Through this we will be able to understand the fallacies of vagueness clearly with the help of examples. It shares some useful examples. the definitions and points are very clear here.

1. CRITICAL THINKING
FALLACIES OF VAGUENESS
PRESENTED BY- Yogesh Kumar
Mohd Tazeem
Pushpendra
Mohd Talib Naqvi
Mohd Bilal
Mohd Mursaleen
Anam Aansari
Nikhat Ansari

2. WHAT DO WE MEAN BY FALLACIES ?
 Fallacies are Flaws in Reasoning, Appeals, Language
 A fallacy is what results when there is something wrong with
someone’s reasoning.
 The number and variety of fallacies is limited only by the
imagination, but what follows are some of the most common
and most commonly overlooked.

3. TYPES OF FALLACIES
Fallacies
Formal Informal
Clarity
vagueness
ambiguity

4. TYPES OF FALLACIES
 Formal Fallacies :- A formal fallacies is one that may be
identified by merely examining the form or structure of the
argument.
 Example:- all arabs are muslims.
all iranians are muslims.
all iranians are arabs.

5.  Informal Fallacies :- An Informal fallacies are those that can
be detected only by examining the content of argument.
Example :- amu building is made of atom
Atoms are invisible
Therefore amu building is invisible.
Hence informal fallacies.

6. FALLACIES OF CLARITY
 These fallacies turn on the fact that words and phrases are
often unclear. While this is rarely a problem, the lack of clarity
can at times underwrite confusion or enable subterfuge.
 Things can fail to be clear in various ways. 1. A word like
“nice” can be unclear because it can be used in a lot of
different ways, many of which admit of degree and the degree
is rarely specified. Call this vagueness.
a. Large animal
b. Populous state
c. Andre is a terrific tennis player.

7. CONTINUE….
 A word like “cardinal” can be unclear because it has a number
of different meanings, and so it may not be obvious which one
is in play. (“I’m a big fan of the cardinal.”) Call this ambiguity.

8. FALLACIES OF VAGUENESS
 Vagueness is introduced into an argument by vague terms, or
more precisely, vague concepts.
 1. These concepts do not apply clearly and precisely in all
cases.
 2. Thus, vague concepts admit of degrees, and these degrees
sanction borderline cases.
 When a concept admits of degree, we can represent the
range of application of these concepts by a scale or dimension,
with or without endpoints depending on the case. (E.g., tall,
pretty, smart, overwhelming, vague, interesting)

9. CONTINUE….
 These concepts can figure into arguments, and given their nature,
they can undermine the effectiveness of an argument. These
arguments trade on the fact that the concept is difficult to apply with
certainty in the borderline cases:
 The standard example is baldness. A person with a full head of hair
is not bald. A person without a hair on his head is bald. In between,
however, is a range of cases in which we cannot say definitely
whether the person is bald or not. These are called borderline cases.
Here we say something less definite, such as that this person is
“going bald.” Our inability to apply the concept of baldness in a
borderline case is not due to ignorance of the number of hairs on the
person’s head. It will not help to count the number of hairs there.
Even if we knew the exact number, we would still not be able to say
whether the person was bald or not. The same is true of most
adjectives that concern properties admitting of degrees—for
example, “rich,” “healthy,” “tall,” “wise,” and “ruthless.”

10. vagueness
Argument of
heap
Slippery
slope
argument
Conceptual
slippery
slope
Fairness
slippery
slope
Casual
slippery
slope

11. TYPES OF FALLACIES OF VAGUENESS
1)Arguments from the Heap: These arguments are meant to
establish that there is no way to arrive at one of the endpoints
on along a conceptual dimension, given assumptions about the
other.
Example:- a person who owns 1 rupee Is poor.
a person having 2 rupees is also poor.
likewise a person having 10,00,000 rupee is also poor.

12. 2)SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENT…
Once one event occurs, other related events will
follow, and this will eventually lead to
undesirable/negative result.
EXAMPLE:
a)If you give chocolate to your friend, then everyone
will see.
b)If everyone sees, then they will ask for chocolate.
c)If everyone ask then you will have to give chocolate
to entire class.
d)Giving to whole class is unacceptable.
e)You should not do what is unacceptable.
f)Therefore, you should not give chocolate to anyone.

