Logic and Fallacy

Bayesian Informal Logic and Fallacy

Bayesian reasoning has been applied formally to statistical inference, machine learning and analysing scientific method. Here I apply it informally to more common forms of inference, namely natural language arguments. I analyse a variety of traditional fallacies, deductive, inductive and causal, and find more merit in them than is generally acknowledged. Bayesian principles provide a framework ...

Notes and Commentary Hayek, Logic, and the Naturalistic Fallacy

In his paper titled “Did Hayek Commit the Naturalist Fallacy?” published in the September 2004 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Erik Angner develops three theses. The first is that Friedrich Hayek’s own writings and those of competent commentators give plentiful evidence that Hayek appears to have inferred values from facts. (The appears is stressed because Angner himsel...

The “banzhaf Fallacy” Fallacy

The Bayesian Logic of the Conjunction Fallacy: Effects of Probabilities and Frequencies in Contingency Tables

In this paper a Bayesian logic of the conjunction fallacy (CF) is advocated as a normative and descriptive proposal for testing hypotheses about dyadic logical connectors. According to traditional extensional probability a violation of additivity and, in particular, a violation of P(A) ≥ P(A ∧ B) or of P(Linda is a bank teller) ≥ P(Linda is a bank teller AND an active feminist) is a fallacy. Th...

Psychology and the Scientific Fallacy

Far more general than upon most subjects has been the agreement reached by competent thinkers that Science is essentially a method of investigation. Of course there have been, and there are today, a number of alternative investigatory methods olther than that of Science, just as there are entirely legitimate logics other than that of the syllogism. But Science today is by far the most publicize...