a horse through an open stable door and the head of another through
another door several yards away, and because the colors of both head and
tail were similar, was moved to cry out: “Dear Lord, what a long horse!”
The old lady started with the presupposition that the rump and the head
of the two horses belonged to one, and could make no use of the obvious
solution of the problem of the inconceivably long horse by breaking it
in two.
Such mistakes may be classified under five heads.[162]
(1) Aprioristic mistakes. (Natural prejudices).
(2) Mistakes in observation.
(3) Mistakes in generalization. (When the facts are right and the
inferences wrong).
(4) Mistakes of confusion. (Ambiguity of terms or mistakes by
association).
(5) Logical fallacies.
All five fallacies play important rôles in the lawyer’s work.
We have very frequently to fight natural prejudices. We take certain
classes of people to be better and others to be worse than the average,
and without clearly expressing it we expect that the first class will
not easily do evil nor the other good. We have prejudices about some one
or another view of life; some definition of justice, or point of view,
although we have sufficient opportunity to be convinced of their
incorrectness. We have a similar prejudice in trusting our human
knowledge, judgment of impressions, facts, etc., far too much, so far
indeed, that certain relations and accidents occurring to any person we
like or dislike will determine his advantage or disadvantage at our
hands.
Of importance under this heading, too, are those inferences which are
made in spite of the knowledge that the case is different; the power of
sense is more vigorous than that of reflection. As Hartmann expresses
it: “The prejudices arising from sensation, are not conscious judgments
of the understanding but instinctively practical postulates, and are,
therefore, very difficult to destroy, or even set aside by means of
conscious consideration. You may tell yourself a thousand times that the
moon at the horizon is as big as at the zenith--nevertheless you see it
smaller at the zenith.” Such fixed impressions we meet in every
criminal trial, and if once we have considered how the criminal had
committed a crime we no longer get free of the impression, even when we
have discovered quite certainly that he had no share in the deed. The
second type of fallacy--mistakes in observation--will be discussed later
under sense perception and similar matters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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