The Historical Review And Reflection On Western Research Of Fallacy

In the history of western logic, the theory of fallacy which is as the obverse of the correct reasoning, has been concerned and researched by the logicians from Aristotle. Because of the richness and complexity of its origin, fallacy seems to be scattered, which is different with the correct reasoning, so searching for a reasonable criteria for the classification has been the main task of the pre-modern logicians who were engaged in the research of fallacy. This research situation has improved a lot since 20th century. The modern fallacy researchers have realized that compared with the theory of the correct reasoning, the method for researching fallacy is obsolete and depth-lacked. As a result of that, they positively use the existing results of modern logic to search for the essence of fallacy and the effective method of avoiding fallacy. By discoursing the history of the western fallacy theory research briefly and summarizing the logical sequence the Fallacy Theory development, the author puts forward some ideas of fallacy research from two dimensions.The whole thesis can be divided into five parts:In the Introduction part, the author introduces the significance and the research features of the Fallacy Theory. On the basis of this, the research ideas and the targets that the author wants to achieve are also mentioned in this part.Chapter One is about the brief introduction of fallacy research in the western history, which is divided into four stages according to the time sequence. In each stage, some representative fallacy theories are selected to be presented briefly. This has established the base for analyzing the research features and development context of the fallacy theory.In Chapter Two, the logical sequence and the historical features are summarized from three aspects, that is content, method and target of fallacy research. The aim is to illustrate that the traditional fallacy researchers attached great importance to the definition and epitaxial analysis of fallacy. Although the fallacy research improves, the method is monotonous. In this part, the research results achieved by Hamblin and other scholars are also discussed.The author tries to analyze the fallacy argumentation from two dimensions in Chapter Three. One is introducing the situational factors into the proposition characterization to let people realize that some seem-to-be-true propositions cannot get a conclusion from the premise effectively if the situation changes, thereby many kinds of fallacies can be revealed, and some-to-be-fallacious argumentations maybe have key factors in situation of premise to deduce the conclusion. The other is constructing a contradictory proposition calculus system, which contains the contradiction that must be rejected, by using Jan Eukasiewicz's Axiomatic Rejection Method for reference. Because in classical logic, contradictory propositions are fallacies of reasoning, the second dimension is to let people realize that if the well-formed formula which is derived from this system can be used to demonstrate in practical debate, the fallacy will be emerged.Epilogue is the further thinking of the meaning of fallacy theory, the method of introducing the situational factors into the propositions, and the calculus system of contradictory proposition. Because there is no objective and clear standard of the situational characterizing of propositions, it is needed that the form of technology research should be strengthened and the objective standard of elements selection in the situation should be provided. However, because the reasoning mode of the contradictory system of propositional calculus is different with people's original thinking habit, it will make the system cumbersome to understand, and bring about some logical problem. It should be further researched in these aspects.