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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - Logical Fallacies

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, logical fallacies, critical thinking and decision-making logical fallacies.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: Logical Fallacies

Lesson 7: logical fallacies.

/en/problem-solving-and-decision-making/how-critical-thinking-can-change-the-game/content/

Logical fallacies

If you think about it, vegetables are bad for you. I mean, after all, the dinosaurs ate plants, and look at what happened to them...

Let's pause for a moment: That argument was pretty ridiculous. And that's because it contained a logical fallacy .

A logical fallacy is any kind of error in reasoning that renders an argument invalid . They can involve distorting or manipulating facts, drawing false conclusions, or distracting you from the issue at hand. In theory, it seems like they'd be pretty easy to spot, but this isn't always the case.

Watch the video below to learn more about logical fallacies.

Sometimes logical fallacies are intentionally used to try and win a debate. In these cases, they're often presented by the speaker with a certain level of confidence . And in doing so, they're more persuasive : If they sound like they know what they're talking about, we're more likely to believe them, even if their stance doesn't make complete logical sense.

False cause

One common logical fallacy is the false cause . This is when someone incorrectly identifies the cause of something. In my argument above, I stated that dinosaurs became extinct because they ate vegetables. While these two things did happen, a diet of vegetables was not the cause of their extinction.

Maybe you've heard false cause more commonly represented by the phrase "correlation does not equal causation ", meaning that just because two things occurred around the same time, it doesn't necessarily mean that one caused the other.

A straw man is when someone takes an argument and misrepresents it so that it's easier to attack . For example, let's say Callie is advocating that sporks should be the new standard for silverware because they're more efficient. Madeline responds that she's shocked Callie would want to outlaw spoons and forks, and put millions out of work at the fork and spoon factories.

A straw man is frequently used in politics in an effort to discredit another politician's views on a particular issue.

Begging the question

Begging the question is a type of circular argument where someone includes the conclusion as a part of their reasoning. For example, George says, “Ghosts exist because I saw a ghost in my closet!"

George concluded that “ghosts exist”. His premise also assumed that ghosts exist. Rather than assuming that ghosts exist from the outset, George should have used evidence and reasoning to try and prove that they exist.

Since George assumed that ghosts exist, he was less likely to see other explanations for what he saw. Maybe the ghost was nothing more than a mop!

False dilemma

The false dilemma (or false dichotomy) is a logical fallacy where a situation is presented as being an either/or option when, in reality, there are more possible options available than just the chosen two. Here's an example: Rebecca rings the doorbell but Ethan doesn't answer. She then thinks, "Oh, Ethan must not be home."

Rebecca posits that either Ethan answers the door or he isn't home. In reality, he could be sleeping, doing some work in the backyard, or taking a shower.

Most logical fallacies can be spotted by thinking critically . Make sure to ask questions: Is logic at work here or is it simply rhetoric? Does their "proof" actually lead to the conclusion they're proposing? By applying critical thinking, you'll be able to detect logical fallacies in the world around you and prevent yourself from using them as well.

3 Fallacies

I. what a re fallacies 1.

Fallacies are mistakes of reasoning, as opposed to making mistakes that are of a factual nature. If I counted twenty people in the room when there were in fact twenty-one, then I made a factual mistake. On the other hand, if I believe that there are round squares I believe something that is contradictory. A belief in “round squares” is a mistake of reasoning and contains a fallacy because, if my reasoning were good, I would not believe something that is logically inconsistent with reality.

In some discussions, a fallacy is taken to be an undesirable kind of argument or inference. In our view, this definition of fallacy is rather narrow, since we might want to count certain mistakes of reasoning as fallacious even though they are not presented as arguments. For example, making a contradictory claim seems to be a case of fallacy, but a single claim is not an argument. Similarly, putting forward a question with an inappropriate presupposition might also be regarded as a fallacy, but a question is also not an argument. In both of these situations though, the person is making a mistake of reasoning since they are doing something that goes against one or more principles of correct reasoning. This is why we would like to define fallacies more broadly as violations of the principles of critical thinking , whether or not the mistakes take the form of an argument.

The study of fallacies is an application of the principles of critical thinking. Being familiar with typical fallacies can help us avoid them and help explain other people’s mistakes.

There are different ways of classifying fallacies. Broadly speaking, we might divide fallacies into four kinds:

• Fallacies of inconsistency: cases where something inconsistent or self-defeating has been proposed or accepted.
• Fallacies of relevance: cases where irrelevant reasons are being invoked or relevant reasons being ignored.
• Fallacies of insufficiency: cases where the evidence supporting a conclusion is insufficient or weak.
• Fallacies of inappropriate presumption: cases where we have an assumption or a question presupposing something that is not reasonable to accept in the relevant conversational context.

II. Fallacies of I nconsistency

Fallacies of inconsistency are cases where something inconsistent, self-contradictory or self-defeating is presented.

1. Inconsistency

Here are some examples:

• “One thing that we know for certain is that nothing is ever true or false.” – If there is something we know for certain, then there is at least one truth that we know. So it can’t be the case that nothing is true or false.
• “Morality is relative and is just a matter of opinion, and so it is always wrong to impose our opinions on other people.” – But if morality is relative, it is also a relative matter whether we should impose our opinions on other people. If we should not do that, there is at least one thing that is objectively wrong.
• “All general claims have exceptions.” – This claim itself is a general claim, and so if it is to be regarded as true we must presuppose that there is an exception to it, which would imply that there exists at least one general claim that does not have an exception. So the claim itself is inconsistent.

2. Self- D efeating C laims

A self-defeating statement is a statement that, strictly speaking, is not logically inconsistent but is instead obviously false. Consider these examples:

• Very young children are fond of saying “I am not here” when they are playing hide-and-seek. The statement itself is not logically consistent, since it is not logically possible for the child not to be where she is. What is impossible is to  utter the sentence as a true sentence  (unless it is used for example in a telephone recorded message.)
• Someone who says, “I cannot speak any English.”
• Here is an actual example: A TV program in Hong Kong was critical of the Government. When the Hong Kong Chief Executive Mr. Tung was asked about it, he replied, “I shall not comment on such distasteful programs.” Mr. Tung’s remark was not logically inconsistent, because what it describes is a possible state of affairs. But it is nonetheless self-defeating because calling the program “distasteful” is to pass a comment!

III. Fallacies of R elevance

1. taking irrelevant considerations into account.

This includes defending a conclusion by appealing to irrelevant reasons, e.g., inappropriate appeal to pity, popular opinion, tradition, authority, etc. An example would be when a student failed a course and asked the teacher to give him a pass instead, because “his parents will be upset.” Since grades should be given on the basis of performance, the reason being given is quite irrelevant.

Similarly, suppose someone criticizes the Democratic Party’s call for direct elections in Hong Kong as follows: “These arguments supporting direct elections have no merit because they are advanced by Democrats who naturally stand to gain from it.” This is again fallacious because whether the person advancing the argument has something to gain from direct elections is a completely different issue from whether there ought to be direct elections.

2. Failing to T ake R elevant C onsiderations into A ccount

For example, it is not unusual for us to ignore or downplay criticisms because we do not like them, even when those criticisms are justified. Or sometimes we might be tempted to make a snap decision, believing knee-jerk reactions are the best when, in fact, we should be investigating the situation more carefully and doing more research.

Of course, if we fail to consider a relevant fact simply because we are ignorant of it, then this lack of knowledge does not constitute a fallacy.

IV. Fallacies of Insufficiency

Fallacies of insufficiency are cases where insufficient evidence is provided in support of a claim. Most common fallacies fall within this category. Here are a few popular types:

1. Limited S ampling

• Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant noodles, died at the age of 96. He said he ate instant noodles every day. So instant noodles cannot be bad for your health.
• A black cat crossed my path this morning, and I got into a traffic accident this afternoon. Black cats are really unlucky.

In both cases the observations are relevant to the conclusion, but a lot more data is needed to support the conclusion, e.g., studies show that many other people who eat instant noodles live longer, and those who encounter black cats are more likely to suffer from accidents.

2. Appeal to I gnorance

• We have no evidence showing that he is innocent. So he must be guilty.

If someone is guilty, it would indeed be hard to find evidence showing that he is innocent. But perhaps there is no evidence to point either way, so a lack of evidence is not enough to prove guilt.

3. Naturalistic F allacy

• Many children enjoy playing video games, so we should not stop them from playing.

Many naturalistic fallacies are examples of fallacy of insufficiency. Empirical facts by themselves are not sufficient for normative conclusions, even if they are relevant.

There are many other kinds of fallacy of insufficiency. See if you can identify some of them.

V. Fallacies of Inappropriate Presumption

Fallacies of inappropriate presumption are cases where we have explicitly or implicitly made an assumption that is not reasonable to accept in the relevant context. Some examples include:

• Many people like to ask whether human nature is good or evil. This presupposes that there is such a thing as human nature and that it must be either good or bad. But why should these assumptions be accepted, and are they the only options available? What if human nature is neither good nor bad? Or what if good or bad nature applies only to individual human beings?
• Consider the question “Have you stopped being an idiot?” Whether you answer “yes” or “no,” you admit that you are, or have been, an idiot. Presumably you do not want to make any such admission. We can point out that this question has a false assumption.
• “Same-sex marriage should not be allowed because by definition a marriage should be between a man and a woman.” This argument assumes that only a heterosexual conception of marriage is correct. But this begs the question against those who defend same-sex marriages and is not an appropriate assumption to make when debating this issue.

VI. List of Common Fallacies

A theory is discarded not because of any evidence against it or lack of evidence for it, but because of the person who argues for it. Example:

A: The Government should enact minimum-wage legislation so that workers are not exploited. B: Nonsense. You say that only because you cannot find a good job.

ad ignorantiam (appeal to ignorance)

The truth of a claim is established only on the basis of lack of evidence against it. A simple obvious example of such fallacy is to argue that unicorns exist because there is no evidence against their existence. At first sight it seems that many theories that we describe as “scientific” involve such a fallacy. For example, the first law of thermodynamics holds because so far there has not been any negative instance that would serve as evidence against it. But notice, as in cases like this, there is evidence for the law, namely positive instances. Notice also that this fallacy does not apply to situations where there are only two rival claims and one has already been falsified. In situations such as this, we may justly establish the truth of the other even if we cannot find evidence for or against it.

ad misericordiam (appeal to pity)

In offering an argument, pity is appealed to. Usually this happens when people argue for special treatment on the basis of their need, e.g., a student argues that the teacher should let them pass the examination because they need it in order to graduate. Of course, pity might be a relevant consideration in certain conditions, as in contexts involving charity.

ad populum (appeal to popularity)

The truth of a claim is established only on the basis of its popularity and familiarity. This is the fallacy committed by many commercials. Surely you have heard of commercials implying that we should buy a certain product because it has made to the top of a sales rank, or because the brand is the city’s “favorite.”

Affirming the consequent

Inferring that P is true solely because Q is true and it is also true that if P is true, Q is true.

The problem with this type of reasoning is that it ignores the possibility that there are other conditions apart from P that might lead to Q. For example, if there is a traffic jam, a colleague may be late for work. But if we argue from his being late to there being a traffic jam, we are guilty of this fallacy – the colleague may be late due to a faulty alarm clock.

Of course, if we have evidence showing that P is the only or most likely condition that leads to Q, then we can infer that P is likely to be true without committing a fallacy.

Begging the question ( petito principii )

In arguing for a claim, the claim itself is already assumed in the premise. Example: “God exists because this is what the Bible says, and the Bible is reliable because it is the word of God.”

Complex question or loaded question

A question is posed in such a way that a person, no matter what answer they give to the question, will inevitably commit themselves to some other claim, which should not be presupposed in the context in question.

A common tactic is to ask a yes-no question that tricks people into agreeing to something they never intended to say. For example, if you are asked, “Are you still as self-centered as you used to be?”, no matter whether you answer “yes” or ”no,” you are bound to admit that you were self-centered in the past. Of course, the same question would not count as a fallacy if the presupposition of the question were indeed accepted in the conversational context, i.e., that the person being asked the question had been verifiably self-centered in the past.

Composition (opposite of division)

The whole is assumed to have the same properties as its parts. Anne might be humorous and fun-loving and an excellent person to invite to the party. The same might be true of Ben, Chris and David, considered individually. But it does not follow that it will be a good idea to invite all of them to the party. Perhaps they hate each other and the party will be ruined.

Denying the antecedent

Inferring that Q is false just because if P is true, Q is also true, but P is false.

This fallacy is similar to the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Again the problem is that some alternative explanation or cause might be overlooked. Although P is false, some other condition might be sufficient to make Q true.

Example: If there is a traffic jam, a colleague may be late for work. But it is not right to argue in the light of smooth traffic that the colleague will not be late. Again, his alarm clock may have stopped working.

Division (opposite of composition)

The parts of a whole are assumed to have the same properties as the whole. It is possible that, on a whole, a company is very effective, while some of its departments are not. It would be inappropriate to assume they all are.

Equivocation

Putting forward an argument where a word changes meaning without having it pointed out. For example, some philosophers argue that all acts are selfish. Even if you strive to serve others, you are still acting selfishly because your act is just to satisfy your desire to serve others. But surely the word “selfish” has different meanings in the premise and the conclusion – when we say a person is selfish we usually mean that he does not strive to serve others. To say that a person is selfish because he is doing something he wants, even when what he wants is to help others, is to use the term “selfish” with a different meaning.

False dilemma

Presenting a limited set of alternatives when there are others that are worth considering in the context. Example: “Every person is either my enemy or my friend. If they are my enemy, I should hate them. If they’re my friend, I should love them. So I should either love them or hate them.” Obviously, the conclusion is too extreme because most people are neither your enemy nor your friend.

Gambler’s fallacy

Assumption is made to take some independent statistics as dependent. The untrained mind tends to think that, for example, if a fair coin is tossed five times and the results are all heads, then the next toss will more likely be a tail. It will not be, however. If the coin is fair, the result for each toss is completely independent of the others. Notice the fallacy hinges on the fact that the final result is not known. Had the final result been known already, the statistics would have been dependent.

Genetic fallacy

Thinking that because X derives from Y, and because Y has a certain property, that X must also possess that same property. Example: “His father is a criminal, so he must also be up to no good.”

Non sequitur

A conclusion is drawn that does not follow from the premise. This is not a specific fallacy but a very general term for a bad argument. So a lot of the examples above and below can be said to be non sequitur.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc  (literally, “ after this, therefore because of this ” )

Inferring that X must be the cause of Y just because X is followed by Y.

For example, having visited a graveyard, I fell ill and infer that graveyards are spooky places that cause illnesses. Of course, this inference is not warranted since this might just be a coincidence. However, a lot of superstitious beliefs commit this fallacy.

