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Notes on Logic:

Informal, Deductive, and Inductive

Posts tagged with "composition"

Statements, Whether Confused Or False, Are Not Fallacies

Friday, 21. July 2006, 13:14:12

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BBC News--Technology reports on a recent study about bloggers:

A study by social networking site MSN Spaces found that nearly 60% of people in the UK use blogs as an online diary.
"Citizen journalists" are increasingly dominating the headlines for reporting events using online tools like blogs.
A second survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 65% of people in the US who write a blog also do not consider their work journalism.

(BBC News Technology. "Numbers cut through blogging hype." (20 July 2006) URL=<http://http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5197808.stm>"

The confusion implicit in the first sentence implies that 60% of the people in the UK blog. However, the context provided by the two following sentences in the quoted passage make it clear that the intent of the author is to report that of the people in the UK who blog, 60% of those blog in an online-diary form.

The mistake in the composition of the population studied is not an instance of the Composition Fallacy, since a fallacy need have at least two statements: a premise and an conclusion. This passage is only one statement with no supporting ellipsis.

Instead, by the Principle of Charity, it's best to regard the statement as confused rather than false. Thus, we should translate to an appropriate contextual meaning before analysis.

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Nanotechnology and Emergent Properties

Tuesday, 4. July 2006, 12:00:00

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With respect to composition, the usual heuristic is to attempt to model the higher level of phenomena on the basis of a lower level of phenomena (sometimes termed, "a dimension less than the one under examination").

With respect to nanoparticles safety concerns arise from surprising and unpredictable toxicological qualities on biological cells:

Their small size, large surface area, and unusual structures endow them with electronic, optical, and catalytic properties not found in their parent materials.

. (Aimee Cunningham, "Particular Problems: Assessing Risks of Nanotechnology," Science News, 169 No. 18 (6 May 2006), 280.)

Nanoparticles can be more toxic than the normally occurring larger particles, and, additionally, nanoparticles can exhibit novel electrical and catalytic properties which make them toxic in unpredictable ways.

Empirical research seems to be the method of discovery of the special properties of nanoparticles. By working from chemistry alone, or from physics alone, the properties of nanoparticles do not seem to be predictable. It seems promising that both sciences will benefit from another direction of discovery: examining seemingly emergent properties at a lower scale of phenomena.

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