The topic that I found to be interesting was chapter 11 in Epstein book. It's about Fallacies; A summary of bad arguments. It's from pages 199 to 204, so if you need more information or examples go there.
A fallacy is a bad argument of one of the types that have been agreed to be typically unrepairable. There are three kinds of fallacy types: structural fallacies, content fallacies, and violations of the Principle of Rational Discussion.
Structural Fallacy: An argument whose form alone guarantees that it is a bad argument.
Content Fallacy: An argument that uses or requires for repair a particular kind of premise that, if false or dubious, classifies the argument as a fallacy.
Principle of Rational Discussion: We assume that the other person who is discussing an issue with us or whose arguments we are reading:
- Knows about the subject under discussion
- Is able and willing to reason well
- Is not lying
I found everything on these pages very helpful because it's made me pay attention to my own arguments when I write and what I need to avoid or watch for. It also gives many examples, enough that I can know and see my own errors and fix them.
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I find that this is an interesting topic to choose from when it comes to fallacy. In our society, it is full of fallacy and are unable to take charge of our own situation. It looks like a content fallacy is more of a difficult situation to describe than a structural fallacy. Content fallacy is more of something that can be resolved while a structual fallacy is something that is not fixable.
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