Red herring

Within an argument some irrelevant issue is raised that diverts attention from the main subject. The function of the red herring is sometimes to help express a strong, biased opinion. The red herring (the irrelevant issue) serves to increase the force of the argument in a very misleading manner.

For example, in a debate as to whether God exists, someone might argue that believing in God gives peace and meaning to many people’s lives. This would be an example of a red herring since whether religions can have a positive effect on people is irrelevant to the question of the existence of God. The positive psychological effect of a belief is not a reason for thinking that the belief is true.

Slippery slope

Arguing that if an opponent were to accept some claim C 1 , then they have to accept some other closely related claim C 2 , which in turn commits the opponent to a still further claim C 3 , eventually leading to the conclusion that the opponent is committed to something absurd or obviously unacceptable.

This style of argumentation constitutes a fallacy only when it is inappropriate to think if one were to accept the initial claim, one must accept all the other claims.

An example: “The government should not prohibit drugs. Otherwise the government should also ban alcohol or cigarettes. And then fatty food and junk food would have to be regulated too. The next thing you know, the government would force us to brush our teeth and do exercises every day.”

Attacking an opponent while falsely attributing to them an implausible position that is easily defeated.

Example: When many people argue for more democracy in Hong Kong, a typical “straw man” reply is to say that more democracy is not warranted because it is wrong to believe that democracy is the solution to all of Hong Kong’s problems. But those who support more democracy in Hong Kong never suggest that democracy can solve  all  problems (e.g., pollution), and those who support more democracy in Hong Kong might even agree that  blindly  accepting anything is rarely the correct course of action, whether it is democracy or not. Theses criticisms attack implausible “straw man” positions and do not address the real arguments for democracy.

Suppressed evidence

Where there is contradicting evidence, only confirming evidence is presented.

VII. Exercises

Identify any fallacy in each of these passages. If no fallacy is committed, select “no fallacy involved.”

1. Mr. Lee’s views on Japanese culture are wrong. This is because his parents were killed by the Japanese army during World War II and that made him anti-Japanese all his life.

2. Every ingredient of this soup is tasty. So this must be a very tasty soup.

3. Smoking causes cancer because my father was a smoker and he died of lung cancer.

4. Professor Lewis, the world authority on logic, claims that all wives cook for their husbands. But the fact is that his own wife does not cook for him. Therefore, his claim is false.

5. If Catholicism is right, then no women should be allowed to be priests. But Catholicism is wrong. Therefore, some women should be allowed to be priests.

6. God does not exist because every argument for the existence of God has been shown to be unsound.

7. The last three times I have had a cold I took large doses of vitamin C. On each occasion, the cold cleared up within a few days. So vitamin C helped me recover from colds.

8. The union’s case for more funding for higher education can be ignored because it is put forward by the very people – university staff – who would benefit from the increased money.

9. Children become able to solve complex problems and think of physical objects objectively at the same time that they learn language. Therefore, these abilities are caused by learning a language.

10. If cheap things are no good then this cheap watch is no good. But this watch is actually quite good. So some good things are cheap.

Critical Thinking Copyright © 2019 by Brian Kim is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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147 Logical Fallacies: A Master List With Examples

Logical fallacies are irrational arguments made through faulty reasoning common enough to be named for its respective logical failure.

A Complete Logical Fallacies List With Examples For Critical Thinking

contributed by Owen M. Wilson , University of Texas El Paso

A logical fallacy is an irrational argument made through faulty reasoning common enough to be named for the nature of its respective logical failure.

The A Priori Argument

Also: Rationalization; Dogmatism, Proof Texting

A corrupt argument from logos, starting with a given, pre-set belief, dogma, doctrine, scripture verse, ‘fact’ or conclusion and then searching for any reasonable or reasonable-sounding argument to rationalize, defend or justify it. Certain ideologues and religious fundamentalists are proud to use this fallacy as their primary method of ‘reasoning’ and some are even honest enough to say so.

Example: Since we know there is no such thing as ‘evolution,’ a prime duty of believers is to look for ways to explain away growing evidence, such as is found in DNA, that might suggest otherwise.

The opposite of this fallacy is the Taboo.

See also the Argument from Ignorance.

See also A Comprehensive List Of 180 Cognitive Biases And Heuristics

Also: The Con Artist’s Fallacy; The Dacoit’s Fallacy; Shearing the Sheeple; Profiteering; ‘Vulture Capitalism,’ ‘Wealth is a disease, and I am the cure.’

A corrupt argument from ethos, arguing that because someone is intellectually slower, physically or emotionally less capable, less ambitious, less aggressive, older or less healthy (or simply more trusting or less lucky) than others, s/he ‘naturally’ deserves less in life and may be freely victimized by those who are luckier, quicker, younger, stronger, healthier, greedier, more powerful, less moral or more gifted (or who simply have more immediate felt need for money, often involving some form of addiction). This fallacy is a ‘softer’ argumentum ad baculum. When challenged, those who practice this fallacy seem to most often shrug their shoulders and mumble ‘Life is ruff and you gotta be tuff [ sic ],’ ‘You gotta do what you gotta do to get ahead in this world,’ ‘It’s no skin off my nose,’ ‘That’s free enterprise,’ ‘That’s the way life is!’ or similar.

Actions have Consequences

The contemporary fallacy of a person in power falsely describing an imposed punishment or penalty as a ‘consequence’ of another’s negative act.

Example: The consequences of your misbehavior could include suspension or expulsion.’

A corrupt argument from ethos, arrogating to oneself or to one’s rules or laws an ethos of cosmic inevitability, i.e., the ethos of God, Fate, Karma, Destiny or Reality Itself. Illness or food poisoning is likely ‘consequences’ of eating spoiled food, while being ‘grounded’ is a punishment for , not a ‘consequence,’ of childhood misbehavior. Freezing to death is a natural ‘consequence’ of going out naked in subzero weather but going to prison is a punishment for bank robbery, not a natural, inevitable or unavoidable ‘consequence,’ of robbing a bank. Not to be confused with the Argument from Consequences, which is quite different.

An opposite fallacy is that of Moral Licensing.

See also Blaming the Victim.

The Ad Hominem Argument

Also: ‘Personal attack,’ ‘Poisoning the well’

The fallacy of attempting to refute an argument by attacking the opposition’s intelligence, morals, education, professional qualifications, personal character or reputation, using a corrupted negative argument from ethos. E.g., ‘That so-called judge;’ or ‘He’s so evil that you can’t believe anything he says.’ Another obverse of Ad Hominem is the Token Endorsement Fallacy, where, in the words of scholar Lara Bhasin, ‘Individual A has been accused of anti-Semitism, but Individual B is Jewish and says Individual A is not anti-Semitic, and the implication, of course, is that we can believe Individual B because, being Jewish, he has special knowledge of anti-Semitism. Or, a presidential candidate is accused of anti-Muslim bigotry, but someone finds a testimony from a Muslim who voted for said candidate, and this is trotted out as evidence against the candidate’s bigotry.’  The same fallacy would apply to a sports team offensively named after a marginalized ethnic group,  but which has obtained the endorsement (freely given or paid) of some member, traditional leader or tribal council of that marginalized group so that the otherwise offensive team name and logo magically become ‘okay’ and nonracist.  

The opposite of this is the ‘Star Power’ fallacy. 

See also ‘Guilt by Association.’

See also 16 Characteristics Of A Critical Thinking Classroom

The Affective Fallacy

Also: The Romantic Fallacy; Emotion over Reflection; ‘Follow Your Heart’

An extremely common modern fallacy of Pathos, that one’s emotions, urges or ‘feelings’ are innate and in every case self-validating, autonomous, and above any human intent or act of will (one’s own or others’), and are thus immune to challenge or criticism. (In fact, researchers now [2017] have robust scientific evidence that emotions are actually cognitive and not innate. ) In this fallacy one argues, ‘I feel it, so it must be true. My feelings are valid, so you have no right to criticize what I say or do, or how I say or do it.’ This latter is also a fallacy of stasis, confusing a respectful and reasoned response or refutation with personal invalidation, disrespect, prejudice, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, or hostility. A grossly sexist form of the Affective Fallacy is the well-known crude fallacy that the phallus ‘Has no conscience’ (also, ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do;’ ‘Thinking with your other head.’), i.e., since (male) sexuality is self-validating and beyond voluntary control what one does with it cannot be controlled either and such actions are not open to criticism, an assertion eagerly embraced and extended beyond the male gender in certain reifications of ‘Desire’ in contemporary academic theory.

See also, Playing on Emotion. Opposite to this fallacy is the Chosen Emotion Fallacy (thanks to scholar Marc Lawson for identifying this fallacy), in which one falsely claims complete, or at least reliable prior voluntary control over one’s own autonomic, ‘gut level’ affective reactions. Closely related if not identical to this last is the ancient fallacy of Angelism, falsely claiming that one is capable of ‘objective’ reasoning and judgment without emotion, claiming for oneself a viewpoint of Olympian ‘disinterested objectivity’ or pretending to place oneself far above all personal feelings, temptations or bias.

See also, Mortification.

Alphabet Soup

A corrupt modern implicit fallacy from ethos in which a person inappropriately overuses acronyms, abbreviations, form numbers and arcane insider ‘shop talk’ primarily to prove to an audience that s/he ‘speaks their language’ and is ‘one of them’ and to shut out, confuse or impress outsiders. E.g., ‘It’s not uncommon for a K-12 with ASD to be both GT and LD;’ ‘I had a twenty-minute DX Q-so on 15 with a Zed-S1 and a couple of LU2’s even though the QR-Nancy was 10 over S9;’ or ‘I hope I’ll keep on seeing my BAQ on my LES until the day I get my DD214.’  See also, Name Calling. This fallacy has recently become common in media pharmaceutical advertising in the United States, where ‘Alphabet Soup’ is used to create false identification with and to exploit patient groups suffering from specific illnesses or conditions, e.g., ‘If you have DPC with associated ZL you can keep your B2D under control with Luglugmena®. Ask your doctor today about Luglugmena® Helium Tetracarbide lozenges to control symptoms of ZL and to keep your B2D under that crucial 7.62 threshold. Side effects of  Luglugmena® may include K4 Syndrome, which may lead to lycanthropic bicephaly, BMJ and occasionally, death. Do not take Luglugmena® if you are allergic to dogbite or have type D Flinder’s Garbosis…’

Alternative Truth

Also: Alt Facts; Counterknowledge; Disinformation; Information Pollution

A newly-famous contemporary fallacy of logos rooted in postmodernism, denying the resilience of facts or truth as such. Writer Hannah Arendt, in her The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) warned that ‘The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.’ Journalist Leslie Grass (2017) writes in her Blog Reachoutrecovery.com, ‘Is there someone in your life who insists things happened that didn’t happen, or has a completely different version of events in which you have the facts? It’s a form of mind control and is very common among families dealing with substance and behavior problems.’ She suggests that such ‘Alternate Facts’ work to ‘put you off balance,’ ‘control the story,’ and ‘make you think you’re crazy,’ and she notes that ‘presenting alternate facts is the hallmark of untrustworthy people.’

The Alternative Truth fallacy is related to the Big Lie Technique.

See also Gaslighting, Blind Loyalty, The Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy, and Two Truths

The Appeal to Closure :

The contemporary fallacy that an argument, standpoint, action, or conclusion no matter how questionable must be accepted as final or else the point will remain unsettled, which is unthinkable because those affected will be denied ‘closure.’ This fallacy falsely reifies a specialized term (closure) from Gestalt Psychology while refusing to recognize the undeniable truth that some points will indeed remain open and unsettled, perhaps forever. E.g., ‘Society would be protected, real punishment would be inflicted, crime would be deterred and justice served if we sentenced you to life without parole, but we need to execute you in order to provide some closure.’ See also, Argument from Ignorance, and Argument from Consequences.

The opposite of this fallacy is the Paralysis of Analysis.

The Appeal to Heaven

Also: Argumentum ad Coelum, Deus Vult, Gott mit Uns, Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, or the Special Covenant

An ancient, extremely dangerous fallacy (a deluded argument from ethos) that of claiming to know the mind of God (or History, or a higher power), who has allegedly ordered or anointed, supports or approves of one’s own country, standpoint or actions so no further justification is required and no serious challenge is possible. (E.g., ‘God ordered me to kill my children,’ or ‘We need to take away your land, since God [or Scripture, or Manifest Destiny, or Fate, or Heaven] has given it to us as our own.’) A private individual who seriously asserts this fallacy risks ending up in a psychiatric ward, but groups or nations who do it are far too often taken seriously. Practiced by those who will not or cannot tell God’s will from their own, this vicious (and blasphemous) fallacy has been the cause of endless bloodshed over history. See also, Moral Superiority, and Magical Thinking. Also applies to deluded negative Appeals to Heaven, e.g., ‘You say that famine and ecological collapse due to climate change are real dangers during the coming century, but I know God wouldn’t ever let that happen to us!’

The opposite of the Appeal to Heaven is the Job’s Comforter fallacy.

The Appeal to Nature

Also: Biologizing; The Green Fallacy

The contemporary romantic fallacy of ethos (that of ‘Mother Nature’) that if something is ‘natural’ it has to be good, healthy and beneficial.  E.g., ‘Our premium herb tea is lovingly brewed from the finest freshly-picked and delicately dried natural T. Radicans leaves. Those who dismiss it as mere ‘Poison Ivy’ don’t understand that it’s 100% organic, with no additives, GMO’s or artificial ingredients  It’s time to Go Green and lay back in Mother’s arms.’ One who employs or falls for this fallacy forgets the old truism that left to itself, nature is indeed ‘red in tooth and claw.’ This fallacy also applies to arguments alleging that something is ‘unnatural,’ or ‘against nature’ and thus evil ( The Argument from Natural Law ) e.g. ‘Homosexuality should be outlawed because it’s against nature,’ arrogating to oneself the authority to define what is ‘natural’ and what is unnatural or perverted. E.g., during the American Revolution British sources widely condemned rebellion against King George III as ‘unnatural,’ and American revolutionaries as ‘perverts,’ because the Divine Right of Kings represented Natural Law, and according to 1 Samuel 15:23 in the Bible, rebellion is like unto witchcraft.

