WIGBERTO E. TAÑADA, ET AL.
vs.
EDGARDO ANGARA, ET AL.

Facts:

As the WTO opens its access to foreign markets, major trading partners, experienced through reduction of tariffs on its exports specifically on agricultural and industrial products. It further associates with exporting and more investment in the country. The signatory Senators viewed this agreement as a “free market” system since there would be more investment and exporting activities with in the member countries. The “Filipino First Policy” of the Constitution was set aside as it gives way to foreign trading. Thus, this petition.


Issue:

Whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the part of the Senate in giving its concurrence of the WTO agreement.

Ruling:

By the doctrine of incorporation, the country is bound by generally accepted principles of international law, which are considered automatically part of our own laws. In its Declaration of Principles and state policies, the Constitution “adopts the generally accepted principles of international law as part of the law of the land, and adheres to the policy of peace, equality, justice, freedom, cooperation and amity, with all nations.

With WTO, the sovereignty of the state cannot in fact and reality be considered as absolute because it is a regulation of commercial relations among nations. The Senate only did their part in the valid exercise of authority. It remains as the only viable structure for multilateral trading and the veritable forum for the development of international trade law. Its alternative is isolation, stagnation if not economic self-destruction. Thus, the people are allowed, through their duly elected officers to make their free choice.

Petition is DISMISSED for lack of merit.

PIMENTEL, JR.
vs.
EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

FACTS :

The Rome Statute established the International Criminal Court which “shall have the power to exercise its jurisdition over persons for the most serious crimes of international concern xxx and shall be complementary to the national criminal jurisdictions.” Its jurisdiction covers the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression as defined in the Statute. The Philippines signed the Statute on December 28, 2000. Its provisions, however, require that it be subject to ratification, acceptance or approval of the signatory states.

Hence this petition for mandamus filed by petitioners to compel the Office of the Executive Secretary and the Department of Foreign Affairs to transmit the signed copy of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to the Senate of the Philippines for its concurrence in accordance with Sec. 21, Art. VII of the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
Petitioners contend that ratification of a treaty, under domestic law and international law, is a function of the Senate and it is the duty of the executive department to transmit the signed copy of the Rome Statute to the Senate to allow it to exercise its discretion with respect to ratification of treaties. Respondents, however argue that it has no duty to transmit the copy of Rome Statute to Senate for concurrence.

ISSUE :

Whether or not the Executive Secretary and the DFA have a ministerial duty to transmit to the Senate the copy of the Rome Statute.

RULING :

In our system of government, the President, being the head of the state, is regarded as the sole organ and authority in external relations and is the country’s sole representative with foreign nations. As chief architect of foreign policy, the President acts as the country’s mouthpiece with respect to international affairs. Hence, the President is vested with the authority to deal with foreign states and governments, extend or withhold recognition, maintain diplomatic relations, enter into treaties, and otherwise transact business of foreign relations. In the realm of treaty-making, the President has the sole authority to negotiate with other states.

Petition is dismissed.

THE WORLD OF FALLACIES...

FALLACY defined

- A false notion.
- A statement or an argument based on a false or invalid inference.
- Incorrectness of reasoning or belief; erroneousness.
- The quality of being deceptive.
- A component of an argument which, being demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, renders the whole argument invalid.

- In Philosophy, fallacy, any error of reasoning. Reasoning may fail in many ways, and a great variety of fallacies have been distinguished and named.

- In Logic, a term used to characterize an invalid argument. Strictly speaking, it refers only to the transition from a set of premises to a conclusion, and is distinguished from falsity, a value attributed to a single statement.

TYPES OF FALLACIES

In logical arguments, fallacies are either formal or informal. Because the validity of a deductive argument depends on its form, a formal fallacy is a deductive argument that has an invalid form, whereas an informal fallacy is any other invalid mode of reasoning whose flaw is not in the form of the argument.

Beginning with Aristotle, informal fallacies have generally been placed in one of several categories, depending on the source of the fallacy. There are fallacies of relevance, fallacies involving causal reasoning, and fallacies resulting from ambiguities (or equivocations).

Recognizing fallacies in actual arguments may be difficult since arguments are often structured using rhetorical patterns that obscure the logical connections between assertions. Fallacies may also exploit the emotional or intellectual weaknesses of the interlocutor. Having the capability of recognizing logical fallacies in arguments reduces the likelihood of such an occurrence.

A different approach to understanding and classifying fallacies is provided by argumentation theory; see for instance the van Eemeren, Grootendorst reference below. In this approach, an argument is regarded as an interactive protocol between individuals which attempts to resolve a disagreement. The protocol is regulated by certain rules of interaction, and violations of these rules are fallacies. Many of the fallacies in the list below are best understood as being fallacies in this sense.

