Talk:Masked-man fallacy

Identical designators

Is it meant 'designators with identical references'? Andres (talk) 14:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't understand either version. Either this should be reworded in the article, or an explanatory link should be used on one or more of the terms. I don't know what article(s) should be linked to, though. - dcljr (talk) 20:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge intensional fallacy

I've marked intensional fallacy to be merged into this article. The Fallacy Files blog mentioned that these are described as the same fallacy: March 2010, April 2010. Whether the intensional fallacy (or "selection-for" fallacy) discussed in What Darwin Got Wrong is the same appears debatable.

The masked man fallacy is also known as larvatus (an old name) and illicit substitution of identicals (so far seen only in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy). —Mrwojo (talk) 01:17, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Example

   Premise 1: I know who Bob is.
   Premise 2: I do not know who the masked man is
   Conclusion: Therefore, Bob is not the masked man.

It goes on to explain "The premises may be true and the conclusion false if Bob is the masked man and the speaker does not know that". But the premises are not true. If premise 1 is true AND Bob is the masked man, then you do know who the masked man is (you would just not know THAT you know him - which is a very different thing). I realize that we are talking about fallacies, but it is very unclear if this is about faulty premises or faulty conclusions (but the latter makes more sense... if the mistake is in the premise, then the fallacy is in the way of getting to that premise). So maybe something more like:

   Premise 1: I know who Bob is.
   Premise 2: I do not recognize the masked man.
   Conclusion: Therefore Bob is not the masked man.

Or maybe something more like the reference (turning it around makes the example a lot clearer):

   Premise 1: Bobs wears masks.
   Premise 2: A masked man committed the crime.
   Conclusion: Therefore Bob committed the crime.

--2A02:810B:C940:13F4:79EE:B0C6:161E:FE7C (talk) 01:51, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't think your rewriting of "know" to "recognize" really helps any; in particular I don't think it does anything to the Superman/Clark Kent example. Personally, I might suggest that maybe the article should rewrite the Bob example to use "It is true that..." and "It is not true that...":

   Premise 1: It is true that I know Bob's last name.
   Premise 2: It is not true that I know the masked man's last name.
   Conclusion: Therefore, Bob is not the masked man.

However, the more formally you rewrite the statements, the more obvious the logical flaw becomes, right? Here the conclusion is merely that the phrase "Bob" is not substitutable-for the phrase "the masked man." ...Or is it? Maybe I do know the masked man's last name; I just don't know that I know it! So the conclusion should be (and logically is) "Therefore, I do not know that Bob is the masked man." (Because if I did know that Bob was the masked man, then of course I would know the masked man's last name — it would be the same as Bob's.) Anyway, the fallacy definitely proceeds from the ambiguity of English phrases like "I know" and "I don't know." The more you formalize the sentences in question, the more obvious the faulty logic becomes, which I think is the point successfully conveyed by the article. --Quuxplusone (talk) 17:30, 18 March 2019 (UTC)