The Appeal to Pity

Also: ‘Argumentum ad Miserecordiam’

The fallacy of urging an audience to ‘root for the underdog’ regardless of the issues at hand. A classic example is, ‘Those poor, cute little squeaky mice are being gobbled up by mean, nasty cats ten times their size!’ A contemporary example might be America’s uncritical popular support for the Arab Spring movement of 2010-2012 in which The People (‘The underdogs’) were seen to be heroically overthrowing cruel dictatorships, a movement that has resulted in retrospect in chaos, impoverishment, anarchy, mass suffering, civil war, the regional collapse of civilization and rise of extremism, and the largest refugee crisis since World War II. A corrupt argument from pathos. See also, Playing to Emotions. The opposite of the Appeal to Pity is the Appeal to Rigor, an argument (often based on machismo or on manipulating an audience’s fear) based on mercilessness. E.g., ‘I’m a real man, not like those bleeding hearts, and I’ll be tough on [fill in the name of the enemy or bogeyman of the hour].’ In academia this latter fallacy applies to politically-motivated or elitist calls for ‘Academic Rigor,’ and rage against university developmental/remedial classes, open admissions, ‘dumbing down’ and ‘grade inflation.’

The Appeal to Tradition

Also: Conservative Bias; Back in Those Good Times, ‘The Good Old Days’

The ancient fallacy that a standpoint, situation, or action is right, proper, and correct simply because it has ‘always’ been that way, because people have ‘always’ thought that way, or because it was that way long ago (most often meaning in the audience members’ youth or childhood, not before) and still continues to serve one particular group very well. A corrupted argument from ethos (that of past generations). E.g., ‘In America, women have always been paid less, so let’s not mess with long-standing tradition.’  See also Argument from Inertia, and Default Bias. The opposite of this fallacy is The Appeal to Novelty (also, ‘Pro-Innovation bias,’ ‘Recency Bias,’ and ‘The Bad Old Days;’ The Early Adopter’s Fallacy), e.g., ‘It’s NEW, and [therefore it must be] improved!’ or ‘This is the very latest discovery–it has to be better.’

  Appeasement

Also: ‘Assertiveness,’ ‘The squeaky wheel gets the grease;’ ‘I know my rights!’

This fallacy, most often popularly connected to the shameful pre-World War II appeasement of Hitler, is in fact still commonly practiced in public agencies, education and retail business today, e.g. ‘Customers are always right, even when they’re wrong. Don’t argue with them, just give’em what they want so they’ll shut up and go away, and not make a stink–it’s cheaper and easier than a lawsuit.’  Widespread unchallenged acceptance of this fallacy encourages offensive, uncivil public behavior and sometimes the development of a coarse subculture of obnoxious, ‘assertive’ manipulators who, like ‘spoiled’ children, leverage their knowledge of how to figuratively (or sometimes even literally!) ‘make a stink’ into a primary coping skill in order to get what they want when they want it. The works of the late Community Organizing guru Saul Alinsky suggest practical, nonviolent ways for groups to harness the power of this fallacy to promote social change, for good or for evil.

See also Bribery.

The Argument from Consequences

Also: Outcome Bias

The major fallacy of logos, arguing that something cannot be true because if it were the consequences or outcome would be unacceptable.

Example: Global climate change cannot be caused by human burning of fossil fuels, because if it were, switching to non-polluting energy sources would bankrupt American industry,’ or ‘Doctor, that’s wrong! I can’t have terminal cancer, because if I did that’d mean that I won’t live to see my kids get married!’

Not to be confused with Actions have Consequences.

The Argument from Ignorance

Also: Argumentum ad Ignorantiam

The fallacy is that since we don’t know (or can never know, or cannot prove) whether a claim is true or false, it must be false, or it must be true. E.g., ‘Scientists are never going to be able to positively prove their crazy theory that humans evolved from other creatures because we weren’t there to see it! So, that proves the Genesis six-day creation account is literally true as written!’ This fallacy includes Attacking the Evidence (also, ‘Whataboutism’; The Missing Link fallacy), e.g. ‘Some or all of your key evidence is missing, incomplete, or even faked!  What about that? That proves you’re wrong and I’m right!’ This fallacy usually includes fallacious ‘Either-Or Reasoning’ as well: E.g., ‘The vet can’t find any reasonable explanation for why my dog died. See! See! That proves that you poisoned him! There’s no other logical explanation!’ A corrupted argument from logos, and a fallacy commonly found in American political, judicial and forensic reasoning. The recently famous ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ meme is a contemporary refutation of this fallacy–simply because we cannot conclusively disprove the existence of such an absurd entity does not argue for its existence.

See also A Priori Argument, Appeal to Closure, The Simpleton’s Fallacy, and Argumentum ex Silentio.

The Argument from Incredulity

The popular fallacy of doubting or rejecting a novel claim or argument out of hand simply because it appears superficially ‘incredible,’ ‘insane’ or ‘crazy,’ or because it goes against one’s own personal beliefs, prior experience or ideology.  This cynical fallacy falsely elevates the saying popularized by Carl Sagan, that ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,’ to an absolute law of logic. See also Hoyle’s Fallacy. The common, popular-level form of this fallacy is dismissing surprising, extraordinary or unfamiliar arguments and evidence with a wave of the hand, a shake of the head, (saying) ‘that’s crazy!’

The Argument from Inertia

Also: ‘Stay the Course’

The fallacy that it is necessary to continue on a mistaken course of action regardless of pain and sacrifice involved and even after discovering it is mistaken, because changing course would mean admitting that one’s decision (or one’s leader, or one’s country, or one’s faith) was wrong, and all one’s effort, expense, sacrifice, and even bloodshed was for nothing, and that’s unthinkable. A variety of the Argument from Consequences, E for Effort, or the Appeal to Tradition. See also ‘Throwing Good Money After Bad.’

The Argument from Motives

Also Questioning Motives

The fallacy of declaring a standpoint or argument invalid solely because of the evil, corrupt or questionable motives of the one making the claim. E.g., ‘Bin Laden wanted us to withdraw from Afghanistan, so we have to keep up the fight!’ Even evil people with the most corrupt motives sometimes say the truth (and even good people with the highest and purest motives are often wrong or mistaken). A variety of the Ad Hominem argument. The opposite side of this fallacy is falsely justifying or excusing evil or vicious actions because of the perpetrator’s apparent purity of motives or lack of malice. (E.g., ‘Sure, she may have beaten her children bloody now and again but she was a highly educated, ambitious professional woman at the end of her rope, deprived of adult conversation and stuck between four walls for years on end with a bunch of screaming, fighting brats, doing the best she could with what little she had. How can you stand there and accuse her of child abuse?’)

See also Moral Licensing.

Argumentum ad Baculum

Also: Argument from the Club,’ ‘Argumentum ad Baculam,’ ‘Argument from Strength,’ ‘Muscular Leadership,’ ‘Non-negotiable Demands,’ ‘Hard Power,’ Bullying, The Power-Play, Fascism, Resolution by Force of Arms, Shock, and Awe.

The fallacy of ‘persuasion’ or ‘proving one is right’ by force, violence, brutality, terrorism, superior strength, raw military might, or threats of violence. E.g., ‘Gimmee your wallet or I’ll knock your head off!’ or ‘We have the perfect right to take your land, since we have the big guns and you don’t.’ Also applies to indirect forms of threat. E.g., ‘Give up your foolish pride, kneel down and accept our religion today if you don’t want to burn in hell forever and ever!’ A mainly discursive Argumentum ad Baculum is that of forcibly silencing opponents, ruling them ‘out of order,’ blocking, censoring, or jamming their message, or simply speaking over them or/speaking more loudly than they do, this last a tactic particularly attributed to men in mixed-gender discussions.

Argumentum ad Mysteriam

ALSO: ‘Argument from Mystery;’ also Mystagogy.

A darkened chamber, incense, chanting or drumming, bowing and kneeling, special robes or headgear, holy rituals, and massed voices reciting sacred mysteries in an unknown tongue  have a quasi-hypnotic effect and can often persuade more strongly than any logical argument.  The Puritan Reformation was in large part a rejection of this fallacy. When used knowingly and deliberately this fallacy is particularly vicious and accounts for some of the fearsome persuasive power of cults.  An example of an Argumentum ad Mysteriam is the ‘ Long Ago and Far Away ‘ fallacy, the fact that facts, evidence, practices or arguments from ancient times, distant lands and/or ‘exotic’ cultures seem to acquire a special gravitas or ethos simply because of their antiquity, language or origin, e.g., publicly chanting Holy Scriptures in their original (most often incomprehensible) ancient languages, preferring the Greek, Latin, Assyrian or Old Slavonic Christian Liturgies over their vernacular versions, or using classic or newly invented Greek and Latin names for fallacies in order to support their validity.

See also, Esoteric Knowledge. An obverse of the Argumentum ad Mysteriam is the Standard Version Fallacy.

Argumentum ex Silentio

Also: Argument from Silence

The fallacy that if available sources remain silent or current knowledge and evidence can prove nothing about a given subject or question this fact in itself proves the truth of one’s claim. E.g., ‘Science can tell us nothing about God. That proves God doesn’t exist.’ Or ‘Science admits it can tell us nothing about God, so you can’t deny that God exists!’ Often misused in the American justice system, where, contrary to the 5th Amendment and the legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty,  remaining silent or ‘taking the Fifth’ is often falsely portrayed as proof of guilt. E.g., ‘Mr. Hixon can offer no alibi for his whereabouts the evening of January 15th. This proves that he was in fact in room 331 at the Smuggler’s Inn, murdering his wife with a hatchet!’ In today’s America, choosing to remain silent in the face of a police officer’s questions can make one guilty enough to be arrested or even shot.

See also, Argument from Ignorance.

Availability Bias

Also: Attention Bias, Anchoring Bias

A fallacy of logos stemming from the natural tendency to give undue attention and importance to information that is immediately available at hand, particularly the first or last information received, and to minimize or ignore broader data or wider evidence that clearly exists but is not as easily remembered or accessed. E.g., ‘We know from experience that this doesn’t work,’ when ‘experience’ means the most recent local attempt, ignoring overwhelming experience from other places and times where it ha s worked and does work. Also related is the fallacy of Hyperbole [also, Magnification, or sometimes Catastrophizing] where an immediate instance is immediately proclaimed ‘the most significant in all of human history,’ or the ‘worst in the whole world!’ This latter fallacy works extremely well with less-educated audiences and those whose ‘whole world’ is very small indeed, audiences who ‘hate history’ and whose historical memory spans several weeks at best.

The Bandwagon Fallacy

Also: Argument from Common Sense, Argumentum ad Populum

The fallacy of arguing that because ‘everyone,’ ‘the people,’ or ‘the majority’ (or someone in power who has widespread backing) supposedly thinks or does something, it must therefore be true and right. E.g., ‘Whether there actually is large scale voter fraud in America or not, many people now think there is and that makes it so.’ Sometimes also includes Lying with Statistics , e.g. ‘Over 75% of Americans believe that crooked Bob Hodiak is a thief, a liar and a pervert. There may not be any evidence, but for anyone with half a brain that conclusively proves that Crooked Bob should go to jail! Lock him up! Lock him up!’ This is sometimes combined with the ‘Argumentum ad Baculum,’ e.g., ‘Like it or not, it’s time to choose sides: Are you going to get on board  the bandwagon with everyone else, or get crushed under the wheels as it goes by?’ Or in the 2017 words of former White House spokesperson Sean Spicer, ”They should either get with the program or they can go,’ A contemporary digital form of the Bandwagon Fallacy is the Information Cascade, ‘ in which people echo the opinions of others, usually online, even when their own opinions or exposure to information contradicts that opinion. When information cascades form a pattern, this pattern can begin to overpower later opinions by making it seem as if a consensus already exists.’ (Thanks to Teaching Tolerance for this definition!)

See also Wisdom of the Crowd, and The Big Lie Technique.

For the opposite of this fallacy see the Romantic Rebel fallacy. 

The Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy

Also: the Führerprinzip; Mad Leader Disease

A not-uncommon but extreme example of the Blind Loyalty Fallacy below, in which a tyrannical boss, military commander, or religious or cult-leader tells followers ‘Don’t think with your little brains (the brain in your head), but with your BIG brain (mine).’ This last is sometimes expressed in positive terms, i.e., ‘You don’t have to worry and stress out about the rightness or wrongness of what you are doing since I, the Leader. am assuming all moral and legal responsibility for all your actions. So long as you are faithfully following orders without question I will defend you and gladly accept all the consequences up to and including eternal damnation if I’m wrong.’

The opposite of this is the fallacy of ‘Plausible Deniability.’ See also, ‘Just Do It!’, and ‘Gaslighting.’

The Big ‘But’ Fallacy

Also: Special Pleading

The fallacy of enunciating a generally-accepted principle and then directly negating it with a ‘but.’ Often this takes the form of the ‘Special Case,’ which is supposedly exempt from the usual rules of law, logic, morality, ethics or even credibility  E.g., ‘As Americans, we have always believed on principle that every human being has God-given, inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, including in the case of criminal accusations a fair and speedy trial before a jury of one’s peers. BUT, your crime was so unspeakable and a trial would be so problematic for national security that it justifies locking you up for life in Guantanamo without trial, conviction or possibility of appeal.’  Or, ‘Yes, Honey, I still love you more than life itself, and I know that in my wedding vows I promised before God that I’d forsake all others and be faithful to you ‘until death do us part,’ but you have to understand, this was a special case…’

See also, ‘Shopping Hungry,’ and ‘We Have to do Something !’

The Big Lie Technique

Also: the Bold Faced Lie; ‘Staying on Message.’

The contemporary fallacy of repeating a lie, fallacy, slogan, talking-point, nonsense-statement, or deceptive half-truth over and over in different forms (particularly in the media) until it becomes part of daily discourse and people accept it without further proof or evidence. Sometimes the bolder and more outlandish the Big Lie becomes the more credible it seems to a willing, most often angry audience. E.g., ‘What about the Jewish Problem?’ Note that when this particular phony debate was going on there was no ‘Jewish Problem,’ only a Nazi Problem, but hardly anybody in power recognized or wanted to talk about that, while far too many ordinary Germans were only too ready to find a convenient scapegoat to blame for their suffering during the Great Depression. Writer Miles J. Brewer expertly demolishes The Big Lie Technique in his classic (1930) short story, ‘The Gostak and the Doshes.’ However, more contemporary examples of the Big Lie fallacy might be the completely fictitious August 4, 1964 ‘Tonkin Gulf Incident’ concocted under Lyndon Johnson as a false justification for escalating the Vietnam War, or the non-existent ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq (conveniently abbreviated ‘WMD’s’ in order to lend this Big Lie a legitimizing, military-sounding ‘Alphabet Soup’ ethos), used in 2003 as a false justification for the Second Gulf War. The November, 2016 U.S. President-elect’s statement that ‘millions’ of ineligible votes were cast in that year’s American. presidential election appears to be a classic Big Lie.