Fallacious arguments involve not only formal logic but also causality. Others may involve psychological ploys such as use of power relationships between proposer and interlocutor to establish necessary intermediate (explicit or implicit) premises for an argument. Fallacies often have unstated assumptions or implied premises in arguments that are not always obvious at first glance.

Note that providing a critique of an argument has no relation to the truth of the conclusion. The conclusion could very well be true, while the argument as to why the conclusion is true is not valid. See argument from fallacy. banana. Apple.

MATERIAL FALLACIES

The classification of material fallacies widely adopted by modern logicians and based on that of Aristotle, Organon (Sophistici elenchi), is as follows:

Fallacy of Accident (also called destroying the exception or a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid)--makes a generalization that disregards exceptions (e.g., Cutting people is a crime. Surgeons cut people. Therefore, surgeons are criminals.)

Converse Fallacy of Accident (also called reverse accident, destroying the exception, or a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter)--argues from a special case to a general rule (e.g., Every swan I have seen is white, so it must be true that all swans are white.)

Irrelevant Conclusion (also called Ignoratio Elenchi)--diverts attention away from a fact in dispute rather than address it directly. This is sometimes referred to as a "red herring".

Subsets include:

purely personal considerations (argumentum ad hominem),

popular sentiment (argumentum ad populum--appeal to the majority),

fear (argumentum ad baculum),

conventional propriety (argumentum ad verecundiam--appeal to authority)

Affirming the Consequent--draws a conclusion from premises that do not support that conclusion by assuming Q implies P on the basis that P implies Q (e.g., If a person runs barefoot, then his feet hurt. Socrates' feet hurt. Therefore, Socrates ran barefoot. Other things, such as tight sandals, can result in sore feet.)

Denying the antecedent--draws a conclusion from premises that do not support that conclusion by assuming Not P implies Not Q on the basis that P implies Q (e.g., If I have the flu, then I have a sore throat. I do not have the flu. Therefore, I do not have a sore throat. Other illnesses may cause sore throat.)

Begging the question (also called Petitio Principii, Circulus in Probando--arguing in a circle, or assuming the answer)--demonstrates a conclusion by means of premises that assume that conclusion (e.g., Paul must be telling the truth, because I have heard him say the same thing many times before. Paul may be consistent in what he says, but he may have been lying the whole time.)

Fallacy of False Cause or Non Sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow")--incorrectly assumes one thing is the cause of another (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great.)

A special case of this fallacy also goes by the Latin term post hoc ergo propter hoc--the fallacy of believing that temporal succession implies a causal relation.

Another special case is given by the Latin term cum hoc ergo propter hoc -- the fallacy of believing that happenstance implies causal relation (aka as fallacy of causation versus correlation: assumes that correlation implies causation).

Fallacy of Many Questions (Plurium Interrogationum)--groups more than one question in the form of a single question (e.g., Is it true that you no longer beat your wife? A yes or no answer will still be an admission of guilt to wife-beating.)

Example

The following argument is posited:

Cake is food.
Food is delicious.
Therefore, cake is delicious.

This argument claims to prove that cake is delicious. This particular argument has the form of a

categorical syllogism. Any argument must have premises as well as a conclusion. In this case we need to ask what the premises are—that is, the set of assumptions the proposer of the argument can expect the interlocutor to grant. The first assumption is almost true by definition: cake is a foodstuff edible by humans. The second assumption is less clear as to its meaning.

Since the assertion has no quantifiers of any kind, it could mean any one of the following:

All food is delicious.
One particular type of food is delicious.
Most food is delicious.
To me, all food is delicious.
Some food is delicious.

In all but the first interpretation, the above syllogism would then fail to have validated its second premise. The person may try to assume that his interlocutor believes that all food is delicious; if the interlocutor grants this then the argument is valid. In this case, the interlocutor is essentially conceding the point to that person. However, the interlocutor is more likely to believe that some food is disgusting, and in this case the person is not much better off than he was before he formulated the argument, since he now has to prove the assertion that cake is a unique type of universally delicious food, which is a disguised form of the original thesis. From the point of view of the interlocutor, the person commits the logical fallacy of begging the question.

VERBAL FALLACIES

Verbal fallacies are those in which a conclusion is obtained by improper or ambiguous use of words. They are generally classified as follows.

Equivocation consists in employing the same word in two or more senses, e.g. in a syllogism, the middle term being used in one sense in the major and another in the minor premise, so that in fact there are four not three terms ("All heavy things have a great mass; This is heavy fog; therefore this fog has a great mass").

Connotation fallacies occur when a dysphemistic word is substituted for the speaker's actual quote and used to discredit the argument. It is a form of attribution fallacy.

