looks like a lot to think about for the design of this name and it would take me a long while to decide. Not at all like the other '-ology' names I designed where the name I should give it was pretty obvious. If I wanted it at far as possible to be easy to remember or guess what it means from its name and made myself care less about how long the word is, I guess I might call it "fallacyology". But might a person unfamiliar with the term "fallacyology" get confused about its pronunciation?
Originally posted by @humy looks like a lot to think about for the design of this name and it would take me a long while to decide. Not at all like the other '-ology' names I designed where the name I should give it was pretty obvious. If I wanted it at far as possible to be easy to remember or guess what it means from its name and made myself care less about how long the word is, I gue ...[text shortened]... But might a person unfamiliar with the term "fallacyology" get confused about its pronunciation?
Originally posted by @vivify I doubt your target audience would.
You probably right even though I am trying to make my target audience as wide as possible and hopefully not only include those with a special professional interest in my work but even many laypeople. I plan to make my book assume the reader knows only basic algebra with the necessary more advanced maths explained in book where required and this will be explained on the front cover of the book.
I was planning on trying to group up my chapters into several large 'parts' (each with its own title) for my book to make it seem more manageable but now I see some serious big problems with that.
There is far too much overlap of content and involvement between the main subject matters plus far to much ridiculous variability in the sizes of them with many being 100 times larger (in terms of words in them) than others. For example, I initially thought of having a separate philosophy section but then long since noticed that most of the main sections of the book will contain considerable philosophy content and can't really separate that out neatly into just one lot of chapters all contained in one massive section of the book. It's the same problem with the subject of stastics; cannot neatly separate it out at all from the other subject matters. It's the same problem with the subject of logical paradoxes and their solutions.
So now I think maybe I shouldn't try and group the chapters together into 'parts' at all but just have a very large number of small chapters ordered only in a rough order. But that would seem to make the layout of my book pretty messy and would mean giving something like a whopping ~200 mainly tiny (but with a few large ones) chapters to my book and with no clear groupings of chapters or main parts of the book clearly defined. But does that seem unreasonable?
Originally posted by @humy ~200 mainly tiny (but with a few large ones) chapters to my book and with no clear groupings of chapters or main parts of the book clearly defined. But does that seem unreasonable?
A hodge-podge of random arguments without clear organization or structure? From this description, it sounds like it would read like an ironic meta-analysis of logical fallacies. Very Vonnegut-esque.
Originally posted by @wildgrass A hodge-podge of random arguments without clear organization or structure? From this description, it sounds like it would read like an ironic meta-analysis of logical fallacies. Very Vonnegut-esque.
Now after a huge amount of further thought, I have finally made up my mind. Because I will have to use the word often in the book, I will make it as short as possible and just call it "falology".
In addition, I now think it is a mistake of having "disto-ology" and "twidology" and "tido-ology" (because it is a type of creeping featurism because there is just too many of them and each is too specialized) and now replace those three with just the two of "teedology" and "tayoicology". But I definitely will still have "definology".
So that is at least 5 totally new 'ology-words' to be introduced by my book; falology, definology, teedology and tayoicology.
Logic is the study of valid reasoning; illogic is invalid reasoning, but there is no specific branch of philosophy concerned with illogic as such. The study of illogical forms of reasoning is simply a part of the study of valid forms of reasoning. Similarly, epistemology is the study of knowledge, but there is not any specific branch of philosophy concerned with pseudo-knowledge; the study of putative but false knowledge is simply part of epistemology.
Originally posted by @humy In my book I am writing, I find I have the inconvenience of having to repeat the words "...the study of logical fallacies..." so often that I see the need to give it a nice short name.
But is there already such a name for this field of study?
I tried googling this but got nowhere although there is this;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
IF (an ...[text shortened]... . But here I am assuming there already a conventional name for this "definology" field of study.
I'm fairly certain there is no single word for "the study of logical fallacies." Such studies are often found in books on "critical thinking," and sometimes one hears of the "theory of fallacies" or "argumentation theory," but no bullseye fifty-dollar word like the one you seek seems to be in evidence amongst publications that use those various terms. Since the definition of "invalid" is "not valid," any investigation into invalid reasoning is inextricably intertwined with the study of valid reasoning.
At https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/ there is this interesting passage:
In modern fallacy studies it is common to distinguish formal and informal fallacies. Formal fallacies are those readily seen to be instances of identifiable invalid logical forms such as undistributed middle and denying the antecedent. Although many of the informal fallacies are also invalid arguments, it is generally thought to be more profitable, from the points of view of both recognition and understanding, to bring their weaknesses to light through analyses that do not involve appeal to formal languages. For this reason it has become the practice to eschew the symbolic language of formal logic in the analysis of these fallacies; hence the term ‘informal fallacy’ has gained wide currency.
As an aside, if there were a word meaning "the study of fallacies" I should think at least one of the references at the bottom of the page linked to above would employ it. No joy.
name for the study of logical fallacies?
14 Sep '17 06:024 edits
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