veiled4allah veiled4allah: would it hold up in a court of law? these paralegals don't think so

Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs Home
« more on Ansar al-Islam | veiled4allah archives | PHP error messages »
Comments (2, last by Al-Munaqabah) | Trackbacks (0 in, 0 out) | 

Email this link | Print this entry | RDF

Further Reading | Elsewhere | Search Options
Add this entry to your hotlist (View your hotlist)

would it hold up in a court of law? these paralegals don't think so

Date: February 06, 2003 | 4 Dhu-l-Hijjah 1423 Hijriah
Blog: veiled4allah
Subjects: school, paralegal
In my Legal Writing class yesterday, the instructor talked about logical fallacies that we should avoid in our persuasive writing. Among the common fallacies is the argument ad ignorantiam:

ad ignorantiam (appeal to ignorance): arguing that a claim is true just because it has not been shown to be false. A classic example is this statement by Senator Joseph McCarthy, when asked for evidence to back up his accusation that a certain person was a communist: "I do not have much information on this except the general statement of the agency that there is nothing in his files to disprove his Communist connections"

The instructor used another example, the U.S. claiming that Saddam Hussein has WMDs because he hasn't been proven not to have them. Most of the class laughed in appreciation and we went on to have a lively discussion of other common logical fallacies and whether the U.S. case against Iraq contains them as well. It was pretty clear that nearly all of us were very skeptical about the whole thing. We also discussed whether Colin Powell was using hearsay evidence that would be thrown out of any court of law.

It may be that paralegal students are not a representative sample of the population, but certainly my impression from this and other discussions at school is that there are a lot of intelligent, well-educated people that Bush is failing to convince.
~ Posted by Al-Muhajabah, a member of the reality-based community, at 05:02 PM

Comments

Robert Williams said: Total comments: 1  

he U.S. claiming that Saddam Hussein has WMDs because he hasn't been proven not to have them

Your instructor's example is a poor one, and in fact got it exactly backwards. We know that Saddam Hussein at one point had some kinds of WMDs and was working on others. He claims to have subsequently destroyed all of them. When asked for proof, he is essentially demanding that we prove he didn't. He's using an ad ignorantium argument by insisting that he doesn't have to prove he destroyed them because we can't prove that he didn't.

The burden of proof is on him, as he is the one claiming to have done something. He should be able to convincingly demonstrate it. We are attempting to determine if he in fact disposed of materials that are known to have existed.


~ Posted at February 11, 2003 12:41 PM | Comment Permalink
moderator Al-Munaqabah said: Total comments: 996   gold stargold stargold stargold stargold star

Thanks for visiting, Robert, and thanks for your comment.

Perhaps my original post wasn't clear. We're looking to see if Saddam Hussein has WMDs. We're not finding any. We're saying that's proof that he must be hiding them. But that's faulty logic. Maybe they've been destroyed. You're overlooking alternative explanations.

~ Posted at February 11, 2003 05:55 PM | Comment Permalink

All comments are copyright their authors

RSS feed of comments on this entry

Finished reading and posting comments? Return to veiled4allah

Trackbacks

What is trackback?
You Pinged Me

Here's who's pinging me:

(no pings yet)


Further reading

Recent entries

The following is a list of the ten most recent entries in veiled4allah as of Mar 02, 2006:

View a list of all entries in veiled4allah

Related entries

This entry has been tagged as covering the following subjects: school paralegal. The following is a list of the ten most recent entries in Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs that share any of these tags:

A semantic analysis of this entry also suggests the following keywords to search for related content on: saddam hussein, hussein wmds, wmds because, claiming saddam, logical fallacies, WMDs, saddam, because, Saddam, Hussein, hussein, been, wmds, destroyed, claiming, proof, instructor, prove, fallacies, example, proven, thanks, communist, statement, court

What links here: View a list of other entries in this blog (if any) that link to this entry

Or look generally for informational pages on my website tagged with school, paralegal

Results of Semantic Search

A semantic search of Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs suggests the following as the ten entries most closely related to this entry:



Elsewhere

External resources

Check out other web pages (if any) that I've bookmarked via del.icio.us that share the same tags: school, paralegal

Explore reference materials from Answers.com about these subjects: school, paralegal

Read news stories at Common Times about these subjects: school, paralegal

View search results at gada.be metasearch service for these subjects: school, paralegal

Find books at Amazon.com on these subjects: school, paralegal

Other views

Check Waypath for blog entries generally related to this entry, or Technorati or Bloglines for blog entries that link to this entry.

Technorati tags: View blog entries, bookmarks and photos tagged by others with the same subjects as this entry:



Search options

     

For external resources on the topic of this entry, you can run a search for its title would it hold up in a court of law? these paralegals don't think so (Google, DayPop, Feedster) or keyword(s) school paralegal (Google, DayPop, Feedster). DayPop is a search engine similar to Google that focuses on searching news sources and blogs. Feedster searches blogs via RSS feeds.

Home
All materials in veiled4allah are written by Al-Muhajabah unless otherwise noted. You may copy, display, or distribute the materials in veiled4allah for non-commercial purposes as long as you give me proper attribution as the author.