Erroneous judgments are a separate and very entertaining part of logic. They are often found in everyday speech and, as a rule, are accidental (paralogisms). But if a logical error was made in the inference on purpose, in order to confuse the interlocutor and knock him off the right line of thinking, then we are talking about sophism.
The origin of sophism
The word "sophism" has Greek roots and translated from this language means "cunning invention", or "trick". By sophism, it is customary to mean an inference that is based on some deliberately incorrect statement. Unlike paralogism, sophism is a deliberate and deliberate violation of logical rules. Thus, any sophism always contains one or several, often quite skillfully disguised, logical errors.
Sophists were called some of the ancient Greek philosophers of the 4th - 5th centuries BC, who achieved great success in the art of logic. Then, during the period of moral decline in the society of Ancient Greece, one after another, the so-called teachers of eloquence began to appear, who considered their goal to spread wisdom, and that is why they also called themselves sophists. They reasoned and carried their conclusions to the masses, but the problem was that these sophists were not scientists. Many of their speeches, convincing at first glance, were based on knowingly false and misinterpreted truths. Aristotle spoke of sophism as "imaginary evidence." Truth was not the goal of the sophists; they sought to win the dispute or get practical benefit in any way, with an emphasis on eloquence and distorted facts.
Examples of Intentional Logic Errors
Errors of this kind are especially common in the ancient mathematical sciences - arithmetic, algebraic and geometric sophisms. In addition to mathematical ones, there are also terminological, psychological and, finally, logical sophisms, which for the most part look like a meaningless game based on the ambiguity of certain linguistic expressions, understatement, incompleteness, and difference in contexts. For example:
“Man has what he did not lose. The man did not lose his tail. So he has a tail."
“One can see without the right eye, just as one can see without the left. In addition to the right and left, a person has no other eyes. From which it follows that in order to see, it is not at all necessary to have eyes."
“The more vodka you drink, the more your hands will shake. The more you shake your hands, the more alcohol will be spilled. The more alcohol is spilled, the less will be drunk. Conclusion: to drink less, you need to drink more."
“Socrates is a man, but on the other hand, a man is not the same as Socrates. This means that Socrates is not Socrates, but something else."