See also, Alternative Truth; The Bandwagon Fallacy, the Straw Man, Alphabet Soup, and Propaganda.   

Blind Loyalty

Also: Blind Obedience, Unthinking Obedience, the ‘Team Player’ appeal, the Nuremberg Defense

The dangerous fallacy that an argument or action is right simply and solely because a respected leader or source (a President, expert, one’s parents, one’s own ‘side,’ team or country, one’s boss or commanding officers) says it is right. This is over-reliance on authority, a gravely corrupted argument from ethos that puts loyalty above truth,  above one’s own reason and above conscience. In this case a person attempts to justify incorrect, stupid or criminal behavior by whining ‘That’s what I was told to do,’ or ‘I was just following orders.’ 

See also, The Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy, and The ‘Soldiers’ Honor’ Fallacy.

Blood is Thicker than Water

Also: Favoritism; Compadrismo; ‘For my friends, anything.’

The reverse of the ‘Ad Hominem’ fallacy, a corrupt argument from ethos where a statement, argument or action is automatically regarded as true, correct and above challenge because one is related to, knows and likes, or is on the same team or side, or belongs to the same religion, party, club or fraternity as the individual involved.  (E.g., ‘My brother-in-law says he saw you goofing off on the job. You’re a hard worker but who am I going to believe, you or him? You’re fired!’)  See also the Identity Fallacy.

Brainwashing

Also: Propaganda, ‘Radicalization.’

The Cold War-era fantasy that an enemy can instantly win over or ‘radicalize’ an unsuspecting audience with their vile but somehow unspeakably persuasive ‘propaganda,’  e.g., ‘Don’t look at that website! They’re trying to brainwash you with their propaganda!’ Historically, ‘brainwashing’ refers more properly to the inhuman Argumentum ad Baculum of  ‘beating an argument into’ a prisoner via a combination of pain, fear, sensory or sleep deprivation, prolonged abuse and sophisticated psychological manipulation (also, the ‘ Stockholm Syndrome .’). Such ‘brainwashing’ can also be accomplished by pleasure (‘ Love Bombing ,’); e.g., ‘Did you like that? I know you did. Well, there’s lots more where that came from when you sign on with us!’ (See also, ‘Bribery.’) An unspeakably sinister form of persuasion by brainwashing involves deliberately addicting a person to drugs and then providing or withholding the substance depending on the addict’s compliance. Note: Only the other side brainwashes. ‘We’ never brainwash.

Also: Material Persuasion, Material Incentive, Financial Incentive

The fallacy of ‘persuasion’ by bribery, gifts or favors is the reverse of the Argumentum ad Baculum. As is well known, someone who is persuaded by bribery rarely ‘stays persuaded’ in the long term unless the bribes keep on coming in and increasing with time.

See also Appeasement.

Calling ‘Cards’

A contemporary fallacy of logos, arbitrarily and falsely dismissing familiar or easily-anticipated but valid, reasoned objections to one’s standpoint with a wave of the hand, as mere ‘cards’ in some sort of ‘game’ of rhetoric, e.g. ‘Don’t try to play the ‘Race Card’ against me,’ or ‘She’s playing the ‘Woman Card’ again,’ or ‘That ‘Hitler Card’ won’t score with me in this argument.’ See also, The Taboo, and Political Correctness.

Circular Reasoning

Also: The Vicious Circle; Catch 22, Begging the Question, Circulus in Probando

A fallacy of logos where A is because of B, and B is because of A, e.g., ‘You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job.’ Also refers to falsely arguing that something is true by repeating the same statement in different words. E.g., ‘The witchcraft problem is the most urgent spiritual crisis in the world today. Why? Because witches threaten our very eternal salvation.’ A corrupt argument from logos. See also the ‘Big Lie technique.’

The Complex Question

The contemporary fallacy of demanding a direct answer to a question that cannot be answered without first analyzing or challenging the basis of the question itself. E.g., ‘Just answer me ‘yes’ or ‘no’:  Did you think you could get away with plagiarism and not suffer the consequences?’ Or, ‘Why did you rob that bank?’ Also applies to situations where one is forced to either accept or reject complex standpoints or propositions containing both acceptable and unacceptable parts. A corruption of the argument from logos.

A counterpart of Either/Or Reasoning.

Confirmation Bias

A fallacy of logos, the common tendency to notice, search out, select and share evidence that confirms one’s own standpoint and beliefs, as opposed to contrary evidence. This fallacy is how ‘fortune tellers’ work–If I am told I will meet a ‘tall, dark stranger’ I will be on the lookout for a tall, dark stranger, and when I meet someone even marginally meeting that description I will marvel at the correctness of the ‘psychic’s’ prediction. In contemporary times Confirmation Bias is most often seen in the tendency of various audiences to ‘curate their political environments, subsisting on one-sided information diets and [even] selecting into politically homogeneous neighborhoods’ ( Michael A. Neblo et al., 2017, Science magazine ).  Confirmation Bias (also, Homophily) means that people tend to seek out and follow solely those media outlets that confirm their common ideological and cultural biases, sometimes to a degree that leads a the false (implicit or even explicit) conclusion that ‘everyone’ agrees with that bias and that anyone who doesn’t is ‘crazy,’ ‘looney,’ evil or even ‘radicalized.’

See also, ‘Half Truth,’ and ‘Defensiveness.’ 

A fallacy of ethos (that of a product), the fact that something expensive (either in terms of money, or something that is ‘hard fought’ or ‘hard won’ or for which one ‘paid dearly’) is generally valued more highly than something obtained free or cheaply, regardless of the item’s real quality, utility or true value to the purchaser. E. g., ‘Hey, I worked hard to get this car!  It may be nothing but a clunker that can’t make it up a steep hill, but it’s mine , and to me it’s better than some millionaire’s limo.’  Also applies to judging the quality of a consumer item (or even of its owner! ) primarily by the item’s brand, price, label or source, e.g., ‘Hey, you there in the Jay-Mart suit! Har-har!’ or, ‘Ooh, she’s driving a Mercedes! ‘

Default Bias

Also: Normalization of Evil, ‘Deal with it;’ ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it;’ Acquiescence; ‘Making one’s peace with the situation;’ ‘Get used to it;’ ‘Whatever is , is right;’  ‘It is what it is;’ ‘Let it be, let it be;’ ‘This is the best of all possible worlds [or, the only possible world];’ ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.’

The logical fallacy of automatically favoring or accepting a situation simply because it exists right now, and arguing that any other alternative is mad, unthinkable, impossible, or at least would take too much effort, expense, stress, or risk to change. The opposite of this fallacy is that of Nihilism (‘Tear it all down!’), blindly rejecting what exists in favor of what could be, the adolescent fantasy of romanticizing anarchy, chaos (an ideology sometimes called political ‘ Chaos Theory ‘), disorder, ‘permanent revolution,’ or change for change’s sake.

Defensiveness

Also: Choice-support Bias: Myside Bias

A fallacy of ethos (one’s own), in which after one has taken a given decision, commitment or course of action, one automatically tends to defend that decision and to irrationally dismiss opposing options even when one’s decision later on proves to be shaky or wrong. E.g., ‘Yeah, I voted for Snith. Sure, he turned out to be a crook and a liar and he got us into war, but I still say that at that time he was better than the available alternatives!’ 

See also ‘Argument from Inertia’ and ‘Confirmation Bias.’

Deliberate Ignorance

Also: Closed-mindedness; ‘I don’t want to hear it!’; Motivated Ignorance; Tuning Out; Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil [The Three Monkeys’ Fallacy]

As described by author and commentator Brian Resnik on Vox.com (2017), this is the fallacy of simply choosing not to listen, ‘tuning out’ or turning off any information, evidence or arguments that challenge one’s beliefs, ideology, standpoint, or peace of mind, following the popular humorous dictum: ‘Don’t try to confuse me with the facts; my mind is made up!’ This seemingly innocuous fallacy has enabled the most vicious tyrannies and abuses over history, and continues to do so today.

See also Trust your Gut, Confirmation Bias, The Third Person Effect, ‘They’re All Crooks,’ the Simpleton’s Fallacy, and The Positive Thinking Fallacy.

Diminished Responsibility

The common contemporary fallacy of applying a specialized judicial concept (that criminal punishment should be less if one’s judgment was impaired) to reality in general. E.g., ‘You can’t count me absent on Monday–I was hungover and couldn’t come to class so it’s not my fault.’  Or, ‘Yeah, I was speeding on the freeway and killed a guy, but I was buzzed out of my mind and didn’t know what I was doing so it didn’t matter that much.’ In reality the death does matter very much to the victim, to his family and friends, and to society in general. Whether the perpetrator was high or not does not matter at all since the material results are the same. This also includes the fallacy of Panic , a very common contemporary fallacy that one’s words or actions, no matter how damaging or evil, somehow don’t ‘count’ because ‘I panicked!’ This fallacy is rooted in the confusion of ‘consequences’ with ‘punishment.’

See also ‘Venting.’

Disciplinary Blinders

A very common contemporary scholarly or professional fallacy of ethos (that of one’s discipline, profession or academic field),  automatically disregarding, discounting or ignoring a priori otherwise-relevant research, arguments and evidence that come from outside one’s own professional discipline, discourse community or academic area of study. E.g., ‘That might be relevant or not, but it’s so not what we’re doing in our field right now.’  See also, ‘Star Power’ and ‘Two Truths.’ An analogous fallacy is that of Denominational Blinders , arbitrarily ignoring or waving aside without serious consideration any arguments or discussion about faith, morality, ethics, spirituality, the Divine or the afterlife that come from outside one’s own specific religious denomination or faith tradition.

Dog-Whistle Politics

An extreme version of reductionism and sloganeering in the public sphere, a contemporary fallacy of logos and pathos in which a brief phrase or slogan of the hour, e.g., ‘Abortion,’ ‘The 1%,’ ‘9/11,’ ‘Zionism,”Chain Migration,’ ‘Islamic Terrorism,’ ‘Fascism,’ ‘Communism,’ ‘Big government,’ ‘Taco trucks!’, ‘Tax and tax and spend and spend,’ ‘Gun violence,’ ‘Gun control,’ ‘Freedom of choice,’ ‘Lock ’em up,’, ‘Amnesty,’ etc. is flung out as ‘red meat’ or ‘chum in the water’ that reflexively sends one’s audience into a snapping, foaming-at-the-mouth feeding-frenzy. Any reasoned attempt to more clearly identify, deconstruct or challenge an opponent’s ‘dog whistle’ appeal results in puzzled confusion at best and wild, irrational fury at worst. ‘Dog whistles’ differ widely in different places, moments and cultural milieux, and they change and lose or gain power so quickly that even recent historic texts sometimes become extraordinarily difficult to interpret. A common but sad instance of the fallacy of Dog Whistle Politics is that of  candidate ‘debaters’ of differing political shades simply blowing a succession of discursive ‘dog whistles’ at their audience instead of addressing, refuting or even bothering to listen to each other’s arguments, a situation resulting in contemporary (2017) allegations that the political Right and Left in America are speaking ‘different languages’ when they are simply blowing different ‘dog whistles.’

See also, Reductionism..

The ‘Draw Your Own Conclusion’ Fallacy

Also: the Non-argument Argument; Let the Facts Speak for Themselves

In this fallacy of logos, an otherwise uninformed audience is presented with carefully selected and groomed, ‘shocking facts’ and then prompted to immediately ‘draw their own conclusions.’ E.g., ‘Crime rates are more than twice as high among middle-class Patzinaks than among any other similar population group–draw your own conclusions.’ It is well known that those who are allowed to ‘come to their own conclusions’ are generally much more strongly convinced than those who are given both evidence and conclusion upfront. However, Dr. William Lorimer points out that ‘The only rational response to the non-argument is ‘So what?’ i.e. ‘What do you think you’ve proved, and why/how do you think you’ve proved it?” Closely related (if not identical) to this is the well-known ‘Leading the Witness’ Fallacy , where a sham, sarcastic or biased question is asked solely in order to evoke a desired answer.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

A cognitive bias that leads people of limited skills or knowledge to mistakenly believe their abilities are greater than they actually are. (Thanks to Teaching Tolerance for this definition!)  E.g., ‘I know Washington was the Father of His Country and never told a lie, Pocahontas was the first Native American, Lincoln freed the slaves, Hitler murdered six million Jews, Susan B. Anthony won equal rights for women, and Martin Luther King said ‘I have a dream!’  Moses parted the Red Sea, Caesar said ‘Et tu, Brute?’ and the only reason America didn’t win the Vietnam War hands-down like we always do was because they tied our generals’ hands and the politicians cut and run. See? Why do I need to take a history course? I know everything about history!’

E’ for Effort

Also: Noble Effort; I’m Trying My Best; The Lost Cause

The common contemporary fallacy of ethos that something must be right, true, valuable, or worthy of respect and honor solely because one (or someone else) has put so much sincere good-faith effort or even sacrifice and bloodshed into it. (See also Appeal to Pity; Argument from Inertia; Heroes All; or Sob Story).  An extreme example of this fallacy is Waving the Bloody Shirt ( also , the ‘Blood of the Martyrs’ Fallacy) , the fallacy that a cause or argument, no matter how questionable or reprehensible, cannot be questioned without dishonoring the blood and sacrifice of those who died so nobly for that cause. E.g., ‘ Defend the patriotic gore / That flecked the streets of Baltimore.. .’ (from the official Maryland State Song).

See also Cost Bias, The Soldier’s Honor Fallacy, and the Argument from Inertia.

Either/Or Reasoning

Also: False Dilemma, All or Nothing Thinking; False Dichotomy, Black/White Fallacy, False Binary

A fallacy of logos that falsely offers only two possible options even though a broad range of possible alternatives, variations, and combinations are always readily available. E.g., ‘Either you are 100% Simon Straightarrow or you are as queer as a three dollar bill–it’s as simple as that and there’s no middle ground!’ Or, ‘Either you’re in with us all the way or you’re a hostile and must be destroyed!  What’s it gonna be?’  Or, if your performance is anything short of perfect, you consider yourself an abject failure. Also applies to falsely contrasting one option or case to another that is not really opposed, e.g., falsely opposing ‘Black Lives Matter’ to ‘Blue Lives Matter’ when in fact not a few police officers are themselves African American, and African Americans and police are not (or ought not to be!) natural enemies. Or, falsely posing a choice of either helping needy American veterans or helping needy foreign refugees, when in fact in today’s United States there are ample resources available to easily do both should we care to do so. 

See also, Overgeneralization.