Amphibology is the result of ambiguity of grammatical structure, e.g. of the position of the adverb "only" in careless writers ("He only said that," in which sentence, the adverb has been intended to qualify any one of the other three words).

Fallacy of Composition "From Each to All". Arguing from some property of constituent parts, to the conclusion that the composite item has that property e.g. "all the band members (constituent parts) are highly skilled, therefore the band (composite item) is highly skilled". This can be acceptable with certain arguments such as spatial arguments e.g. "all the parts of the car are in the garage, therefore the car is in the garage"

Division, the converse of the preceding, arguing from a property of the whole, to each constituent part e.g. "the university (the whole) is 700 years old, therefore, all the staff (each part) are 700 years old".

Proof by verbosity, sometimes colloquially referred to as argumentum verbosium - a rhetorical technique that tries to persuade by overwhelming those considering an argument with such a volume of material that the argument sounds plausible, superficially appears to be well-researched, and it is so laborious to untangle and check supporting facts that the argument might be allowed to slide by unchallenged.

Accent, which occurs only in speaking and consists of emphasizing the wrong word in a sentence. e.g., "He is a fairly good pianist," according to the emphasis on the words, may imply praise of a beginner's progress, or an expert's deprecation of a popular hero, or it may imply that the person in question is a deplorable pianist.

Figure of Speech, the confusion between the metaphorical and ordinary uses of a word or phrase.

Fallacy of Misplaced Concretion, identified by Whitehead in his discussion of metaphysics, this refers to the reification of concepts which exist only in discourse.

Example 1

Tom argues:
Joe is a good tennis player.
Therefore, Joe is 'good', that is to say a morally good person.

Here the problem is that the word good has different meanings, which is to say that it is an ambiguous word. In the premise, Tom says that Joe is good at some particular activity, in this case tennis. In the conclusion, Tom states that Joe is a morally good person. These are clearly two different senses of the word "good". The premise might be true but the conclusion can still be false: Joe might be the best tennis player in the world but a rotten person morally. However, it is not legitimate to infer he is a bad person on the ground there has been a fallacious argument on the part of Tom. Nothing concerning Joe's moral qualities is to be inferred from the premise. Appropriately, since it plays on an ambiguity, this sort of fallacy is called the fallacy of equivocation, that is, equating two incompatible terms or claims.

Example 2

One posits the argument:
Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
Eating a hamburger is better than nothing.
Therefore, eating a hamburger is better than eternal happiness.

This argument has the appearance of an inference that applies

transitivity of the two-placed relation is better than, which in this critique we grant is a valid property. The argument is an example of syntactic ambiguity. In fact, the first premise semantically does not predicate an attribute of the subject, as would for instance the assertion.

A potato is better than eternal happiness.
In fact it is semantically equivalent to the following universal quantification:

Everything fails to be better than eternal happiness.
So instantiating this fact with eating a hamburger, it logically follows that
Eating a hamburger fails to be better than eternal happiness.

That the premise A hamburger is better than nothing does not provide anything to this argument. This fact really means something such as

Eating a hamburger is better than eating nothing at all.

Thus this is a fallacy of composition.

These sort of fallacies are firmly tied to English language and how the words are used in ambiguous ways in several expressions. The phrase "nothing is better than X" actually means "Such a thing that would be better than X does not exist". If the arguments mentioned in this article were to be translated to other languages, they would suddenly make no sense at all since the word "nothing" would be translated differently in different sentences.

DEDUCTIVE FALLACY

In philosophy, the term logical fallacy properly refers to a formal fallacy : a flaw in the structure of a deductive argument which renders the argument invalid.

However, it is often used more generally in informal discourse to mean an argument which is problematic for any reason, and thus encompasses informal fallacies as well as formal fallacies. – valid but unsound claims or bad nondeductive argumentation – .

The presence of a formal fallacy in a deductive argument does not imply anything about the argument's premises or its conclusion (see fallacy fallacy). Both may actually be true, or even more probable as a result of the argument (e.g. appeal to authority), but the deductive argument is still invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises in the manner described. By extension, an argument can contain a formal fallacy even if the argument is not a deductive one; for instance an inductive argument that incorrectly applies principles of probability or causality can be said to commit a formal fallacy.

Reference: http://www.answers.com/topic/fallacy

CHA-CHA or the other way around?

INTRODUCTION.
Before laying down my views of whether or not the change of the Constitution is necessary or beneficial to the country, or others may call it as CHA-CHA, I will first defined and laid out the great importance of the Constitution in our country.

CONSTITUTION DEFINED.

