The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [22]
On the other hand, the camping out in front of Best Buy argument probably is a good one. It’s usually true that when geeks camp out at stores for Gamecubes and other consoles, they’re often able to get them. And given this fact, plus the fact that the one geek got his own Gamecube in the past, he had a strong case for drawing the conclusion that he would get the Wii.
Farore, Four Swords, and Fallacies
Checking to see if conclusions follow from premises and if premises are true can be very difficult. In the gaming and real worlds, there are times when characters and people try to convince us of the truth of their statements in order to deceive us, sell us something, beckon us into their lair, get us to vote for them, become part of their group, or share their ideology. Further, characters and people try to convince us that a conclusion follows from a premise or premises when, in fact, it does not, kind of like what Rob has done with his “all gamers are geeks” bit of bad reasoning (rest assured, he doesn’t think this way anymore).
A fallacy occurs when we incorrectly or inappropriately draw a conclusion from a reason or reasons that don’t support the conclusion. In fact, fallacies are so frequent and common that logicians have names for different types of fallacies.
A common fallacy is hasty generalization. In a hasty generalization, a person incorrectly draws a conclusion about characteristics of a whole group based upon premises concerning characteristics of a small sample of the group. When we conclude, “They’re all like that” in talking about anything—gamers, goddesses, liberals, philosophers, cars—based upon a small sample of the group we’re talking about, we commit a hasty generalization. There’s usually no way definitely to conclude something about the characteristics of an entire group since we have no knowledge of the entire group. It may be that the next member of the group we encounter turns out to have different characteristics from members of the group we know thus far. Any form of stereotyping and prejudice, by definition, involves a hasty generalization. Consider the way Rob hastily generalized that all gamers are geeks … Tsk, tsk.
Another fallacy that people commit regularly is an argument from inappropriate authority. This fallacy occurs when we incorrectly draw a conclusion from premises based upon an illegitimate, non-credible, non-qualified, or inappropriate authority figure. We have to be careful about which “authority” we trust. It would seem that, for example, people who give advice about Zelda gaming strategies at the LegendofZelda.com or Zelda Universe websites likely would be more trustworthy than, say, Joe Schmo at Wikipedia or Gary Gamer in his latest blog entry. The best way to avoid this fallacy altogether is to become an authority concerning some matter yourself by getting all of the relevant facts, understanding the issues, doing research, checking and double-checking your sources, dialoguing with people, having your ideas challenged, defending your position, being open to revising your position, and the like. So, if you want to avoid fallacious reasoning concerning the Zelda series, then you should become an expert on it. But since we can’t become authorities on everything, we need to rely upon others. Just be careful that “the others” you rely upon are credible.
A false dilemma is the fallacy of concluding something based upon premises that include only two options, when, in fact, there are three or more options. Rob actually fell victim to this kind of bad reasoning when he was trying to play Space Invaders on his original Atari system “back in the day” (yep, he’s a bit of an old bastard).