Equivocation

The fallacy of deliberately failing to define one’s terms, or knowingly and deliberately using words in a different sense than the one the audience will understand. (E.g., President Bill Clinton stating that he did not have sexual relations with ‘that woman,’ meaning no sexual penetration, knowing full well that the audience will understand his statement as ‘I had no sexual contact of any kind with that woman.’) This is a corruption of the argument from logos, and a tactic often used in American jurisprudence.  Historically, this referred to a tactic used during the Reformation-era religious wars in Europe, when people were forced to swear loyalty to one or another side and did as demanded via ‘equivocation,’  i.e., ‘When I solemnly swore true faith and allegiance to the King I really meant to King Jesus, King of Kings, and not to the evil usurper squatting on the throne today.’ This latter form of fallacy is excessively rare today when the swearing of oaths has become effectively meaningless except as obscenity or as speech formally subject to perjury penalties in legal or judicial settings.

The Eschatological Fallacy

The ancient fallacy of arguing, ‘This world is coming to an end, so…’  Popularly refuted by the observation that ‘Since the world is coming to an end you won’t need your life savings anyhow, so why not give it all to me?’

Esoteric Knowledge

Also: Esoteric Wisdom; Gnosticism; Inner Truth; the Inner Sanctum; Need to Know

A fallacy from logos and ethos, that there is some knowledge reserved only for the Wise, the Holy or the Enlightened, (or those with proper Security Clearance), things that the masses cannot understand and do not deserve to know, at least not until they become wiser, more trusted or more ‘spiritually advanced.’  The counterpart of this fallacy is that of Obscurantism (also Obscurationism, or Willful Ignorance), that (almost always said in a basso profundo voice) ‘There are some things that we mere mortals must never seek to know!’ E.g., ‘Scientific experiments that violate the privacy of the marital bed and expose  the deep and private mysteries of human sexual behavior to the harsh light of science are obscene, sinful and morally evil. There are some things that we as humans are simply not meant to know!’ For the opposite of this latter, see the ‘Plain Truth Fallacy.’

See also, Argumentum ad Mysteriam.

Essentializing

A fallacy of logos that proposes a person or thing ‘is what it is and that’s all that it is,’ and at its core will always be the way it is right now (E.g., ‘All terrorists are monsters, and will still be terrorist monsters even if they live to be 100,’ or ”The poor you will always have with you,’ so any effort to eliminate poverty is pointless.’). Also refers to the fallacy of arguing that something is a certain way ‘by nature,’ an empty claim that no amount of proof can refute. (E.g., ‘Americans are cold and greedy by nature,’ or ‘Women are naturally better cooks than men.’) See also ‘Default Bias.’  The opposite of this is Relativizing, the typically postmodern fallacy of blithely dismissing any and all arguments against one’s standpoint by shrugging one’s shoulders and responding ‘ Whatever…, I don’t feel like arguing about it;’ ‘It all depends…;’ ‘That’s your opinion; everything’s relative;’ or falsely invoking Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Quantum Weirdness or the Theory of Multiple Universes in order to confuse, mystify or ‘refute’ an opponent.

See also, ‘Red Herring’ and  ‘Appeal to Nature.’

The Etymological Fallacy

Also: ‘The Underlying Meaning’

A fallacy of logos, drawing false conclusions from the (most often long-forgotten) linguistic origins of a current word, or the alleged meanings or associations of that word in another language. E.g., ‘As used in physics, electronics and electrical engineering the term ‘hysteresis’ is grossly sexist since it originally came from the Greek word for ‘uterus’ or ‘womb.”  Or, ‘I refuse to eat fish! Don’t you know that the French word for ‘fish’ is ‘poisson,’ which looks just like the English word ‘poison’? And doesn’t that suggest something to you?’ Famously, postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida played on this fallacy at great length in his (1968) ‘Plato’s Pharmacy.’

The Excluded Middle

A corrupted argument from logos that proposes that since a little of something is good, more must be better (or that if less of something is good, none at all is even better). E.g., ‘If eating an apple a day is good for you, eating an all-apple diet is even better!’ or ‘If a low fat diet prolongs your life, a no-fat diet should make you live forever!’  An opposite of this fallacy is that of Excluded Outliers , where one arbitrarily discards evidence, examples or results that disprove one’s standpoint by simply describing them as ‘Weird,’ ‘Outliers,’ or ‘Atypical.’ See also, ‘The Big ‘But’ Fallacy.’ Also opposite is the Middle of the Road Fallacy (also, Falacia ad Temperantiam; ‘The Politics of the Center;’ Marginalization of the Adversary), where one demonstrates the ‘reasonableness’ of one’s own standpoint (no matter how extreme) not on its own merits, but solely or mainly by presenting it as the only ‘moderate’ path among two or more obviously unacceptable extreme alternatives.  E.g., anti-Communist scholar Charles Roig (1979) notes that Vladimir Lenin successfully argued for Bolshevism in Russia as the only available ‘moderate’ middle path between bomb-throwing Nihilist terrorists on the ultra-left and a corrupt and hated Czarist autocracy on the right. As Texas politician and humorist Jim Hightower famously declares in an undated quote, ‘The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.’

The ‘F-Bomb’

Also: Cursing; Obscenity; Profanity

An adolescent fallacy of pathos, attempting to defend or strengthen one’s argument with gratuitous, unrelated sexual, obscene, vulgar, crude or profane language when such language does nothing to make an argument stronger, other than perhaps to create a sense of identity with certain young male ‘urban’ audiences. This fallacy also includes adding gratuitous sex scenes or ‘adult’ language to an otherwise unrelated novel or movie, sometimes simply to avoid the dreaded ‘G’ rating. Related to this fallacy is the Salacious Fallacy , falsely attracting attention to and thus potential agreement with one’s argument by inappropriately sexualizing it, particularly connecting it to some form of sex that is perceived as deviant, perverted or prohibited (E.g., Arguing against Bill Clinton’s presidential legacy by continuing to wave Monica’s Blue Dress, or against Donald Trump’s presidency by obsessively highlighting his past boasting about genital groping). Historically, this dangerous fallacy was deeply implicated with the crime of lynching, in which false, racist accusations against a Black or minority victim were almost always salacious in nature, and the sensation involved was successfully used to whip up public emotion to a murderous pitch.

See also, Red Herring.

The False Analogy

The fallacy of incorrectly comparing one thing to another in order to draw a false conclusion. E.g., ‘Just like an alley cat needs to prowl, a normal adult can’t be tied down to one single lover.’ The opposite of this fallacy is the Sui Generis Fallacy (also, Differance), a postmodern stance that rejects the validity of analogy and of inductive reasoning altogether because any given person, place, thing or idea under consideration is ‘sui generis’ i.e., different and unique, in a class unto itself. 

Finish the Job

The dangerous contemporary fallacy, often aimed at a lesser-educated or working-class audience, that an action or standpoint (or the continuation of that action or standpoint) may not be questioned or discussed because there is ‘a job to be done’ or finished, falsely assuming ‘jobs’ are meaningless but never to be questioned. Sometimes those involved internalize (‘buy into’) the ‘job’ and make the task a part of their own ethos. 

Example: ‘Ours is not to reason why / Ours is but to do or die.’) Related to this is the ‘ Just a Job’ fallacy. (E.g., ‘How can torturers stand to look at themselves in the mirror? But I guess it’s OK because for them it’s just a job like any other, the job that they get paid to do.’)

See also ‘Blind Loyalty,’ ‘The Soldiers’ Honor Fallacy’ and the ‘Argument from Inertia.’

The Free Speech Fallacy

The infantile fallacy of responding to challenges to one’s statements and standpoints by whining, ‘It’s a free country, isn’t it?  I can say anything I want to!’ A contemporary case of this fallacy is the ‘ Safe Space,’ or ‘Safe Place,’ where it is not allowed to refute, challenge or even discuss another’s beliefs because that might be too uncomfortable or ‘triggery’ for emotionally fragile individuals. E.g., ‘All I told him was, ‘Jesus loves the little children,’ but then he turned around and asked me ‘But what about birth defects?’ That’s mean. I think I’m going to cry!’ Prof. Bill Hart Davidson (2017) notes that ‘Ironically, the most strident calls for ‘safety’ come from those who want us to issue protections for discredited ideas. Things that science doesn’t support AND that have destroyed lives – things like the inherent superiority of one race over another. Those ideas wither under demands for evidence. They *are* unwelcome. But let’s be clear: they are unwelcome because they have not survived the challenge of scrutiny.’ Ironically, in contemporary America ‘free speech’ has often become shorthand for freedom of racist, offensive or even neo-Nazi expression, ideological trends that once in power typically quash free speech. Additionally, a (201) scientific study has found that, in fact, ‘ people think harder and produce better political arguments when their views are challenged ‘ and not artificially protected without challenge.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

Also: Self Justification

A corrupt argument from ethos, this fallacy occurs as a result of observing and comparing behavior. ‘You assume that the bad behavior of others is caused by character flaws and foul dispositions while your behavior is explained by the environment.  So, for example, I get up in the morning at 10 a.m.  I say it is because my neighbors party until 2 in the morning (situation) but I say that the reason why you do it is that you are lazy. Interestingly, it is more common in individualistic societies where we value self volition. Collectivist societies tend to look at the environment more. (It happens there, too, but it is much less common.)’  [Thanks to scholar Joel Sax for this!] The obverse of this fallacy is Self Deprecation (also Self Debasement) , where, out of either false humility or a genuine lack of self-esteem, one deliberately puts oneself down, most often in hopes of attracting denials, gratifying compliments, and praise.

Gaslighting

A recently-prominent, vicious fallacy of logic, denying or invalidating a person’s own knowledge and experiences by deliberately twisting or distorting known facts, memories, scenes, events and evidence in order to disorient a vulnerable opponent and to make him or her doubt his/her sanity. E.g., ‘Who are you going to believe?  Me, or your own eyes?’ Or, ‘You claim you found me in bed with her ? Think again!  You’re crazy! You seriously need to see a shrink.’ A very common, though cruel instance of Gaslighting that seems to have been particularly familiar among mid-20th century generations is the fallacy of Emotional Invalidation , questioning, after the fact, the reality or ‘validity’ of  affective states, either another’s or one’s own. E.g., ‘Sure, I made it happen from beginning to end, but it wasn’t me doing it, it was just my stupid hormones betraying me.’ Or, ‘You didn’t really mean it when you said you ‘hate’ Mommy. Now take a time-out and you’ll feel better.’ Or, ‘No, you’re not really in love; it’s just infatuation or ‘puppy love.” The fallacy of ‘Gaslighting’ is named after British playwright Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play ‘Gas Light,’ also known as ‘Angel Street.’  See also, Blind Loyalty, ‘The Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy,’ The Affective Fallacy, and ‘Alternative Truth.’

Guilt by Association

The fallacy of trying to refute or condemn someone’s standpoint, arguments, or actions by evoking the negative ethos of those with whom the speaker is identified or of a group, party, religion, or race to which he or she belongs or was once associated with. A form of Ad Hominem Argument, e.g., ‘Don’t listen to her. She’s a Republican so you can’t trust anything she says,’ or ‘Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?’  An extreme instance of this is the Machiavellian ‘For my enemies, nothing’ Fallacy , where real or perceived ‘enemies’ are by definition always wrong and must be conceded nothing, not even the time of day, e.g., ‘He’s a Republican, so even if he said the sky is blue I wouldn’t believe him.’

The Half Truth

Also: Card Stacking, Stacking the Deck, Incomplete Information

A corrupt argument from logos, the fallacy of consciously selecting, collecting and sharing only that evidence that supports one’s own standpoint, telling the strict truth but deliberately minimizing or omitting important key details in order to falsify the larger picture and support a false conclusion.(E.g. ‘The truth is that Bangladesh is one of the world’s fastest-growing countries and can boast of a young, ambitious and hard-working population, a family-positive culture, a delightful, warm climate of tropical beaches and swaying palms where it never snows, low cost medical and dental care, a vibrant faith tradition and a multitude of places of worship, an exquisite, world-class spicy local curry cuisine and a swinging entertainment scene. Taken together, all these solid facts clearly prove that Bangladesh is one of the world’s most desirable places for young families to live, work and raise a family.’)

See also, Confirmation Bias.

Hero-Busting

Also: ‘The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good’

A postmodern fallacy of ethos under which, since nothing and nobody in this world is perfect there are not and have never been any heroes: Washington and Jefferson held slaves, Lincoln was (by our contemporary standards) a racist, Karl Marx sexually exploited his family’s own young live-in domestic worker and got her pregnant, Martin Luther King Jr. had an eye for women too, Lenin condemned feminism, the Mahatma drank his own urine (ugh!), Pope Francis is wrong on abortion, capitalism, same-sex marriage and women’s ordination, Mother Teresa loved suffering and was wrong on just about everything else too, etc., etc  Also applies to the now near-universal political tactic of ransacking everything an opponent has said, written or done since infancy in order to find something to misinterpret or condemn (and we all have something! ). An early example of this latter tactic is deftly described in Robert Penn Warren’s classic (1946) novel, All the King’s Men . This is the opposite of the ‘Heroes All’ fallacy, below. The ‘Hero Busting’ fallacy has also been selectively employed at the service of the Identity Fallacy (see below) to falsely ‘prove’ that ‘you cannot trust anyone’ but a member of ‘our’ identity-group since everyone else , even the so-called ‘heroes’ or ‘allies’ of other groups, are all racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or hate ‘us.’  E.g., In 1862 Abraham Lincoln said he was willing to settle the U.S. Civil War either with or without freeing the slaves if it would preserve the Union, thus ‘conclusively proving’ that all whites are viciously racist at heart and that African Americans must do for self and never trust any of ‘them,’ not even those who claim to be allies.

Also: ‘Everybody’s a Winner’

The contemporary fallacy that everyone is above average or extraordinary. A corrupted argument from pathos (not wanting anyone to lose or to feel bad). Thus, every member of the Armed Services, past or present, who serves honorably is a national hero, every student who competes in the Science Fair wins a ribbon or trophy, and every racer is awarded a winner’s yellow jersey. This corruption of the argument from pathos, much ridiculed by disgraced American humorist Garrison Keeler, ignores the fact that if everybody wins nobody wins, and if everyone’s a hero no one’s a hero. The logical result of this fallacy is that, as children’s author Alice Childress writes (1973), ‘A hero ain’t nothing but a sandwich.’

See also the ‘Soldiers’ Honor Fallacy.’  

