct. [ 16 ] Continuum fallacy (fallacy of the beard, line-drawing fallacy, sorites fallacy, fallacy of the heap, bald man fallacy, decision-point fallacy) – improperly ...
Shows that a sentence can be paradoxical even if it is not self-referring and does not use demonstratives or indexicals. Yablo's paradox: An ordered infinite sequence of sentences, each of which says that all following sentences are false. While constructed to avoid self-reference, there is no consensus whether it relies on self-reference or not.
[121] [122] For example, when a person runs out of drinking water in the middle of a hiking trip, they could employ the skills associated with logical reasoning to decide whether to boil and drink water from a stream that might contain dangerous microorganisms rather than break off the trip and hike back to the parking lot. This could include ...
Historically, begging the question refers to a fault in a dialectical argument in which the speaker assumes some premise that has not been demonstrated to be true. In modern usage, it has come to refer to an argument in which the premises assume the conclusion without supporting it. This makes it an example of circular reasoning. [1] [2]
A priori ('from the earlier') and a posteriori ('from the later') are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. A priori knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics, [i] tautologies and deduction from pure reason.
For example, if A. Plato was mortal, and B. Socrates was like Plato in other respects, then asserting that C. Socrates was mortal is an example of argument by analogy because the reasoning employed in it proceeds from a particular truth in a premise (Plato was mortal) to a similar particular truth in the conclusion, namely that Socrates was mortal.
Arguments from example may be difficult to recognize because they can look like mere illustration. [2] For example: Taxonomists use Latin words to classify various animals into such categories as kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.