I would like to point out that I stumbled across a gold mine (quality not quantity) of argumentative fallacies within this very hectic and problematic Bigfoot experience account. Steve (Pavlik) is one hell of a man who claims more Bigfoot sightings exist in Washington than any number of bears... with a black bear population of 25,000 to 30,000 to be an asshole. I’m only being cruel because I have a reason to be, and I’m going to prove it below. And also because he used Bigfoot as a real and animal-like being to tell his story, and then in the very last paragraph he gets very specific about how he believes that Bigfoot is a “spiritual being”. An “entity with powers beyond our imagination...”
FALLACIES, BABY. Let’s step into it.
BEARS! (And Unrepresentative Samples)
“In reality bear sightings on the Lummi reservation are far less frequent than Bigfoot sightings” Wise words from our friend Steve. I would personally call this an unrepresentative lack of sample, although we can still use the fallacy to understand Steve’s comment. From my comment above about the real bear population in Washington, we know that there are indeed bears in Washington and in Bellingham, Washington (where Steve resides). I decided to look up all Bigfoot sightings in Washington, and I found that a man who has been tallying up the sightings over the past 30 years has accumulated just over 1000 sightings. Thank you Bob Filbey for clearing this unrepresentative sample up for us.
Anecdotal Fallacy... Misleading Vividness
Both stories told by Steve of his encounters with Bigfoot are extremely detailed, but still have no explicit confirmation of Bigfoot. He did not see anything at all, he just heard a loud cry that apparently woke all of the nearby dogs up, and saw a tree violently shaking just 20 feet in front of him while cleaning birds. He did however, fail to mention that he had a dog in the first story, but his dog, Robin, spontaneously appears in the second story. “Although all of this disruption was taking place less than 20 feet in front of me, I could see nothing due to the density of the brush and foliage. Robin, my Labrador retriever, who had been lying on the ground next to me chewing on a pheasant wing, also had leapt to his feet.” It’s just hard for me to believe that he left out the fact that he had a dog in the first story, but mentioned that all of the nearby dogs were barking and howling for 10 minutes after he heard Bigfoot “cry out”, Which makes me believe that he’s simply trying to be specific with his story, but sort of fell short.
Quantifier Shift
“The subject of Bigfoot often comes up in the classes I teach. Everyone, it seems has a Bigfoot story.” “Many of my students, for example, have had a Bigfoot encounters. Almost everyone knows someone who has seen a Bigfoot.” These are Steve‘s exact words. The first quote is taken from the very beginning of his blog, and the second quote is taken from the third to last paragraph. They contradict each other. “Almost” everyone used to be “Everyone” which I guess is actually flipped from the quantifier shift, but i think it still holds its meaning and Steve’s point. He is saying everyone has this connection with Bigfoot, and everyone knows someone who has had an experience with Bigfoot, so the encounters have to have this higher meaning... Have to mean that Bigfoot is justified.
Ad Hominem
“The Syfy channel continues to release movie after movie based on the theme of man-eating Bigfoots that terrorize teams of scientists or camp full of teenagers. -Both well-deserving targets.” “I believe it to be a spiritual being, and entity that has powers beyond our imagination, including the power to shape shift, to change forms. It is for this reason we will never be able to scientifically prove their existence.” Holy shit this is hilarious. If an ad hominem is an “irrelevant attack on a person that makes one of their arguments false”, I think calling scientists a well deserving target of Bigfoot, then saying that scientifically, you cannot prove Bigfoots existence is a damn good ad hominem.
Overall, I think that Steve really and invigoratingly believes in the spirit of Bigfoot. I am not trying to take this belief away from him, but his justification for his arguments, and the way he explains his story details are questionable for me, and the fallacies that help me strengthen my point are pretty clear for me. I think the universal understandings of data on bears outweighs the senses (mainly hearing, smell and sometimes sight) that tell a person that Bigfoot is afoot.
