The standardization fallacy

The “banzhaf Fallacy” Fallacy

The Risk-return Fallacy

We assume that in the world of business, higher risks are only taken when rewarded with higher expected returns. This supposition has been confirmed empirically using capital market data. However, accounting measures have yielded puzzling results: using the mean and variance of ROE as measures of return and risk, respectively, Bowman (1980) and other researchers find a negative relationship bet...

The Abstract Meaning Fallacy

rights provisions are valuable even if their contours are not fully determined in advance. They shape the way that political actors understand and articulate the values inherent in the political system; they shape the beliefs of political actors about what they can and cannot do, what they are fighting for and what they are fighting against. But rights are less valuable, indeed not really valua...

The Coupling-Constitution Fallacy

In the face of both common sense and contemporary science, an increasing number of philosophers and psychologists have found themselves attracted to the view that, in ordinary tool use, we have instances in which cognitive processes span the cranial boundary and extend into extracranial space. As Daniel Dennett puts it, " minds are composed of tools for thinking that we not only obtain from the...

The Anti-naturalistic Fallacy

The naturalistic fallacy and Hume’s ‘law’ are frequently appealed to for the purpose of drawing limits around the scope of scientific inquiry into ethics and morality. These two objections are shown to be without force. Thus two highly influential obstacles are removed from naturalizing ethics. The relative merits of moral skepticism and moral realism are compared. Moral skepticism and some for...