Lesson Five

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Lesson Five

• Love is a Fallacy
• by Max Shulman

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Background information
About the author Max Shulman
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Max Shulman

• a writer in the early '40s as one of Americas
  best-known humorists. Lots of his novels were
  adapted to the screen.
• Best remembered for creating the popular
  character Dobie Gillis, a typical American teen
  who frequently suffered from romantic angst. The
  character appeared on a popular television sitcom
  during the '50s and was in a feature film in
  1953.

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Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

• English essayist and critic who is now best known
  for his "Essays of Elia" (1823,1833). He
  collaborated with his sister Mary in adapting
  Shakespeare's plays into stories for children.
• "Tales from Shakespeare"
• "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets"

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Thomas Carlyle ( 1795-188)

• English author, Scottish writer
• He influenced social thinking about the new
  industrial working class through his essay
  "Chartism" and his book The Present and the
  Past. He is best known for his epic history of
  The French Revolution 1837 and his lectures
  On Heroes and Hero-Workshop 1841

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Thomas Carlyle ( 1795-1881)

• Carlyle developed a peculiar style of his own
  which was called --- "Carlyese" "Carlylism"
• Style -- a compound of
• biblical phrases
• colloquialisms
• Teutonic (???,????)twists
• his own coinings arranged in unexpected
  sequences.

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Thomas Carlyle ( 1795-1881)

• He produced Sartor Resartus 1833-34, the book in
  which he first developed his characteristic style
  and thought. This book is a veiled Sardonic
  (scornful ) attack upon the shams and pretences
  of society, upon hollow rank, hollow officialism,
  hollow custom, out of which life and usefulness
  have departed.

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John Ruskin -- (1819-1900)

• English critic and social theorist
• a writer on art and architecture
• In his later writings he attacked social and
  economic problems
• Modern Painters
• The Stones of Venice
• The Seven Lamps of Architecture
• Time and Tide

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John Ruskin -- (1819-1900)

• Positive program for social reforms
• Sesame and Lilies (?????)
• The Crown of Wild Olive
• The King of the Golden River

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Frankenstein

• The young student in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  (1797--1851) romance of that name (1818), a
  classic horror story. Frankenstein made a
  soulless monster out of corpses from church-yards
  and dissecting-rooms and endued it with life by
  galvanism. The tale shows the creature longed
  for sympathy, but was shunned by everyone and
  became the instrument of dreadful retribution on
  the student who usurped the prerogative of the
  creator

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Special terms in logic

• Argument--a statement which is offered as an
  evidence or a proof.
• It consists of two major elements
• 1. conclusion
• 2. premises -- a previous statement serving as a
  basis for an argument.
• Conclusion is to be drawn from premises.

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Special terms in logic

• Fallacy -- false reasoning, as in an argument
• a weakness and lack of logic or good sense in an
  argument or piece of reasoning

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Fallacy

• Usually, an argument is correct (deductively
  valid) if the premises can provide enough
  conclusive evidence for the conclusion. Otherwise
  the argument is wrong. It is said to be
  fallacious.

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Special terms in logic

• Three kinds of fallacy
• 1. material fallacy -- in its material content
  through a misstatement of the facts.
• 2. verbal fallacy -- in its wording through an
  incorrect use of terms.
• 3. formal fallacy-in its structure through the
  use of an improper process of inference.

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False Analogy

• "High school should not require a freshman
  writing course . Harvard doesn't require a
  freshman writing course, and the students get
  along fine without it".
• --- The analogy is false because the two items
  don't have strong enough similarities to predict
  that what happens in one will happen in the other.

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Dicta Simpliciter

• "Everyone wants to get married someday."
• --- The example starts a logical train of thought
  with an assumption that is false. Not "everyone"
  wants to get married.

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Evading the issue

• There are a number of handy fallacies that people
  press into service to side step a problem while
  appearing to pursue the point.

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1)Distraction

• "Suds ' n ' Puds is a great restaurant you can
  see how shining clean the kitchens are ".
• --- The example is called distraction because the
  reader's attention is drawn to the cleanliness of
  the kitchen instead of to the excellence of the
  food, which is usually the determiner of a great
  restaurant.

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2)Ad hominem

• "against the person". "poisoning the well"
• " Ms Bauer is a terrible English teacher. She
  always wears blue jeans"
• --- Instead of point out faults in teaching
  technique, it calls attention to things about a
  teacher as a person that are unrelated to her
  teaching performance.

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3)Ad misericordian (an appeal to pity)

• "Look at this fourteen-year-old child who's run
  away from home to hide her shame-- pregnant,
  unwashed, friendless. penniless, at the mercy of
  our social service agencies. Can you till claim
  that sex should be taught in the classroom?"

