Witches can be killed if they are crushed by a house, as seen when Dorothy's house killed the Witch of the East. A human would also be killed if a house were to fall on them. In addition, being shot can kill a human. Therefore, when the Witch of the West appeared, the musket-wielding Munchkins should have shot her and saved everyone a great deal of trouble.
With H representing Houses Falling From The Sky, G representing Guns, W representing Things That Kill Witches and P representing Things That Kill People, his argument look like this:
All H are W
All H are P
All G are P
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All G are W
And once you replace H with Cats, W with Mammals, P with Animals, and G with Lizards, it's clear that the argument is invalid.
I realize this is a bit behind what we are doing in class just now, but I thought it might be notable since it was the first time I had a personal encounter with a fallacy that was formal rather than informal.
I think this is a very good real life argument to use. I agree with what you have gotten out of it and I love that the Wizard of Oz was the movie in question. Anyone who has seen the movie probably feels the same way I do, in that, I feel as though I can relate to it. Good work!
ReplyDeleteI like that this is a real life case where we can see that fallacy too. It also could have been fun if you asked people to provide a counterexample themselves instead of providing one.
ReplyDeleteNice, I like how logic stays consistent in a fictional universe. Not approaching this argument formally one might think that the authors of that world did not necessarily make witches vulnerable to guns.
ReplyDelete