To suppose that "I know" is a descriptive phrase, is only one example of the descriptive fallacy, so common in philosophy. Even if... some language is now purely descriptive, language was not in origin so, and much of it is still not so. utterance of obvious ritual phrases, in the appropriate circumstances, is not describing the action we are doing, but doing it ("I do"): in other cases it functions, like tone and expression, or again like punctuation and mood, as an intimation that we are employing language in a special way ("I warn," "I ask," "I define"). Such phrases cannot, strictly, be lies, though they can "imply" lies, as "I promise" implies that I fully intend, which may be true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There was somewhat military in his nature, not to be subdued, always manly and able, but rarely tender, as if he did not feel hims...elf except in opposition. He wanted a fallacy to expose, a blunder to pillory, I may say required a little sense of victory, a roll of the drum, to call his powers into full exercise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It would be a fallacy to deduce that the slow writer necessarily comes up with superior work. There seems to be scant relationship... between prolificness and quality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and ap...plause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In this lucid and flexible pattern only one thing remained always stationary, but this fallacy went unnoticed by Martha. The blind... spot was the victim. The victim showed no signs of life before being deprived of it. If anything, the corpse which had to be moved and handled before burial seemed more active than its biological predecessor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People who give us their full confidence believe that they have thereby earned a right to ours. This is a fallacy; one does not ac...quire rights through gifts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of t...he so-called "scientific" mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would... generally characterize as the "pathetic fallacy."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using "good" as our example. Calling something good is char...acteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of "good" is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »