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A counterargument might seek to cast doubt on facts of one or more of the first argument's premises, to show that the first argument's contention does not follow from its premises in a valid manner, or the counterargument might pay little attention to the premises and common structure of the first argument and simply attempt to demonstrate that ...
Moravec's paradox: Logical thought is hard for humans and easy for computers, but picking a screw from a box of screws is an unsolved problem. Movement paradox: In transformational linguistics, there are pairs of sentences in which the sentence without movement is ungrammatical while the sentence with movement is not.
For example, in Plato's Gorgias, Callicles, trying to define what it means to say that some people are "better" than others, claims that those who are stronger are better. Socrates replies that, because of their strength of numbers, the class of common rabble is stronger than the propertied class of nobles, even though the masses are prima ...
Red herring – introducing a second argument in response to the first argument that is irrelevant and draws attention away from the original topic (e.g.: saying "If you want to complain about the dishes I leave in the sink, what about the dirty clothes you leave in the bathroom?"). [72] In jury trial, it is known as a Chewbacca defense.
More broadly, proof by contradiction is any form of argument that establishes a statement by arriving at a contradiction, even when the initial assumption is not the negation of the statement to be proved. In this general sense, proof by contradiction is also known as indirect proof, proof by assuming the opposite, [2] and reductio ad ...
Euclid's proof of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is a simple proof which uses a minimal counterexample. [5] [6] Courant and Robbins used the term minimal criminal for a minimal counter-example in the context of the four color theorem. [7]
Reductio ad absurdum, painting by John Pettie exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884. In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or apagogical argument, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.
An inference objection is an objection to an argument based not on any of its stated premises, but rather on the relationship between a premise (or set of premises) and main contention. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] For a given simple argument, if the assumption is made that its premises are correct, fault may be found in the progression from these to the ...