Learn Logic with Beavis and Butthead!

A work in progress, where our two friends exemplify logical fallacies, types of causation and other cool stuff. Quotations are from memory, and so may not be entirely accurate, e.g. I may have substituted "buttmunch" for "buttknocker"....

Circular definition

This is where you include the concept you are defining in the definition of that concept.

Butthead: Shut up, bunghole!
Beavis : What's a bunghole?
Butthead: A bunghole is what you are, bunghole!

Fallacy of Accident

Assuming that a generalisation will hold in every case.

Butthead: They must be cool, they're from Seattle.

Converse Fallacy of Accident(?)

Making a generalisation from insufficient evidence.

Storekeeper: Hello, Maximart. We've got a robbery in progress
Police : Are they armed?
Storekeeper: Er...of course they're armed. Aren't all kids armed?

Equivocation

Equivocation means many things, but is often taken to mean using a word in a different sense to that which was intended. In fact the word "equivocation" is pretty equivocal.

(Beavis, under the influence of a music video, is "dancing" on the sofa.)

Butthead: Get down, Beavis!
Beavis : I am getting down!

Circular causation

A chicken and egg situation. Not always the result of faulty logic, of course - life is often like that, as Butthead demonstrates here....

Beavis : How come Tom Petty's on TV?
Butthead: Coz he's famous, dumbass.
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's famous?
Butthead: Coz he's on TV, buttmunch!
Beavis : Yeah, but how come he's on TV?

and so on....

Beavis on the philosophy of language

Words suck.