Faulty Causality - Logical Fallacy

We have just begun studying Single State Parties in History class of which our unit circulates around the dreaded yet very exciting figure, Adolf Hitler. We were discussing Hitler's drives and to get to that, we studied his biography as well. One of the things it stated was that Hitler loved to paint and it was a passion of his to go to the Vienna Art Academy which was perhaps one of the best Art schools in Europe at the time. Unfortunately he got rejected because he didn't draw people well. This didn't settle well with him and he was extremely disappointed. Some people say this is a reason he become a psychopathic dictator. It does sound absurd but if it is analysed then it could be a possibility. He was deprived of something he desperately wanted, that too by the administrators who were supposedly Jews leading to his greatly anti Semitic personality. However, it still remains a faulty causality. Not getting accepted to Art School is not the cause of him killing millions and is indeed a logical fallacy because there is not a clear connection between the two propositions. Yes analysis will help a person better understand how they are related, but that does not justify anything. A serial killer who also happened to be a school drop out cannot be deduced as being a serial killer BECAUSE he dropped out of school, or perhaps was unemployed or whatever the case is. Assuming such things or linking them together in a manner of cause and effect just causes misconceptions when there are so many factors and theories involved in why exactly Hitler became inclined to do all of this of which people cannot prove. The rejection from Vienna Art Academy is just another causes of many that have been affiliated with Hitler's dementia because it preceded his rise and is therefore linked with being the cause. 

Are people studying reality a part of it?

My friends and I always learn something or another from Kinga. We feel that she is so interesting and since she is older and hence much more mature, we can take away something from our conversations from her rather than just complaining to each other about something. One day while working on our group four project, Kinga told us how she loves Literature and Art but despises Math and Sciences, a familiar feeling to quite a few of us sitting with her. She then said something that I thought was truly interesting which was that people spend so much time picking reality apart to the extent where they are not even in it anymore. The way she said it was articulated differently but I believe what she meant to say was, was that sometimes people study things that may not be of utmost pragmatism to us, or they scrutinize it to the point where they are not a part of their social realities but in a world where they are blindly looking for answers and not pausing to see what is actually around them. She sarcastically gave an example of a table while knocking on it, "oooh a table, how close are the molecules? is it a solid? why is it huh?" and said that these people tend to be the most awkward because they cannot appreciate the beauty of things around them as they feel the need to examine it. The table example was a scornful and mocking one but I could understand what she was getting at. I remember when we were studying the IQ and EQ in class and discovered that EQ is also very valuable in getting jobs nowadays because sometimes if the IQ is too high, people are not emotionally capable of handling customers and managing their enthusiasm and things similar to that. I think that in a sense relates to what Kinga said, because if the intelligence quotient is too high and the general tendency to be correct and particular is greater, a person loses their touch with emotions which can be related back to seeing reality, experiencing it and appreciating it. Kinga strongly prefers people who have aesthetic tastes such as in writing and art and she finds that math and science people are actually not pleasant to talk to, not as entertaining and imaginative, and overall just too skeptical and precise. I feel that studying reality is necessary and enlightening but could it be that the more you study it, the more you detach yourself from it? If you study something beyond what needs to be done, it may get devalued. People can lose touch with their social realities as a result of trying to figure out what a certain object is or means. From what she said, she had me convinced, and I think that this could be one way to look at it. 

Sentimental Appeal - Logical Fallacy

For this spring break, I really wanted to go to Dubai because a lot of my friends were going there. However, my family wasn't traveling because my dad has some work he needs to take care of. Luckily one friend of mine from school who is going to Dubai with her mother actually asked me to join her on the trip and I was overjoyed, regardless of considering the fact that I would probably never get permission to go to a different country with a friend. Despite that, I excitedly told people that I knew who live there and later explained that my mom is paranoid and wouldn't agree whereas my dad does, to which one of the responses I got said, "do some emotional attyachar. your mom should be cool" I didn't understand what that meant at first because it is not a word I am familiar with and probably comes from Indian vocabulary so I had to ask what they meant and turns out that it means "blackmail" and not "act" as I would have thought otherwise. And then, I thought, might as well try my luck, obviously not exactly in the blackmail sense, but in a way that I thought would appeal to my mom. "Amma, don't you think this trip will make me a lot more independent? Don't you think I'm sensible enough to handle myself the way that you have raised me?" and other dramatic questions of the like. These were all things my mom would be sensitive to seeing as she wants me to be self-relying and responsible and it twists my arguments slightly as it makes it seem I am going to prove myself to her and not just because I want to go for my own enjoyment. This kind of sentimental appeal manipulates the listener because it makes them consider themselves and adds a deeper purpose even to a superficial argumen, hence it is a fallacy. Did mom agree after listening to my emotional "attyachar"? No, she is great at this and does it for my own good. However it is a way to exploit arguments to people and make them seem really meaningful, heart-rending and for the greater good when they actually may not be. 

Ad Hominem - Logical Fallacy

There is a huge phenomenon on Facebook and BBM and other forms of social and mobile networking where people are posting photos of an equal sign to promote rights for the LGBTQ community and particularly for homosexual marriages. However, there are some who put up a not equal sign stating that it is against their culture for this to be legalized the world over and should not be promoted so openly. These people get the most amount of criticism not regarding that if the majority have the freedom to voice FOR the cause, naturally there will be some people who are against it and should be able to post whatever they want as well. In one particular case where a boy put up the picture of the non-equal sign and made an argument that his religion speaks for women for men and men for women, someone countered it by saying that he is not even religious because he has had alcohol, or whatever it was that he supposedly does. That argument was irrelevant because he merely stated one aspect of his religion that he does abide by, and instead of countering that particular argument, he received a personal attack where he apparently isn't religious enough because of other things that he does. Ad Hominem arguments are used to deter the person from the actual argument and attack them in a personal way as to get them to retaliate to that instead. Since they could not argue with the part where the boy's religion is against marriages, they decided to attack him personally inducing a logical fallacy because the intention of the argument is not addressed.

Logical Fallacy - Equivocation

While we were in school one day, we were discussing Bad Luck Brian memes. It is something really popular on Facebook lately and some of them are actually pretty ridiculous. Then Shahmir brought up that one of them said, "Smokes up for the first time in Pakistan. Gets stoned." I am actually not good at understanding jokes so he explained how in this sense, stoned means the literal kind of prosecution but the joke is that it refers to Bad Luck Brian smoking for the first time and instead of getting stoned after consuming the drug, he literally gets stoned. This is because Bad Luck Brian refers to a guy who thinks he has done something, but the absolute worst consequence emerges. An example of this is, "Wins a date with a Kardashian. Rob," meaning that out of all the Kardashian women, he happens to get their brother. Going back to the equivocation, the word stoned has two different meanings. They are used in a way to create a joke, however taking it literally would be a logical fallacy. Both ways would make sense, but what the intention is would not be conveyed. The meme portrays Brian's bad luck by saying that for the first time, Brian had the courage to smoke but it happened to be in Pakistan, and hence he literally got prosecuted for it. Equivocations can sometimes be a little tricky to understand and could hinder our ability to understand what is being said but they are used in jokes often and ultimately make it more humorous once you understand, in this case being Brian's terrible luck.