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3)Ad misericordian (an appeal to pity)

• --- In this shifty approach to argumentation, the
  writer gives tear jerking descriptions of the
  cruel opponents' victims in order to arouse
  sympathy from the reader.

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Hasty Generalization

• "Mr Wang's handwriting is terrible. Mr. Hu's
  handwriting is also terrible and you know how
  terrible men's handwriting is ."
• --- It applies a special case to general rule.
  That fact that certain person's handwriting is
  bad doesn't imply that all mens handwriting is
  bad.

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Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

• After this, therefore because of this"
• "The last five times that I've worn my white
  pants, something depressing has happened. I'm not
  going to wear those pants again!"
• -- This fallacy assumes that if event Y happened
  after event X, then X must be the cause of Y.

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Circular Reasoning

• or Begging the question
• "Juan is an impressive speaker because he always
  touches his listeners deeply."

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Circular Reasoning

• --- This problem occurs when the writer tries to
  support a claim by restating it in different
  words. You can tell this example is circular by
  considering this Why is Juan an impressive
  speaker? Because he touches his listeners
  deeply.? Why are Juan's listeners touched so
  deeply? Because he is an impressive speaker.
• impressive touching someone deeply

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Appeal to the Wrong Authority

• "My political science teacher says that the new
  math is impossible for children to learn.

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Appeal to the Wrong Authority

• --- If the student believes that political
  science teacher's low opinion of new math
  strongly supports an argument against new math,
  the student is wrong. The political science
  teacher is an authority, but in a different field.

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Non Sequitur -- "it doesn't follow"

• "Students who take earth science instead of
  physics are lazy. Susie took earth science
  instead of physics. Susie should be kicked out of
  school"
• --- If the first statement is correct, then you
  could conclude that Susie is lazy. But there's
  nothing in that line of reasoning that says lazy
  students should be kicked out of school. The
  conclusion doesn't follow.

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(No Transcript)
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Pre-class questions

• 1 How do you understand the title of the lesson?
• 2 Which rhetorical speech is repeatedly used in
  this lesson to achieve the fixed effects?
• 3 How many sections can you divide the lesson
  into?
• 4 Tell the students what difficulties they will
  face in understanding the lesson.
• 5 What is the theme of the story? Where is it
  stated?
• 6 What role does the raccoon coat play in the
  development of the story?
• 7 What is the purpose of the narration? Can you
  find evidence from the text?
• 8 How does the story end? In what sense is the
  conclusion ironic?

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Detailed study of the text

• title -- humorous/ well chosen
• 1. When "fallacy" is taken in its ordinary sense,
  the title means
• There is a deceptive or delusive quality about
  love.
• Love has delusive qualities

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• 2. When "fallacy" is having logical sense, it
  means
• Love cannot be deduced from a set of given
  premises.
• Love can not follow the given rules.
• Love is an error, a deception and an emotion that
  does not follow the principles of logic.

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• Fallacy a false or mistaken idea
• It is a fallacy to suppose that riches always
  bring happiness.
• Love is a fallacy
• 1. There is a deceptive or delusive quality about
  love.
• 2. Love is an error, a deception that does not
  fellow the principle of love

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• Paras 1-3
• Charles Lamb, as merry and enterprising a fellow
  as you will meet in a month of Sundays.
• Charles Lamb is the kind of merry and
  enterprising person you rarely encounter. He
  wrote the essays, Old China and Dream's Children,
  which set free the informal essay.

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• enterprising energetic, initiative
• in a month of Sundays in a long time
• unfetter free from fetter, to set free or keep
  free from restrictions or bonds.
• limp drooping, having lost stiffness, rigidity
• flaccid Lacking firmness and resilience, flabby
• spongy soft and porous

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• Pedantic
• Characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious
  concern for book learning and formal rules
• ???, ??
• a pedantic attention to details.??????????
• a pedantic style of writing ????????
• an academic insistence on precision ??????????
• donnish refinement of speech ??????
• scholastic and excessively subtle
  reasoning.???????????

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Implication

• My writing is even more informal. I can do better
  than them. He says this only with his tongue in
  cheek.

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What is his purpose of writing this essay?

• He compared logic to a living thing ( a human
  being). Logic is not at all a dry learned branch
  of learning. It is like a living human being,
  full of beauty, passion and painful emotional
  shocks.

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Trauma

• a term in psychiatry meaning a painful emotional
  experience.
• Trauma A painful emotional experience, wound or
  shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to
  the psychological development of a person, often
  leading to neurosis.

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Authors note

• 1) His own idea about his own essay.
• From his point of view, his essay is sth limp,
  spongy. It is very informal.
• 2) His own idea about the purpose of that essay.
• It is not a dry branch of learning , but like a
  human being.

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• Para 4
• 1. How did the narrator describe himself? What
  does it show? How does the author bring out the
  pomposity of the narrator? What makes the satire
  humorous?
• The writer is satirizing a smug
  self-conceited freshman in a law school, who
  keeps boasting at every opportunity. He heaps
  upon himself all the beautiful words of praise he
  can think of--cool, logical, keen, calculating,
  perspicacious , acute , astute , powerful,
  precise and penetrating . This exaggerated
  self-praise and the profuse use of similes and
  metaphors help to make the satire humorous.

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• 2. Cool was I and logical.
• Inversion to emphasize "cool".
• 3. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and
  astute-- I was all of these.
• keen (of the mind) active, sensitive, sharp
• (syn. nimble, quick, adroit prompt, sharp smart
  swift) ???,???
• sight ?????
• intelligence ?????

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calculating

• coldly planning and thinking about future actions
  and esp. whether they will be good or bad for
  oneself.

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perspicacious

• fml. quick to judge and understand ???????, ??
• having or showing keen judgment and understanding
  

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acute, astute

• acute-- (senses, sensation, intellect)
• ??,??,??
• able to notice small differences
• Dogs have an acute sense of smell.
• astute -- shrewd , quick at seeing how to gain an
  advantage
• clever and able to see quickly sth, that is to
  one's advantage.???,???

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Dynamo Scalpel

• Dynamo generator
• Scale standard in measurement
• Scalpel A small, straight knife with a thin,
  sharp blade used in surgery and dissection.

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comparison

• His brain
• 1. dynamo -- powerful
• 2. a chemist's scales--- precise, accurate
• 3. scalpel -- penetrating

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Para.5

• Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst
  of all, a faddist----introduction of the first
  antagonist Petey Burch
• He downgrades his roommate.
• nothing upstairs -- (Am. slang) empty-headed

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unstable

• unstable
• -- easily moved, upset or changed
• emotional
• -- having feelings which are strong or easily
  moved

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impressionable

• -- easy to be influenced, often with the result
  that one's feeling and ideas change easily and
  esp. that one is ready to admire other people.

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fad

• -- a style etc that interests many people for a
  short time, passing fashion.
• Faddista person who always follows fashion with
  craze

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• Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason.
• (1) I believe following passing crazes(A
  short-lived popular fashion a fad.????????????)
  shows a complete lack of sound judgment.
• (2) submit to offer as an opinion suggest,
  propose

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negation

• --- the lack or opposite of sth. positive, The
  opposite or absence of something regarded as
  actual, positive, or affirmative.
• Reason
• --- the ability to think, draw conclusions
• Fads / passing fashions, in my opinion, show a
  complete lack of reason.

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• To be swept up in every new craze that comes
  along, to surrender yourself to idiocy (A foolish
  or stupid utterance or deed just because
  everybody else is doing it-- this, to me, is the
  acme of mindlessness.
• (1) to be swept up in to be carried away by
  to follow enthusiastically
• (2) craze something that is currently the
  fashion fad
• (3) to surrender yourself to yield to
  indulge (in)
• (4) idiocy behavior like that of an idiot
  great foolishness or stupidity

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Raccoon

• --?? the fur of a small, tree climbing mammal of
  N. America, having yellowish gray fur and a
  black, bushy ringed tail.????????

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in the swim

• -- knowing about and concerned in what is going
  on in modern life.
• active in or conforming to current fashions

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mixed metaphor

• 1. brain -- a precision instrument
• 2. brain -- a machine that has gears

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He didnt have it exactly, but at least he had
first rights on it.

• He didnt really own Polly, or Polly didnt
  really belong to him. He meant they were not
  married or going steady. But they were friends so
  Petey had the first claim or privilege of first
  asking Polly to be his wife.
• Notice the deliberate use of it, showing the
  narrators attitude towards Polly. It maybe
  refers to a property or wealth, which can be
  possessed by sb before appropriation.

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• Why was the narrator interested in Polly Espy?
  What kind of girl was she?
• According to the narrator, he was interested
  in Polly "for a shrewdly calculated, entirely
  cerebral reason". He wanted Polly to help
  further his career as a lawyer. Polly was
  beautiful, gracious only she was not
  intelligent. The narrator considered Polly "a
  beautiful dumb girl", who would smarten up under
  his guidance to become a suitable wife for him.

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cerebral

• (fml, humor) ???
• 1. of the brain
• 2. intellectual, excluding the emotions
• tending to or showing (too much) serious thinking

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carriage

• --- (sing) the manner of carrying oneself,
  bearing the manner of holding one's head, limbs,
  and body when standing or walking.
• physical aspects of persons bearing ??, ??
• Dancing can improve the carriage. ?????????

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deportment -- fml.

• 1. Br.E the way a person, esp. a young lady,
  stands and walks
• 2. Am.E the way a person, esp, a young lady,
  behaves in the company of others

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bearing

• -- manner of holding one's body or way of
  behaving
• (physical /mental posture)??,??
• She has a very modest bearing. ??????

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breeding

• polite social behavior

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makings

• -- qualities, the possibility of developing into
  ??
• He has the makings of a good doctor.
• He has in him the makings of a great man.

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The main idea of this lesson

• It is about a law student who tries to marry the
  girl after suitable re-education, but he's been
  too clever for his own good.
• The narrator, Dobie Gillis, a freshman in a law
  school, is the protagonist

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Protagonist

• a law school student
• very young
• clever
• over-conceited -- cool, logical, keen,
  calculating, perspicacious, acute, astute,
• powerful, precise, penetrating

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Antagonists

• 1. Petey Burch -- pitiful, dump, roommate,
  faddist
• 2. Polly Espy --- beautiful, gracious, stupid

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The summary of the story

• This text is a piece of narrative writing, a
  story. The narrator of the story, Dobie Gill is a
  freshman in a law school, is the hero or
  protagonist. He struggles against two antagonist
  Petey Burch, his roommate whose girl friend he
  plans to steal and Polly Espy, the girl he
  intends to marry after suitable re-education.
  Dobie tried very hard to persusde Petey to
  exchange a raccoon coat with his girl. Then Dobie
  had several dates with Polly, with the view to
  educate her to meet the requirements for an ideal
  wife.

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The summary of the story

• The story reached its climax when Polly refuses
  to go steady with the narrator because she had
  already promised to go steady with Petey Burch,
  simply because Petey owned a raccoon coat, a coat
  that all fashionable people on campus were
  wearing. The raccoon coat which he gave to Petey
  Burch for the privilege of dating his girl. The
  story ends with a very ironic tone.

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Discrimination 1

• 1. Fads enjoy very brief popularity, which
  fashions are likely to be longer-lasting. Also,
  "fad" has a pejorative connotation. A fad is a
  cheap sort of fashion, somewhat debased. To be
  described as fashionable is a compliment.
  However, to be swayed by fads is to show a
  weakness for sudden and brief trends.

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Discrimination 2

• 2. "Incredible" means unbelievable. It comes from
  the Latin "in" (not), and "credibitis
  (credible). "Incredulous" means disbelieving or
  skeptical. It is not as strong as "incredible"

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Discrimination 3

• "Eager suggests strong interest or desire.
  "Passionate" is nearly the same but generally is
  used in a more intense way, to express a degree
  of emotion slightly greater than "eager".
• "Feeling" and Emotions" are often considered
  interchangeable, though "emotions" is often
  considered the stronger word.

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Discrimination 4

• keen --
• It suggests unusual ability or perceptiveness
  adding to them a vigorous forceful ability to
  grass complex problem
• 1. The keen ears of the dog heard the sound long
  before we did.
• 2. He exercised keen judgment to rescue the
  drowning.
• ?????,??????????

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calculating --

• It means coldly planning and thinking about
  future actions and esp. whether they will be good
  or bad for oneself ???,???
• He was regarded as a calculating man.
• To Kate, calculating and cold, the most important
  thing was power.

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perspicacious -- fml.

• It suggests one has or shows an unusual power or
  ability of keen judgment and understanding ??,??
• Tom's understanding to the matter is .
• ????????????????

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perspicacious -- fml

• These were the fundamental difficulties, but few
  men were perspicacious enough to appreciate them.
  
• ????????,?????????????????

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acute --

• It suggests a sensitivity and receptivity to the
  small differences that was not notices by others,
  also implies a high-keyed state of nervous
  attention that will not be lasting.
• He is an acute observer and thinker.

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astute --

• It means clever and having a thorough or deep
  understanding, stemming from a scholarly or
  experienced mind that is full command of a given
  field.
• ???????
• He is astute and capable. ??????
• They are astute financiers.
• ??????????????

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Summary Assignments

• 1. Summary of each section
• to make the students aware of the thoughts and
  ideas offered by the author and make the students
  know what we should learn from the lesson.
• 2.Assignments