LOGICAL FALLACIES

Logic plays a very important role in our everyday life. Our politicians are best in playing with words. You just have to read the press statements of some of India's famed political leaders in our newspapers. Even the Indo-Pak dialogue process can get affected by "logical fallcies" committed by either parties during joint statements. Our Indian foriegn minister had to make clarifications when his statements was found to have logical fallacies [The Hindu, 31 May, 2004]. Even we do commit logical fallacies. Look at the following scenarios that occured during one of my industrial visits.
Scene 1:
Visitor: What is the difference between a drilling and tooling?

Plant Chief: It is simple, A drilling is meant for drill and tooling is meant for tools.
[Definiendum appears in Definens- A case of definition circularity which defies the logic of the term definition itself [p. 193 Copi 2000]

Scene 2:
Plant Chief: All bloody politicians are corrupt
Even the No. 1 plays dirty politics
[five minutes later, His subordinate gives him a pamphlet]
Plant Chief: Ah, this is the festival brochure bought out by our Chairman's party. He is the president of the DUD party.

Scene 3:
Visitor: Chief, How ethical are you vis-a-vis your competitors?

Plant Chief: If we fault on excise payments, then we become cheaters
We donot fault on excise payments and our records are clear.Our competitors cheat
We donot cheat like others, we are ethical
[Fallacy of denying the antecedent, invalid modus tollens]

Scene 4:
Plant Chief: My salesman was out on an assignment, I asked him "Have you reached Mumbai and delivered the consignment?". The bloody salesman "bugger" replied that he was speaking from Mumbai, when in fact I saw him from my office window starting his bike. He was lying to me. These sales people are big manipulators, liars.

[A phone call comes, his HR manager attends the phone call]

HR manager: Sir, Mr. Lal on line

Plant Chief: [Nods his head in disagreement to the HR manager]

HR manager: Mr. Lal, Chief is not there, he is gone to the plant

Plant Chief: [slaps his forehead] huh, why tell him where I am? [heaves a sigh of relief]

Scene 5:
Visitor: Why did the employee not wear the head gear?
Plant chief: We have deployed the best safety standards, it is their life they have to take care of themselves
[Plaque]: Management is committed and resposnsible to its ....blah..blah..blah...

Scene 6:
Visitor: How do you do plant maintenance? Do you shut down all process?
Tour Guide: Yes, we shut down everything, but production doesnot stop
(phew..how can that be??)

It is not that we donot commit these fallacies ourselves. Everyday I commit illogical mistakes which I cannot realize. I am sure you too will have many fallacies and episodes to share.