That body of rules and maxims in accordance with which the powers of sovereignty are habitually exercised [Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, p.4]

THE SUPREMACY OF THE CONSTITUTION.
The Constitution is the basic and paramount law to which all other laws must conform and to which all persons, including the highest officials of the land, must defer. No act shall be valid, however noble its intentions, if it conflicts with the Constitution. The Constitution must ever remain supreme. All must bow to the mandate of this law [Cruz, Isagani A., “Constitutional Law” (2003 ed.].

CHARTER CHANGE or "cha-cha" in the Philippines.
Refers to the political and other related processes involved in amending or revising the current 1987 Constitution of the Philippines. Under the current constitution there are three modes of which it could be amended: people's initiative (PI), constituent assembly and constitutional convention. All three would lead to a referendum wherein the proposed amendment/s or revision/s has to be approved by the majority of Filipinos in order to be adopted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Philippines_charter_ change).

MY VIEWS.
Based on the laid information, I don’t believe that there is a need to change the Constitution. Leading countries in the world like France and United States never change their Constitution since from the beginning, but still these countries lead the world politically and economically. The 1987 Philippine Constitution is the product of the past revisions and ammendments of the prior Constitutions, it undergoes series of modifications that suit the type of belief and culture among Filipinos. Historically, CHA-CHA was shut down by the Supreme Court in the following cases:

- Santiago v. COMELEC, 270 SCRA 106
- Pirma v. COMELEC, G.R. No. 129754
- Lambino v. COMELEC, 505 SCRA 160

So, NO to CHA-CHA, let us protect and guard our Constitution against those people who think of their personal interest alone without thinking the many issues / problems to be resolved first in our country.

BETWEEN THE GIANTS....

THE 3rd PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE OF OBAMA and McCAIN

WHO SHOULD BE???

Freedom of thought and of expression is the very soul of democracy – so much so that one cannot exist without the other. It is for this reason that many types of contest debates and public discussion have been evolved in many institutions of learning around the world. Lately, the 3rd US Presidential Debate caught the eyes of the many peoples around the world since US is one of the globally leading country today in which others looked up to as their model. The said 3rd Presidential Debate was moderated by Bob Schieffer of CBS with the country’s presidentiables, Senator Jhon McCain and Senator Barrack Obama. As they started, they were given one (1) question which to be answered at a time among the two debaters. The following were the total ten (10) questions:

- Why is Your Economic Plan Better Than Your Opponent’s?
- How would You Cut Spending?
- Can you balance the Budget in Four Years?
- Are you Willing to Say Face-to-Face What Your Campaigns Have Said About Your Opponent?
- Why Would the Country Be Better Off If Your Running Mate Became President?
- How much Can U.S. Reduce Dependence on Foreign Oil?
- Do You Favor Controlling Health Care Costs Over Expanding Coverage?
- Could You Nominate a Supreme Court Justice Who Differs With Your View on Rose v. Wade?
- Does Poor Performance in School Pose a Threat to National Security?
- Should Federal Government Play a Larger Role in Education?

In each given question, the candidate gave his stand on the issue. Then, the other would be free to argue his opponent’s answer. The entire event gave a view of how the two presidentiables carry their selves on the questions raised. Nevertheless, there were many instances when McCain displayed his aggressive manner in answering the questions; and plenty of situations where Obama manifested calmness over the issue.

Based from my readings and as audience of certain debates, I believe that the 3rd Presidential Debate did not have the formal contest form. The said US Presidential Debate had no similarities in format with the different common types of contest debates. To mention, there were plenty of issues / questions raised to the candidates; when in fact, there should only be one issue. Added to that, there were no affirmative nor negative side was assigned / clarified; and each of them is free to argue the answer of the other without giving the appropriate guidelines of who will give first the interpellation nor the rebuttal speech. Since the said debate did not have the formal contest form in structure, therefore, the 3rd US Presidential debate was only one of the many types of public discussion wherein the candidate were given the appropriate time of laying their views on the current US issues and problems. It is the time that each of them can convince and persuade freely their answers to the audience.

ARGUMENTATION...

Argumentation defined.

Argumentation is generally defined as " the art of influencing others, through the medium of reasoned discourse, to believe or act as we wish them to believe or act."

It is the process of influencing the belief or behavior of a hearer or reader, through spoken or written speech, by supplying him with reasons and stirring his feelings.

In argumentation, the medium is either the written or the spoken word and the opposing speakers may not be in each other's presence.

The Two Methods of Approach in the Work of Argumentation.

1. Conviction. The appeal to reason.

The phase of argumentation whereby the arguer directs his words to the reasoning faculty of man.

Purpose: To create belief, or intellectual agreement.

2. Persuasion. The appeal to the emotions, to the feelings, to the will.

The phase of argumentation whereby the disputant directs his words to the heart, to the feelings, to the sentiments, to the emotions.

Purpose: To stir those one desires to influence to act in the way one wishes them to act