Name:                                                                          Date:

You have a total of 30 minutes to do this test. Answer all the questions following the instructions in each section.

Determine which fallacy is committed in each of the following disguised arguments:

1. Everyone must be allowed to speak his or her mind, because otherwise freedom of speech would be violated.

2. Gruber's argument begins with the premise, "Cats are hairy animals." But this statement does not take into account that a few cats have no hair at all. So Gruber's first premise is false and his argument is therefore unsound.

Identify the informal fallacy, or fallacies -- or at least one, if there are several -- involved in the following arguments.

3. The theory of evolution cannot be true. The Bible says the world was created in seven days.

4. Insurance agents never tell you about the ways their company has to get out of paying insurance claims until you actually file a claim. So how can insurance companies blame people for padding their claims the next time they have an accident or burglary?

5. Uncle Homer says he has lived to celebrate his ninetieth birthday because all his life he ate a garlic clove and downed a shot of whiskey every day.

6. If you study hard you will graduate with honors; and if you don't study at all you won't graduate. Either you'll study hard or you will not study at all. So, either you'll graduate with honors or you won't graduate.

Arrange the following terms in order of increasing extension (i.e., put the term with the smallest extension first and the term with the largest extension last).

7. Beagle, mammal, dog, domestic pet.

8. Symphony, music, classical music, sounds.

9. Vehicle, Neon, automobile, Dodge.

Decide whether each of the following definitions is synonymous, enumerative, (ostensive or denotative) connotative (possibly by genus and difference), or operational.

10. An icosahedron is a polyhedron having twenty faces.

11. The face cards in a deck of playing cards are all the jacks, queens and kings.

12. A full house is a poker hand consisting of three of a kind and a pair.

Each passage below is concerned with the definition of a word, and in some cases a particular context has been supplied. Read each passage carefully and then determine the use to which the definition has been put. Is it (a) reportive, (b) limited reportive (perhaps theoretical or legal), (c) precising, (d) stipulative, (e) persuasive or (f) a combination of these?

13. A law school professor to his class: "Escrow is defined as a property placed by one person in the hands of a second person, usually a trust company, for the delivery to a third person upon the fulfillment by the later of certain specific obligations."

14. A social problems instructor to his class: "There are many varying definitions of poverty. By "poverty," I mean any family unit of two or more persons which has a yearly income of $4,800 or less, or any individual living alone who has a yearly income of $2,000 or less."

15. A teacher to her class of sixth graders: "The word "juvenile" which you just came across in this book, means a "young person."

Indicate which criterion (or criteria) -- like non-circularity, affirmativeness, accuracy, and / or clarity -- is (are) violated by each of the following definitions:

16. A prosecutor to a jury, "A defendant is one who is on trial because he or she has committed a crime."

17. A science teacher to sixth grade students, "A layman is someone who is not trained as a scientist."

18. Father to his teenage son, "A jury is a group of people at a criminal trial."

Bonus question:

THIS PROPOSITION IS NOT TRUE.

 IS IT TRUE OR NOT?

See Peirce for a discussion on this.