Hoyle’s Fallacy

A fallacy of logos, falsely assuming that a possible event of low (even vanishingly low) probability can never have happened and/or would never happen in real life. E.g., ‘The probability of something as complex as human DNA emerging by purely random evolution in the time the earth has existed is so negligible that it is for all practical purposes impossible and must have required divine intervention.’  Or, ‘The chance of a casual, Saturday-night poker player being dealt four aces off an honest, shuffled deck is so infinitesimal that it would never occur even once in a normal lifetime!  That proves you cheated!’ See also, Argument from Incredulity. An obverse of Hoyle’s Fallacy is ‘You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play,’ (also, ‘Someone’s gonna win and it might as well be YOU!’) a common and cruel contemporary fallacy used to persuade vulnerable audiences, particularly the poor, the mathematically illiterate and gambling addicts to throw their money away on lotteries, horse races, casinos, and other long-shot gambling schemes.

I Wish I Had a Magic Wand

The fallacy of regretfully (and falsely) proclaiming oneself powerless to change a bad or objectionable situation over which one has power. E.g., ‘What can we do about gas prices? As Secretary of Energy I wish I had a magic wand, but I don’t’ [shrug] . Or, ‘No, you can’t quit piano lessons. I wish I had a magic wand and could teach you piano overnight, but I don’t, so like it or not, you have to keep on practicing.’ The parent, of course, ignores the possibility that the child may not want or need to learn piano.

See also, TINA.

The Identity Fallacy

Also: Identity Politics; ‘Die away, ye old forms and logic!’

A corrupt postmodern argument from ethos, a variant on the Argumentum ad Hominem in which the validity of one’s logic, evidence, experience or arguments depends not on their own strength but rather on whether the one arguing is a member of a given social class, generation, nationality, religious or ethnic group, color, gender or sexual orientation, profession, occupation or subgroup. In this fallacy, valid opposing evidence and arguments are brushed aside or ‘othered’ without comment or consideration, as simply not worth arguing about solely because of the lack of proper background or ethos of the person making the argument, or because the one arguing does not self-identify as a member of the ‘in-group.’ E.g., ‘You’d understand me right away if you were Burmese but since you’re not there’s no way I can explain it to you,’ or ‘Nobody but another nurse can know what a nurse has to go through.’ Identity fallacies are reinforced by common ritual, language, and discourse. However, these fallacies are occasionally self-interested, driven by the egotistical ambitions of academics, politicians and would-be group leaders anxious to build their own careers by carving out a special identity group constituency to the exclusion  of existing broader-based identities and leadership. An Identity Fallacy may lead to scorn or rejection of potentially useful allies, real or prospective, because they are not of one’s own identity. The Identity Fallacy promotes an exclusivist, sometimes cultish ‘do for self’ philosophy which in today’s world virtually guarantees self-marginalization and ultimate defeat.  A recent application of the Identity Fallacy is the fallacious accusation of ‘ Cultural Appropriation,’ in which those who are not of the right Identity are condemned for ‘appropriating’ the cuisine, clothing, language or music of a marginalized group, forgetting the old axiom that ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’ Accusations of Cultural Appropriation very often stem from competing selfish economic interests (E.g., ‘What right do those Gringos have to set up a taco place right here on Guadalupe Drive to take away business from Doña Teresa’s Taquería? They even dare to play Mexican music in their dining room! That’s cultural appropriation!’).

See also, Othering.

Infotainment

Also: Infortainment; Fake News; InfoWars

A very corrupt and dangerous modern media-driven fallacy that deliberately and knowingly stirs in facts, news, falsities and outright lies with entertainment, a mixture usually concocted for specific, base ideological, and profit-making motives. Origins of this fallacy predate the current era in the form of ‘Yellow’ or ‘Tabloid’ Journalism. This deadly fallacy has caused endless social unrest, discontent and even shooting wars (e.g., the Spanish American War) over the course of modern history. Practitioners of this fallacy sometimes hypocritically justify its use on the basis that their readers/listeners/viewers ‘know beforehand’ (or should know) that the content offered is not intended as real news and is offered for entertainment purposes only, but in fact this caveat is rarely observed by uncritical audiences who eagerly swallow what the purveyors put forth.

See also Dog-Whistle Politics.

The Job’s Comforter Fallacy

Also: ‘Karma is a bi**;’  ‘What goes around comes around.’

The fallacy that since there is no such thing as random chance and we (I, my group, or my country) are under special protection of heaven, any misfortune or natural disaster that we suffer must be a punishment for our own or someone else’s secret sin or open wickedness. The opposite of the Appeal to Heaven, this is the fallacy employed by the Westboro Baptist Church members who protest fallen service members’ funerals all around the United States.

See also, Magical Thinking. 

Just Do it. 

Also: ‘Find a way;’ ‘I don’t care how you do it;’ ‘Accomplish the mission;’ ‘By Any Means Necessary.’

A pure, abusive Argumentum ad Baculum (argument from force), in which someone in power arbitrarily waves aside or overrules the moral objections of subordinates or followers and orders them to accomplish a goal by any means required, fair or foul  The clear implication is that unethical or immoral methods should be used. E.g., ‘You say there’s no way you can finish the dig on schedule because you found an old pioneer gravesite with a fancy tombstone on the excavation site? Well, find a way! Make it disappear! Just do it ! I don’t want to know how you do it, just do it! This is a million-dollar contract and we need  it done by Tuesday.’ 

See also, Plausible Deniability.

Just Plain Folks

Also: ‘Values’

This corrupt modern argument from ethos argues to a less-educated or rural audience that the one arguing is ‘just plain folks’ who is a ‘plain talker,’  ‘says what s/he is thinking,’ ‘scorns political correctness,’ someone who ‘you don’t need a dictionary to understand’ and who thinks like the audience and is thus worthy of belief, unlike some member of the fancy-talking, latte-sipping Left Coast Political Elite, some ‘double-domed professor,’ ‘inside-the-beltway Washington bureaucrat,’ ‘tree-hugger’ or other despised outsider who ‘doesn’t think like we do’ or ‘doesn’t share our values.’  This is a counterpart to the Ad Hominem Fallacy and most often carries a distinct reek of xenophobia or racism as well.

See also the Plain Truth Fallacy and the Simpleton’s Fallacy.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Also: ‘Every Revolution Ends up Eating its own Young:’ Grit; Resilience Doctrine

In this very dangerous, archly pessimistic postmodern fallacy the bogus ‘Law of Unintended Consequences,’ once a semi-humorous satirical corollary of ‘Murphy’s Law,’ is elevated to the status of an iron law of history. This fallacy arbitrarily proclaims a priori that since we can never know everything or securely foresee anything , sooner or later in today’s ‘complex world’ unforeseeable adverse consequences and negative side effects (so-called ‘unknown unknowns’) will always end up blindsiding and overwhelming, defeating and vitiating any and all naive ‘do-gooder’ efforts to improve our world. Instead, one must always expect defeat and be ready to roll with the punches by developing ‘grit’ or ‘resilience’ as a primary survival skill. This nihilist fallacy is a practical negation of the possibility of any valid argument from logos.

See also, TINA. 

Lying with Statistics

The contemporary fallacy of misusing true figures and numbers to ‘prove’ unrelated claims. (e.g. ‘In real terms, attending college has never been cheaper than it is now. When expressed as a percentage of the national debt, the cost of getting a college education is actually far less today than it was back in 1965!’). A corrupted argument from logos, often preying on the public’s perceived or actual mathematical ignorance. This includes the Tiny Percentage Fallacy, that an amount of action that is quite significant in and of itself somehow becomes insignificant simply because it’s a tiny percentage of something much larger.  E.g., the arbitrary arrest, detention, or interception of ‘only’ a few hundred legally boarded international travelers as a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands who normally arrive. Under this same fallacy a consumer who would choke on spending an extra dollar for two cans of peas will typically ignore $50 extra on the price of a car or $1000 extra on the price of a house simply because these differences are ‘only’ a tiny percentage of the much larger amount being spent.  Historically, sales taxes or value-added taxes (VAT) have successfully gained public acceptance and remain ‘under the radar’ because of this latter fallacy, even though amounting to hundreds or thousands of dollars a year in extra tax burden.

See also Half-truth, the Snow Job, and the Red Herring.

Magical Thinking

Also: the Sin of Presumption; Expect a Miracle

An ancient but deluded fallacy of logos, arguing that when it comes to ‘crunch time,’ provided one has enough faith, prays hard enough, says the right words, does the right rituals, ‘names it and claims it,’ or ‘claims the Promise,’ God will always suspend the laws of the universe and work a miracle at the request of or for the benefit of the True Believer. In practice this nihilist fallacy denies the existence of a rational or predictable universe and thus the possibility of any valid argument from logic

See also, Positive Thinking, the Appeal to Heaven, and the Job’s Comforter fallacy.

Also: Arguing in Bad Faith ; also Sophism

Using an argument that the arguer himself or herself knows is not valid.  E.g., An unbeliever attacking believers by throwing verses from their own Holy Scriptures at them, or a lawyer arguing for the innocence of someone whom s/he knows full well to be guilty. This latter is a common practice in American jurisprudence and is sometimes portrayed as the worst face of ‘Sophism.’  [ Special thanks to Bradley Steffens for pointing out this fallacy! ] Included under this fallacy is the fallacy of  Motivational Truth ( also , Demagogy, or Campaign Promises) , deliberately lying to ‘the people’ to gain their support or motivate them toward some action the rhetor perceives to be desirable (using evil discursive means toward a ‘good’ material end). A particularly bizarre and corrupt form of this latter fallacy is Self Deception (also, Whistling by the Graveyard ) . In which one deliberately and knowingly deludes oneself in order to achieve a goal, or perhaps simply to suppress anxiety and maintain one’s energy level, enthusiasm, morale, peace of mind or sanity in moments of adversity.

Measurability

A corrupt argument from logos and ethos (that of science and mathematics), the modern Fallacy of Measurability proposes that if something cannot be measured, quantified, and replicated it does not exist or is ‘nothing but anecdotal, touchy-feely stuff’ unworthy of serious consideration, i.e., mere gossip or subjective opinion. Often, achieving ‘Measurability’ necessarily demands preselecting, ‘fiddling’ or ‘massaging’ the available data simply in order to make it statistically tractable, or in order to support a desired conclusion. Scholar Thomas Persing thus describes ‘The modernist fallacy of falsely and inappropriately applying norms, standardizations, and data point requirements to quantify productivity or success. This is similar to complex question, measurability, and oversimplification fallacies where the user attempts to categorize complicated/diverse topics into terms that when measured, suit their position.

Example: ‘The calculation of inflation in the United States doesn’t include the changes in the price of gasoline, because the price of gasoline is too volatile, despite the fact gasoline is necessary for most people to live their lives in the United States.’

See also, ‘A Priori Argument,’ ‘Lying with Statistics,’ and the ‘Procrustean Fallacy.’

Mind-reading

Also: ‘The Fallacy of Speculation;’ ‘I can read you like a book’An ancient fallacy, a corruption of stasis theory, speculating about someone else’s thoughts, emotions, motivations, and ‘body language’ and then claiming to understand these clearly, sometimes more accurately than the person in question knows themselves. The rhetor deploys this phony ‘knowledge’ as a fallacious warrant for or against a given standpoint. Scholar Myron Peto offers as an example the baseless claim that ‘Obama doesn’t a da** [sic] for human rights.’ Assertions that ‘call for speculation’ are rightly rejected as fallacious in U.S. judicial proceedings but far too often pass uncontested in public discourse. The opposite of this fallacy is the postmodern fallacy of Mind Blindness (also, the Autist’s Fallacy ), a complete denial of any normal human capacity for ‘Theory of Mind,’ postulating the utter incommensurability and privacy of minds and thus the impossibility of ever knowing or truly understanding another’s thoughts, emotions, motivations or intents. This fallacy, much promoted by the late postmodernist guru Jacques Derrida, necessarily vitiates any form of Stasis Theory. However, the Fallacy of Mind Blindness has been decisively refuted in several studies, including recent (2017) research published by the Association for Psychological Science , and a (2017) Derxel University study indicating how ‘our minds align when we communicate.’

Moral Licensing

The contemporary ethical fallacy that one’s consistently moral life, good behavior or recent extreme suffering or sacrifice earns him/her the right to commit an immoral act without repercussions, consequences or punishment. E.g., ‘I’ve been good all year, so one bad won’t matter,’ or  ‘After what I’ve been through, God knows I need this.’  The fallacy of Moral Licensing is also sometimes applied to nations, e.g., ‘Those who criticize repression and the Gulag in the former USSR forget what extraordinary suffering the Russians went through in World War II and the millions upon millions who died.’  See also Argument from Motives.  The opposite of this fallacy is the (excessively rare in our times) ethical fallacy of Scruples, in which one obsesses to pathological excess about one’s accidental, forgotten, unconfessed or unforgiven sins and because of them, the seemingly inevitable prospect of eternal damnation.

Moral Superiority

Also: Self Righteousness; the Moral High Ground

An ancient, immoral, and extremely dangerous fallacy, enunciated in Thomistic / Scholastic philosophy in the late Middle Ages, arguing that Evil has no rights that the Good and the Righteous are bound to respect. That way lies torture, heretic-burning, and the Spanish Inquisition. Those who practice this vicious fallacy reject any ‘moral equivalency’ (i.e., even-handed treatment) between themselves (the Righteous) and their enemies (the Wicked), against whom anything is fair, and to whom nothing must be conceded, not even the right to life. This fallacy is a specific denial of the ancient ‘Golden Rule,’ and has been the cause of endless intractable conflict, since if one is Righteous no negotiation with Evil and its minions is possible; The only imaginable road to a ‘just’ peace is through total victory, i.e., the absolute defeat and liquidation of one’s Wicked enemies.  American folk singer and Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan expertly demolishes this fallacy in his 1963 protest song, ‘With God on Our Side.’

See also the Appeal to Heaven, and Moving the Goalposts.

Mortification

Also: Live as Though You’re Dying; Pleasure-hating; No Pain No Gain

An ancient fallacy of logos, trying to ‘beat the flesh into submission’ by extreme exercise or ascetic practices, deliberate starvation or infliction of pain, denying the undeniable fact that discomfort and pain exist for the purpose of warning of lasting damage to the body. Extreme examples of this fallacy are various forms of self-flagellation such as practiced by the New Mexico ‘ Penitentes ‘ during Holy Week or by Shia devotees during Muharram. More familiar contemporary manifestations of this fallacy are extreme ‘insanity’ exercise regimes not intended for normal health, fitness or competitive purposes but just to ‘toughen’ or ‘punish’ the body. Certain pop-nutritional theories and diets seem based on this fallacy as well. Some contemporary experts suggest that self-mortification (an English word related to the Latinate French root ‘mort,’ or ‘death.’) is in fact ‘suicide on the installment plan.’ Others suggest that it involves a narcotic-like addiction to the body’s natural endorphins.

