Talk:Fallacy of the single cause
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The line about the cause of september eleventh attacks and how it is a prominent topic of disccusion that may contain this fallacy is just not a good point. The word may, without citations renders it useless. Also its an incorrect argument in the first place, the cause of the attacks were clearly the actions of the nineteen individuals involved. They caused the attack, and the individuals aboard the flight that crashed into the ground caused that portion of the plan to fail. The reasons why the attacks happened, ie: Muslim extremism, a desire for a specific cultural group to retain their culture without corruption, the belief that America and perhaps NATO and/or the UN is out to steal oil, vengeance etc. Is not the cause, it is the reason why. For example suppose I am angry at a man for sleeping with my wife and kill him by shooting him. The cause of his death is me shooting him, not me being angry at him for sleeping with my wife, that was the reason why I shot him. But the cause of death was gunshot, we would not say that his death was caused by me being angry at him. This vagueness over the difference between the reason why a theoretical person did something and the cause of an event seems to me to be a logical fallacy itself, I am not sure about that though. The reason why I am removing this mention is the phrases mentioned above, the may and the lack of citations which might be ok for a while under the most innocuos circumstances, but the phrase prominent topic of discussion means that its controversial (since people rarely discuss at length a topic that everybody is in full agreement with) and therefore should always have citations.Colin 8 21:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Broader explanation?
[edit]Attacking Faulty Reasoning, as far as I can tell, discusses causal oversimplification (which is said to be synonymous in this unreferenced article) in more general terms in which someone claims that one or more things are said to be the cause yet these things do not explain all of the effects seen.
(I've also removed "joint effect" as a synonym because a Google Books search suggests this more often refers to the common cause fallacy in which someone argues that A causes B when in reality C causes A & B -- i.e. A & B are "joint effects" of cause C.) —Mrwojo (talk) 05:39, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Example section does not seem opinionated
[edit]The Examples section contains an admonishment stating, "This article is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay." I do not see any opinionated statements in the Examples section. What I do see is a challenge to two very strong societal taboos: school shootings and digital copyright infringement. Most people seem to hold a deep conviction that these acts are wrong. Widespread conviction, of course, is never a proof of the soundness of one's claim. School shootings and the profit losses of digital media artists are serious problems in society. Their resolution requires careful and detailed analysis that goes above and beyond singling out and blaming any one particular person, policy, or simple state of affairs. I see the examples listed as good examples, and they train us to apply principles and think logically in scenarios that might otherwise arouse inculcated prejudice.
Scott7261 02:12, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
Ditto. Few things are more common than reading "officials are investigating -the cause- of the crash" when it should and could be properly presented as, at least; "officials are investigating what led to the crash", or better, "...what factors contributed to...".
A guy who forgot his pw and is too lazy to create another account. 5/21/15 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.133.109.153 (talk) 14:31, 21 May 2015 (UTC)