A situation in which I caught others using logical fallacies in a discussion
The situation and the logical fallacies used
In this situation, it was on a late Friday evening and I and some members of my family were discussing about relationships: how to maintain relationships, healthy relationships, toxic relationships, etc., and while we were at it, I observed about five fallacies coming from my parents and siblings. My dad was not in the room at the beginning, he joined in later. First, my mum made a hasty generalization fallacy that all men can be gotten to through their stomach, thus that any man’s heart can be won by a woman through good food. She had absolutely no proof of this order than the fact that my dad was a foodie and her making meals for him had helped her capture his heart since their courtship until now. Then my immediate elder brother exhibited a non sequitur fallacy when he proceeded what my mum had said with: “still you have not succeeded in blinding him to loving you alone; he loves us all.” We all (including my mum) laughed so hard when he said that. My eldest brother in an attempt to pacify my mum used a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy while doing so. He said, “don’t mind him mum, at least you gave him us all to love thereby increasing his bowl of love. If he hadn’t married you, we most probably would not have been born for him to love.”
At this point my dad came in to join the ongoing conversation as he had been listening to us from the balcony and couldn’t stay away any longer. When he entered, he started with an ad hominem fallacy and a non sequitur fallacy already when he responded to my brother’s initial statement said “I really have no response to give you. Last I checked, you were not a relationship expert, so who’s to say that you would not end up in a toxic relationship in the nearest future?” This jocular remark cracked us all into an uncontrollably moment of laughter as my eldest brother crowned it all with an appeal to false authority fallacy by going to my immediate elder brother’s face to say, “what he said!” The “he” here functioning as a pronoun for my dad. He had no other evidence to back up his statement. The laughter grew even more ceaselessly but the argument/discussion did eventually break off after a couple more minutes as everyone left for their beds still laughing. It was already way past midnight.
How did I react?
That night I just couldn’t stop laughing, even after I got into my bed, I would remember one of statements and laugh even harder. I practically laughed myself to sleep. It was all just my family’s regular jocularity. As at the time this happened, I wasn’t yet very much aware that they were logical fallacies. Not until after the TMD workshop on “critical thinking and reading and reflection”, which included some insight on logical fallacies, did I realize that the discussion of that night was filled with logical fallacies. After the workshop, I looked back at that day and began to identify the logical fallacies that had been used.
Did it influence my reaction?
The situation and the fallacies themselves did indeed influence my reaction. I mean, it was just one of our regular family relaxation evenings when everyone is at home that always ended up in laughter and all that follows. And, upon realizing that they were actually logical fallacies, I came to the enlightenment that logical fallacies are not always intended but still prevalently take place in our day to day lives. I concluded that I had to be careful not to use them in more professional or social contexts. I mean, outside of the jocular confines of my friends and family territory.
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