13.  Conceptual Slippery-Slope Arguments: These
arguments are meant to establish that there is no
significant difference between the endpoints.
 This fallacy is seductive, because it is often hard to
tell when many small differences do make a big
difference.
TYPES OF SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENTS

14. CONTINUE….
 Such arguments often seem to depend on the following
principles:
 1. We should not draw a distinction between things that are
not significantly different.
 2. If A is not significantly different from B, and B is not
significantly different from C, then A is not significantly different
from C.
 Example :- a person who is 1 m height is short.
a difference of 1mm is not a significant difference.
a person who is 2 m height is tall.
therefore there is no significant difference in being short and
being tall.

15. CONTINUE….
 Fairness Slippery-Slope Arguments: It exploits the
vagueness of a category to argue that it is unfair to treat cases
that fall into a category differently from cases that do not fall
into that category.
EXAMPLE:
PERSON SCORES 100%= exam passes
PERSON SCORES99.99%= exam passes
PERSON SCORES 99.98%= exam passes
PERSON SCORE 32.99%= exam passes(fail)
It cant be fair to fail someone whose score is not significantly
different from that,

16. CONTINUE…..
EXAMPLE:-
 Questions about the fairness of drawing a line often
arise in the law. For example, given reasonable
cause, the police generally do not have to obtain a
warrant to search a motor vehicle, for the obvious
reason that the vehicle might be driven away while
the police go to a judge to obtain a warrant. On the
other hand, with few exceptions, the police may not
search a person’s home without a search warrant.

17. CONTINUE…..
 Causal Slippery-Slope Arguments (AKA “Domino
Arguments
 . In these arguments, the claim is made that, once a certain
kind of event occurs, other similar events will also occur, and
this will lead eventually to disaster.

18. EXAMPLE
 If A then B
 If B then C
 If C then D
 Not D
 Hence not A

19. FALLACIES OF AMBIGUITY
 Ambiguity is a term used to signal the presence of multiple
meanings. (Linguists use the term ‘polysemy’ if this number
exceeds two.)
 The term ‘ambiguity’ is itself ambiguous. It can mean:
1. The association of more than one meaning with a given term
(viz., the ambiguous term).
2. A term/sentence is ambiguous in a particular context just in
case it is difficult to tell which of several meanings the
term/sentence has in that context and so is misleading.

20. CONTINUE….
The notion of ambiguity is also based on a common
feature of our language: Words often have a
number of different meanings. For example, the
New Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary has the
following entry under the word “cardinal”: cardinal
adj.
1: of basic importance; chief, main, primary,
2: of cardinal red color.
3 an ecclesiastical official of the Roman Catholic
Church ranking next below the pope,
4: a bright red,
5: any of several American finches of which the male
is bright red.

21. TYPES OF AMBIGUITY
 Types of Ambiguity:
 1. Semantic: a term, like ‘bank’ or ‘cardinal’, has more than
one lexical meaning associated with it, and can give rise to
sentential ambiguity for that reason. (E.g., “I keep my money in
a bank.”) In a sentence, there can be multiple semantic
ambiguities that contribute to an ambiguous whole: “Mary had
a little lamb.”
 2. Syntactic: a sentence is syntactically ambiguous if it is
possible for the words in it to serve different structural
purposes, giving rise to different meanings in the process.
(E.g., “Flying planes can be dangerous.” “All students want a
grade.”)

22. CONTINUE…
 Fallacy of Equivocation:
This is committed when a person advances an argument that
trades on an ambiguity. That is, an argument that contains the
same word (or phrase) in two premises, but the word is
intended in one sense one place and another sense in the
other place. These arguments will not be valid.

23.  Ambiguity can also generate bad arguments that involve the
fallacy of equivocation. An argument is said to commit this
fallacy when it uses the same expression in different senses in
different parts of the argument, and this ruins the argument.
Here is a silly example (from Carl Wolf):
 Six is an odd number of legs for a horse.
 Odd numbers cannot be divided by two.
 ∴Six cannot be divided by two.
Clearly, “odd” means “unusual” in the first premise, but it
means “not even” in the second premise. Consequently, both
premises are true, even though the conclusion is false, so the
argument is not valid.

24. THANK YOU ……