There are many websites that provide information on both formal and informal fallacies. Three of the most interesting are the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy(entry on “Fallacies”), the Nizkor Project, and the Fallacy Files. (Links to these sites are also found in External Links in the folder entitled “Internet Materials on Fallacies.” Your assignment is to visit each of these sites and find the fallacies that correspond to those in Chapters 7 and 8. If there is no corresponding fallacy, don’t worry about it; the purpose of this activity is to acquaint you with some alternative explanations of the fallacies in the text. After you feel comfortable recognizing fallacies of failed induction and presumption, your assignment is the following: Findonevideo or cartoon example ofoneof these fallacies on the Web. The examplemusttake the form of a video/cartoon (check outYouTube, for instance, or search for the fallacies in cartoon banks). The Cartoon Network, Family Guy, Stephen Colbert, or even just plain old cartoon websites are good places to look. Once you’ve located the example, paste in a link to the file (embed it) in your Discussion Board thread. Finally, explain why you think this is a good example of the fallacy. Make sure to reconstruct the argument (using standard reconstruction format) that the video or cartoon presents by identifying its implicit premise(s) and conclusion. Here’s an example. The satirist Stephen Colbert (see the video below) asks Congressman Barney Frank if President Bush was a “… great President, or the greatest President?” Clearly, the question contains an assumption which the Congressman must accept if he answers using the alternatives that Colbert has offered. So this is an example of both a complex question AND a false alternative, since the choices that Colbert offers are neither exclusive nor exhaustive. (Note: click on the link to open it in a separate window, and then move to the 1:15 timestamp to locate the portion of the video where the fallacy occurs. Sorry about the commercial that precedes the video, but there’s no way to remove it!

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