All things that can burn are made of wood.Ĭ: Therefore, all witches are made of wood. All witches are things that can be burned. The following are the four arguments I they will usually find: First Argument: Valid. I warn them ahead of time that they should find the fallacy of the undistributed middle. I give them the conclusion of each argument below and ask them to try to find the premises in the script that might lead to that conclusion. I provide the students the script and suggest there are four separate arguments in it. However, we can try to clean up and analyze the argument itself. The students will likely be able to identify the argument as unsound very quickly, though they will be slower to understand why it’s invalid. If the woman weighs the same as a duck, then she is made of wood.Īfter going through the script and helping the students find this basic structure (or something similar), we then turn to a logical analysis of this argument.Building a bridge out of the woman will not determine that she is made of wood. However, bridges are multiply realizable.Witches burn because they are made out of wood.We know this woman is a witch because she turned someone into a newt.We know this woman is a witch because she has a wart.We know this woman is a witch because she dresses like one.We know this woman is a witch because she looks like one.One can do this in many different ways but this is the way I break down the structure of the script: In the scene, the townspeople accuse a woman of being a witch, and then a knight leads them through a hilariously flawed line of reasoning.įirst, we try to informally map the structure of the argument. In the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), there is a scene involving a Witch Burning Trial that I use in my critical thinking course to analyze valid and sound arguments. It is great for teaching students to recognize the fallacy of the undistributed middle.
0 kommentar(er)
