Common Logical Fallacies, Illustrated

There are a few problems with this (for example, it doesn't really define begging the question correctly), but overall, it's pretty cool.

I'm reading a book on the subject of "Causality and Explanation" (same as title) by Wesley C. Salmon. In it Salmon makes reference to this fact by saying that night follows day and day follows night with a statistically high probability (100%), but this does not mean that night causes day and day causes night. Rather it is the rotation of the earth on it's axis that causes both day and night.

But this is also incorrect; the rotation of the earth on its own axis is not a sufficient cause (nor does it antecede the event but is contemporaneous with it). Especially when we consider the role played by the observer. The human brain habituates to light intensities and perceives light and dark only in relation to each other. A human who had never any conception of night would likewise never have any conception of day. That is; if the earth was smack dab in the middle of three or more stars and there was never a dark period on earth it would be utterly senseless to talk about "night" and conversely senseless to talk about "day". No one would say "It is daytime" because the concept of day is entirely relative to night. In that sense, night and day cause each other (at least in the human brain).

But this fact is even expressed by Aristotle in his Law of Identity. He is not simply saying "A thing is what it is" but he is also saying "A thing is what it is by virtue of what it is not." The Identity of any particular thing is caused by that which it is not and more directly its opposite. Up is relative to Down. Inside is relative to Outside. If there were no "inside" then it would be utterly senseless to talk about "Outside". This perceptual duality is how the brain/mind works.

I guess this is a form of conceptual causation. The concept of night is caused by the concept of day and vice versa. This view of causation takes into account a two-way influence of simultaneously existing "objects". Where the "objects" (i.e. causes) are actually just arbitrations and do not represent the "thing-in-itself".

This is a point which Salmon and pretty much everyone else seems to forget. What we call "causes" are not strictly noumenal, nomological or ontic, they are finite abritrations extracted out of our experience and cast into a cognitive framework (i.e. noumenal, nomological, ontic)and may share a relative identity with something else in our experience (actually our entire experience).

This stuff (logical fallacies) should be thought at school.

"Circular Logic" example:

"Stripping privacy rights only matters to those with something to hide. You must have something to hide if you oppose privacy protection."

Shouldn't that be "... if you support privacy protection"?