The opposite of this fallacy is the ancient fallacy of Hedonism , seeking and valuing physical pleasure as a good in itself, simply for its own sake.

Moving the Goalposts

Also: Changing the Rules; All’s Fair in Love and War; The Nuclear Option

‘Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’): A fallacy of logos, demanding certain proof or evidence, a certain degree of support or a certain number of votes to decide an issue, and then when this is offered, demanding even more, different or better support in order to deny victory to an opponent. For those who practice the fallacy of Moral Superiority (above), Moving the Goalposts is often perceived as perfectly good and permissible if necessary to prevent the victory of Wickedness and ensure the triumph of one’s own side, i.e, the Righteous.

Mind Your Own Business

Also: You’re Not the Boss of Me; ‘None of yer beeswax,’ ‘So What?’, The Appeal to Privacy

The contemporary fallacy of arbitrarily prohibiting or terminating any discussion of one’s own standpoints or behavior, no matter how absurd, dangerous, evil or offensive, by drawing a phony curtain of privacy around oneself and one’s actions. A corrupt argument from ethos (one’s own). E.g., ‘Sure, I was doing eighty and weaving between lanes on Mesa Street–what’s it to you? You’re not a cop, you’re not my nanny. It’s my business if I want to speed, and your business to get the hell out of my way. Mind your own damn business!’ Or, ‘Yeah, I killed my baby. So what? Butt out! It wasn’t your brat, so it’s none of your damn business!’  Rational discussion is cut off because ‘it is none of your business!’ See also, ‘Taboo.’ The counterpart of this is ‘ Nobody Will Ever Know, ‘ (also ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas;’ ‘I Think We’re Alone Now,’ or the Heart of Darkness Syndrome) the fallacy that just because nobody important is looking (or because one is on vacation, or away in college, or overseas) one may freely commit immoral, selfish, negative or evil acts at will without expecting any of the normal consequences or punishment . Author Joseph Conrad graphically describes this sort of moral degradation in the character of Kurtz in his classic novel, Heart of Darkness .

Name-Calling

A variety of the ‘Ad Hominem’ argument. The dangerous fallacy that, simply because of who one is or is alleged to be, any and all arguments, disagreements or objections against one’s standpoint or actions are automatically racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, bigoted, discriminatory or hateful. E.g., ‘My stand on abortion is the only correct one. To disagree with me, argue with me or question my judgment in any way would only show what a pig you really are.’ Also applies to refuting an argument by simply calling it a ‘fallacy,’ or declaring it invalid without proving why it is invalid, or summarily dismissing  arguments or opponents by labeling them ‘racist,’ ‘communist,’ ‘fascist,’ ‘moron,’ any name followed by the suffix ‘tard’ (short for the highly offensive ‘retard’) or some other negative name without further explanation. E.g., ‘He’s an a**hole, end of story’ or ‘I’m a loser.’  A subset of this is the Newspeak fallacy, creating identification with a certain kind of audience by inventing or using racist or offensive, sometimes military-sounding nicknames for opponents or enemies, e.g., ‘The damned DINO’s are even worse than the Repugs and the Neocons.’ Or, ‘In the Big One it took us only five years to beat both the J*ps and the Jerries, so more than a decade and a half after niner-eleven why is it so hard for us to beat a raggedy bunch of Hajjis and Towel-heads?’ Note that originally the word ‘Nazi’ belonged in this category, but this term has long come into use as a proper English noun.

See also, ‘Reductionism,’ ‘Ad Hominem Argument,’ and ‘Alphabet Soup.’

The Narrative Fallacy

Also: the Fable; the Poster Child

The ancient fallacy of persuasion by telling a ‘heartwarming’ or horrifying story or fable, particularly to less-educated or uncritical audiences who are less likely to grasp purely logical arguments or general principles.  E.g., Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol.’ Narratives and fables, particularly those that name names and personalize arguments, tend to be far more persuasive at a popular level than other forms of argument and are virtually irrefutable, even when the story in question is well known to be entirely fictional. This fallacy is found even in the field of science, as noted by a recent (2017) scientific study .

The Not in My Back Yard Fallacy

Also ‘Build a Wall!’; ‘Lock’em up and throw away the key;’ The Ostrich Strategy; The Gitmo Solution

The infantile fallacy that a problem, challenge, or threat that is not physically nearby or to which I am not directly exposed has for all  practical purposes ‘gone away’ and ceased to exist. Thus, a problem can be permanently and definitively solved by ‘making it go away,’ preferably to someplace ‘out of sight,’ a walled-off ghetto or a distant isle where there is no news coverage, and where nobody important stays. Lacking that, it can be made to go away by simply eliminating, censoring, or ignoring ‘negative’ media coverage and public discussion of the problem and focusing on ‘positive, encouraging’ things instead.

No Discussion

Also: No Negotiation; the Control Voice; Peace through Strength; a Muscular Foreign Policy; Fascism

A pure Argumentum ad Baculum that rejects reasoned dialogue, offering either instant, unconditional compliance/surrender or defeat/death as the only two options for settling even minor differences, e.g., screaming ‘Get down on the ground, now!’ or declaring ‘We don’t talk to terrorists.’ This deadly fallacy falsely paints real or potential ‘hostiles’ as monsters devoid of all reason, and far too often contains a very strong element of ‘machismo’ as well. I.e. ‘A real, muscular leader never resorts to pantywaist pleading, apologies, excuses, fancy talk, or argument. That’s for lawyers, liars, and pansies and is nothing but a delaying tactic. A real man stands tall, says what he thinks, draws fast, and shoots to kill.’ The late actor John Wayne frequently portrayed this fallacy in his movie roles.

See also, The Pout.

No True Scotsman

Making a generalization true by changing the generalization to exclude a counterexample.

Non-recognition

A deluded fallacy in which one deliberately chooses not to publicly ‘recognize’  ground truth, usually on the theory that this would somehow reward evil-doers if we recognize their deeds as real or consequential. Often the underlying theory is that the situation is ‘temporary’ and will soon be reversed. E.g., In the decades from 1949 until Richard Nixon’s presidency the United States officially refused to recognize the existence of the most populous nation on earth, the People’s Republic of China, because America supported the U.S.-friendly Republic of China government on Taiwan instead and hoped they might somehow return to power on the mainland. Perversely, in 2016 the U.S. President-Elect caused a significant international flap by chatting with the President of the government on Taiwan, a de facto violation of long-standing American non-recognition of that same regime. More than half a century after the Korean War the U.S. still refuses to pronounce the name of, or recognize (much less conduct normal, peaceful negotiations with) a nuclear-armed DPRK (North Korea). An individual who practices this fallacy risks institutionalization (e.g., ‘I refuse to recognize Mom’s murder, ‘cuz that’d give the victory to the murderer! I refuse to watch you bury her! Stop!  Stop!’) but tragically, such behavior is only too common in international relations.

See also the State Actor Fallacy, Political Correctness, and The Pout.

The Non Sequitur

The deluded fallacy of offering evidence, reasons or conclusions that have no logical connection to the argument at hand (e.g. ‘The reason I flunked your course is because the U. S. government is now putting out purple five-dollar bills! Purple! ‘). Occasionally involves the breathtaking arrogance of claiming to have special knowledge of why God, fate, karma or the Universe is doing certain things. E.g., ‘This week’s earthquake was obviously meant to punish those people for their great wickedness.’ See also, Magical Thinking, and the Appeal to Heaven.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Also: Uniformitarianism, ‘Seen it all before;’ ‘Surprise, surprise;’ ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.’

Fairly rare in contemporary discourse, this deeply cynical fallacy, a corruption of the argument from logos, falsely proposes that there is not and will never be any real novelty in this world. Any argument that there are truly ‘new’ ideas or phenomena is judged  a priori to be unworthy of serious discussion and dismissed with a jaded sigh and a wave of the hand as ‘the same old same old.’  E.g., ‘[Sigh!] Idiots! Don’t you see that the current influx of refugees from the Mideast is just the same old Muslim invasion of Christendom that’s been going on for 1,400 years?’ Or, ‘Libertarianism is nothing but re-warmed anarchism, which, in turn, is nothing but the ancient Antinomian Heresy. Like I told you before, there’s nothing new under the sun!’ 

See also Red Herring.

Olfactory Rhetoric

Also: ‘The Nose Knows’

A vicious, zoological-level fallacy of pathos in which opponents are marginalized, dehumanized, or hated primarily based on their supposed odor, lack of personal cleanliness, imagined diseases, or filth. E. g.,  ‘Those demonstrators are demanding something or another but I’ll only talk to them if first they go home and take a bath!’ Or, ‘I can smell a Jew a block away!’  Also applies to demeaning other cultures or nationalities based on their differing cuisines, e.g., ‘I don’t care what they say or do, their breath always stinks of garlic. And have you ever smelled their kitchens?’  Olfactory Rhetoric straddles the borderline between a fallacy and a psychopathology. A 2017 study by Ruhr University Bochum suggests that olfactory rhetoric does not arise from a simple, automatic physiological reaction to an actual odor, but in fact, strongly depends on one’s predetermined reaction or prejudices toward another, and one’s olfactory center ‘is activated even before we perceive an odor.’

See also, Othering. Oops!

Also: ‘Oh, I forgot…,’ ‘The Judicial Surprise,’ ‘The October Surprise,’

A corrupt argument from logos in which toward the decisive end of a discussion, debate, trial, electoral campaign period, or decision-making process an opponent suddenly, elaborately and usually sarcastically shams having just remembered or uncovered some salient fact, argument or evidence–e.g., ‘Oops, I forgot to ask you:  You were convicted of this same offense twice before, weren’t you?!’ Banned in American judicial argument, this fallacy is only too common in public discourse. Also applies to supposedly ‘discovering’ and sensationally reporting some potentially damning information or evidence and then, after the damage has been done or the decision has been made, quietly declaring, ‘Oops, I guess that really wasn’t that significant after all. Ignore what I said. Sorry ’bout that!’ 

Also: Otherizing, ‘They’re Not Like Us,’ Stereotyping, Xenophobia, Racism, Prejudice

A badly corrupted, discriminatory argument from ethos where facts, arguments, experiences or objections are arbitrarily disregarded, ignored or put down without serious consideration because those involved ‘are not like us,’ or ‘don’t think like us.’ E.g., ‘It’s OK for Mexicans to earn a buck an hour in the maquiladoras [Mexico-based ‘Twin Plants’ run by American or other foreign corporations]. If it happened here I’d call it brutal exploitation and daylight robbery but south of the border, down Mexico way the economy is different and they’re not like us.’  Or, ‘You claim that life must be really terrible over there for terrorists to ever think of blowing themselves up with suicide vests just to make a point, but always remember that they’re different from us. They don’t think about life and death the same way we do.’ A vicious variety of the Ad Hominem Fallacy, most often applied to non-white or non-Christian populations. A variation on this fallacy is the ‘Speakee’ Fallacy (‘You speakee da English?’; also the Shibboleth), in which an opponent’s arguments are mocked, ridiculed and dismissed solely because of the speaker’s alleged or real accent, dialect, or lack of fluency in standard English, e.g., ‘He told me ‘Vee vorkers need to form a younion!’ but I told him I’m not a ‘vorker,’ and to come back when he learns to speak proper English.’ A very dangerous, extreme example of Othering is Dehumanization, a fallacy of faulty analogy where opponents are dismissed as mere cockroaches, lice, apes, monkeys, rats, weasels or bloodsucking parasites who have no right to speak or to live at all, and probably should be ‘squashed like bugs.’ This fallacy is ultimately the ‘logic’ behind ethnic cleansing, genocide and gas ovens. See also the Identity Fallacy, ‘Name Calling’ and ‘Olfactory Rhetoric.’

The opposite of this fallacy is the ‘Pollyanna Principle’ below.

Overexplanation

A fallacy of logos stemming from the real paradox that beyond a certain point, more explanation, instructions, data, discussion, evidence or proof inevitably results in less, not more, understanding. Contemporary urban mythology holds that this fallacy is typically male (‘ Mansplaining ‘), while barely half a century ago the prevailing myth was that it was men who were naturally monosyllabic, grunting or non-verbal while women would typically overexplain (e.g., the 1960 hit song by Joe Jones, ‘You Talk Too Much’). ‘Mansplaining’ is, according to scholar Danelle Pecht, ‘the infuriating tendency of many men to always have to be the smartest person in the room, regardless of the topic of discussion and how much they actually know!’

See also The Snow Job, and the ‘Plain Truth’ fallacy.

Overgeneralization

Also: Hasty Generalization; Totus pro Partes Fallacy ; the Mereological Fallacy

A fallacy of logos where a  broad generalization that is agreed to be true is offered as overriding all particular cases, particularly special cases requiring immediate attention. E.g., ‘Doctor, you say that this time of year a  flu vaccination is essential. but I would counter that ALL vaccinations are essential’ (implying that I’m not going to give special attention to getting the flu shot). Or, attempting to refute ‘Black Lives Matter’ by replying, ‘All Lives Matter,’ the latter undeniably true but still a fallacious overgeneralization in that specific and urgent context. ‘ Overgeneralization can also mean one sees a single negative outcome as an eternal pattern of defeat. Overgeneralization may also include the Pars pro Toto Fallacy , the stupid but common fallacy of incorrectly applying one or two true examples to all cases. E.g., a minority person who commits a particularly horrifying crime, and whose example is then used to smear the reputation of the entire group, or when a government publishes special lists of crimes committed by groups who are supposed to be hated, e.g., Jews, or undocumented immigrants. Famously, the case of one Willie Horton was successfully used in this manner in the 1988 American presidential election to smear African Americans, Liberals, and by extension, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. See also the fallacy of ‘Zero Tolerance’ below.

The Paralysis of Analysis

Also: Procrastination; the Nirvana Fallacy

A postmodern fallacy that says since all data is never in, any conclusion is always provisional, no legitimate decision can ever be made and any action should always be delayed until forced by circumstances. A corruption of the argument from logos.

See also the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences.’

