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Flaw Practice – Ultimate Frisbee

Identify the flaw in the argument: “The ultimate frisbee community has been in the news a lot lately. Therefore Braden, who is an ultimate frisbee fris-bro, must have been in the news recently.”

Answer

This is a whole-to-part composition flaw.  Descriptions you use for a community as a whole do not necessarily apply to the members of that community.  Here, it’s possible that the frisbee community was in the news as a group, even if no individual members were in the news.  So, we cannot use a piece of information about the community as a whole to support a conclusion about the community members.

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