The Passive Voice Fallacy

Also: the Bureaucratic Passive

A fallacy from ethos, concealing active human agency behind the curtain of the grammatical passive voice, e.g., ‘It has been decided that you are to be let go,’ arrogating an ethos of cosmic infallibility and inevitability to a very fallible conscious decision made by identifiable, fallible and potentially culpable human beings. Scholar Jackson Katz notes (2017): ‘We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenage girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls. …  So you can see how the use of the passive voice has a political effect. [It] shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term ‘Violence against women’ is problematic. It’s a passive construction; there’s no active agent in the sentence. It’s a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at the term ‘violence against women’ nobody is doing it to them, it just happens to them… Men aren’t even a part of it.’  See also, Political Correctness. An obverse of the Passive Voice Fallacy is the Be-verb Fallacy , a cultish linguistic theory and the bane of many a first-year composition student’s life, alleging that an extraordinary degree of ‘clarity,’ ‘sanity,’ or textual ‘liveliness’ can be reached by strictly eliminating all passive verb forms and all forms of the verb ‘to be’ from English-language writing. This odd but unproven contention, dating back to Alfred Korzybski’s ‘General Semantics’ self-improvement movement of the 1920’s and ’30’s via S. I. Hayakawa, blithely ignores the fact that although numerous major world languages lack a ubiquitous ‘be-verb,’ e.g., Russian, Hindi and Arabic, speakers of these languages, like English-speaking General Semantics devotees themselves, have never been proven to enjoy any particular cognitive advantage over ordinary everyday users of the passive voice and the verb ‘to be.’ Nor have writers of the curiously stilted English that results from applying this fallacy achieved any special success in academia, professional or technical writing, or in the popular domain.

Paternalism

A serious fallacy of ethos, arbitrarily tut-tutting, dismissing or ignoring another’s arguments or concerns as ‘childish’ or ‘immature;’ taking a condescending attitude of superiority toward opposing standpoints or toward opponents themselves. E.g., ‘Your argument against the war is so infantile. Try approaching the issue like an adult for a change,’ ‘I don’t argue with children ,’ or ‘Somebody has to be the grownup in the room, and it might as well be me. Here’s why you’re wrong…’  Also refers to the sexist fallacy of dismissing a woman’s argument because she is a woman, e.g., ‘Oh, it must be that time of the month, eh?’

See also ‘Ad Hominem Argument’ and ‘Tone Policing.’

Personalization

A deluded fallacy of ethos, seeing yourself or someone else as the essential cause of some external event for which you or the other person had no responsibility. E.g., ‘Never fails! It had to happen! It’s my usual rotten luck that the biggest blizzard of the year had to occur just on the day of our winter festival. If it wasn’t for ME being involved I’m sure the blizzard wouldn’t have happened!’ This fallacy can also be taken in a positive sense, e.g. Hitler evidently believed that simply because he was Hitler every bullet would miss him and no explosive could touch him. ‘Personalization’ straddles the borderline between a fallacy and a psychopathology.

See also, ‘The Job’s Comforter Fallacy,’ and ‘Magical Thinking.’

The Plain Truth Fallacy

Also: the Simple Truth fallacy, Salience Bias, the KISS Principle [Keep it Short and Simple / Keep it Simple, Stupid], the Monocausal Fallacy; the Executive Summary

A fallacy of logos favoring familiar, singular, summarized or easily comprehensible data, examples, explanations and evidence over those that are more complex and unfamiliar but much closer to the truth. E.g., ‘Ooooh, look at all those equations and formulas!  Just boil it down to the Simple Truth,’ or ‘I don’t want your damned philosophy lesson!  Just tell me the Plain Truth about why this is happening.’  A more sophisticated version of this fallacy arbitrarily proposes, as did 18th-century Scottish rhetorician John Campbell, that the Truth is always simple by nature and only malicious enemies of  Truth would ever seek to make it complicated. (See also, The Snow Job, and Overexplanation.) The opposite of this is the postmodern fallacy of Ineffability or Complexity (also, Truthiness; Post-Truth), arbitrarily declaring that today’s world is so complex that there is no truth, or that Truth (capital-T), if indeed such a thing exists, is unknowable except perhaps by God or the Messiah and is thus forever inaccessible and irrelevant to us mere mortals, making any cogent argument from logos impossible.

See also the Big Lie and Paralysis of Analysis.

Plausible Deniability

A vicious fallacy of ethos under which someone in power forces those under his or her control to do some questionable or evil act and to then falsely assume or conceal responsibility for that act in order to protect the ethos of the one in command. E.g., ‘Arrange a fatal accident but make sure I know nothing about it!’ 

Playing on Emotion

Also: the Sob Story; the Pathetic Fallacy; the ‘Bleeding Heart’ fallacy, the Drama Queen / Drama King Fallacy

The classic fallacy of pure argument from pathos, ignoring facts and evoking emotion alone. E.g., ‘If you don’t agree that witchcraft is a major problem just shut up, close your eyes for a moment, and picture in your mind all those poor moms crying bitter tears for their innocent tiny children whose cozy little beds and happy tricycles lie all cold and abandoned, just because of those wicked old witches! Let’s string’em all up!’ The opposite of this is the Apathetic Fallacy (also, Cynicism; Burnout; Compassion Fatigue), where any and all legitimate arguments from pathos are brushed aside because, as noted country music artist Jo Dee Messina sang (2005), ‘My give-a-damn’s busted.’ Obverse to Playing on Emotion is the ancient fallacy of Refinement (‘ Real Feelings’), where certain classes of living beings such as plants and non-domesticated animals, infants, babies and minor children, barbarians, slaves, deep-sea sailors, farmworkers, criminals and convicts, refugees, addicts, terrorists, Catholics, Jews, foreigners, the poor, people of color, ‘Hillbillies,’ ‘Hobos,’ homeless or undocumented people, or ‘the lower classes’ in general are deemed incapable of experiencing real pain like we do, or of having any ‘ real feelings’ at all, only brutish appetites, vile lusts, evil drives, filthy cravings, biological instincts, psychological reflexes and automatic tropisms. Noted rhetorician Kenneth Burke falls into this last, behaviorist fallacy in his otherwise brilliant (1966) Language as Symbolic Action, in his discussion of a bird trapped in a lecture room .

Political Correctness (‘PC’)

A postmodern fallacy, a counterpart of the ‘Name Calling’ fallacy, supposing that the nature of a thing or situation can be changed by simply changing its name. E.g., ‘Today we strike a blow for animal rights and against cruelty to animals by changing the name of ‘pets’ to ‘animal companions.’’ Or ‘Never, ever play the ‘victim’ card, because it’s so manipulative and sounds so negative, helpless and despairing. Instead of being ‘victims,’ we are proud to be ‘survivors.” (Of course, when ‘victims’ disappear then perpetrators conveniently vanish as well!)  See also, The Passive Voice Fallacy, and The Scripted Message. Also applies to other forms of political ‘ Language Control,’ e.g., being careful never to refer to North Korea or ISIS/ISIL by their rather pompous proper names (‘the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ and ‘the Islamic State,’ respectively) or to the Syrian government as the ‘Syrian government,’ (It’s always the ‘Regime’ or the ‘Dictatorship.’). Occasionally the fallacy of ‘Political Correctness’ is falsely confused with simple courtesy, e.g., ‘I’m sick and tired of the tyranny of Political Correctness, having to watch my words all the time–I want to be free to speak my mind and to call out (insert derogatory term here) in public any time I damn well feel like it!’

An opposite of this fallacy is the fallacy of Venting, below.

See also, Non-recognition.

The Pollyanna Principle

Also: ‘The Projection Bias,’ ‘They’re Just Like Us,’ ‘Singing ‘Kumbaya.”

A traditional, often tragic fallacy of ethos, that of automatically (and falsely) assuming that everyone else in any given place, time and circumstance had or has basically the same (positive) wishes, desires, interests, concerns, ethics and moral code as ‘we’ do. This fallacy practically if not theoretically denies both the reality of difference and the human capacity to chose radical evil.  E.g., arguing that ‘The only thing most Nazi Storm Troopers wanted was the same thing we do, to live in peace and prosperity and to have a good family life,’ when the reality was radically otherwise. Dr. William Lorimer offers this explanation: ‘The Projection Bias is the flip side of the ‘They’re Not Like Us’ [Othering] fallacy. The Projection bias (fallacy) is ‘They’re just people like me, therefore they must be motivated by the same things that motivate me.’ For example: ‘I would never pull a gun and shoot a police officer unless I was convinced he was trying to murder me; therefore, when Joe Smith shot a police officer, he must have been in genuine fear for his life.’ I see the same fallacy with regard to Israel: ‘The people of Gaza just want to be left in peace; therefore, if Israel would just lift the blockade and allow Hamas to import anything they want, without restriction, they would stop firing rockets at Israel.’ That may or may not be true – I personally don’t believe it – but the argument clearly presumes that the people of Gaza, or at least their leaders, are motivated by a desire for peaceful co-existence.’ The Pollyanna Principle was gently but expertly demolished in the classic twentieth-century American animated cartoon series, ‘The Flintstones,’ in which the humor lay in the absurdity of picturing ‘Stone Age’ characters having the same concerns, values and lifestyles as mid-twentieth century white working-class Americans.  This is the opposite of the Othering fallacy. (Note: The Pollyanna Principle fallacy should not be confused with a psychological principle of the same name which observes that positive memories are usually retained more strongly than negative ones. )   

The Positive Thinking Fallacy

An immensely popular but deluded modern fallacy of logos, that because we are ‘thinking positively’ that in itself somehow biases external, objective reality in our favor even before we lift a finger to act. See also, Magical Thinking. Note that this particular fallacy is often part of a much wider closed-minded, somewhat cultish ideology where the practitioner is warned against paying attention to or even acknowledging the reality of evil, or of ‘negative’ evidence or counter-arguments against his/her standpoints. In the latter case rational discussion, argument or refutation is most often futile. See also, Deliberate Ignorance.

The Post Hoc Argument

Also: ‘Post Hoc Propter Hoc;’  ‘Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc;’ ‘Too much of a coincidence,’ the ‘Clustering Illusion’): The classic paranoiac fallacy of attributing an imaginary causality to random coincidences, concluding that just because something happens close to, at the same time as, or just after something else, the first thing is caused by the second. E.g., ‘AIDS first emerged as an epidemic back in the very same era when Disco music was becoming popular–that’s too much of a coincidence: It proves that Disco caused AIDS!’ Correlation does not equal causation.

Also: The Silent Treatment; Nonviolent Civil Disobedience; Noncooperation

an often-infantile Argumentum ad Baculum that arbitrarily rejects or gives up on dialogue before it is concluded. The most benign nonviolent form of this fallacy is found in passive-aggressive tactics such as slowdowns, boycotts, lockouts, sitdowns, and strikes.  Under President Barack Obama the United States finally ended a half-century-long political Pout with Cuba.

See also ‘No Discussion’ and ‘Nonrecognition.’

The Procrustean Fallacy

Also: ‘Keeping up Standards,’ Standardization, Uniformity, Fordism

The modernist fallacy of falsely and inappropriately applying the norms and requirements of standardized manufacturing. quality control and rigid scheduling, or of military discipline to inherently diverse free human beings, their lives, education, behavior, clothing, and appearance. This fallacy often seems to stem from the pathological need of someone in power to place in ‘order’ their disturbingly free, messy, and disordered universe by restricting others’ freedom and insisting on rigid standardization, alphabetization, discipline, uniformity, and ‘objective’ assessment of everyone under their power. This fallacy partially explains why marching in straight lines, mass calisthenics, goose-stepping, drum-and-bugle or flag corps, standing at attention, saluting, uniforms, and standardized categorization are so typical of fascism, tyrannical regimes, and of tyrants petty and grand everywhere. Thanks to author Eimar O’Duffy for identifying this fallacy!

Prosopology

Also: Prosopography, Reciting the Litany; ‘Tell Me, What Were Their Names?’; Reading the Roll of Martyrs

An ancient fallacy of pathos and ethos, publicly reading out loud, singing, or inscribing at length a list of names (most or all of which will be unknown to the reader or audience), sometimes in a negative sense, to underline the gravity of a past tragedy or mass-casualty event, sometimes in a positive sense, to emphasize the ancient historical continuity of a church, organization or cause. Proper names, especially if they are from the same culture or language group as the audience, can have near-mystical persuasive power. In some cases, those who use this fallacy in its contemporary form will defend it as an attempt to ‘personalize’ an otherwise anonymous recent mass tragedy. This fallacy was virtually unknown in secular American affairs before about 100 years ago, when the custom emerged of listing of the names of local World War I casualties on community monuments around the country. That this is indeed a fallacy is evident by the fact that the names on these century-old monuments are now meaningful only to genealogists and specialized historians, just as the names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington or the names of those who perished on 9/11 will surely be in another several generations.

The Red Herring

Also: Distraction

An irrelevant argument, attempting to mislead and distract an audience by bringing up an unrelated but emotionally loaded issue. E.g., ‘In regard to my several bankruptcies and recent indictment for corruption let’s be straight up about what’s really important: Terrorism!  Just look at what happened last week in [name the place]. Vote for me and I’ll fight those terrorists anywhere in the world!’  Also applies to raising unrelated issues as falsely opposing the issue at hand, e.g., ‘You say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ but I would rather say ‘Climate Change Matters!” when the two contentions are in no way opposed, only competing for attention.

See also Availability Bias, and Dog Whistle Politics.

Reductio ad Hitlerum

Also: ad Hitleram

A highly problematic contemporary historical-revisionist contention that the argument ‘That’s just what Hitler said (or would have said, or would have done)’ is a fallacy, an instance of the Ad Hominem argument and/or Guilt by Association. Whether the Reductio ad Hitlerum can be considered an actual fallacy or not seems to fundamentally depend on one’s personal view of Hitler and the gravity of his crimes.

Reductionism

Also: Oversimplifying, Sloganeering

The fallacy of deceiving an audience by giving simple answers or bumper-sticker slogans in response to complex questions, especially when appealing to less educated or unsophisticated audiences. E.g., ‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you must vote to acquit.’ Or, ‘Vote for Snith. He’ll bring back jobs!’ In science, technology, engineering and mathematics (‘STEM subjects’) reductionism is intentionally practiced to make intractable problems computable, e.g., the well-known humorous suggestion, ‘First, let’s assume the cow is a sphere!’.

See also, the Plain Truth Fallacy, and Dog-whistle Politics.

Also: Mistaking the Map for the Territory :

The ancient fallacy of treating imaginary intellectual categories, schemata or names as actual, material ‘things.’ (E.g., ‘The War against Terror is just another chapter in the eternal fight to the death between Freedom and Absolute Evil!’)

Sometimes also referred to as ‘ Essentializing ‘ or ‘ Hypostatization .’

The Romantic Rebel

Also: the Truthdig/Truthout Fallacy ; the Brave Heretic; Conspiracy theories; the Iconoclastic Fallacy

The contemporary fallacy of claiming Truth or validity for one’s standpoint solely or primarily because one is supposedly standing up heroically to the dominant ‘orthodoxy,’ the current Standard Model, conventional wisdom or Political Correctness, or whatever may be the Bandwagon of the moment; a corrupt argument from ethos. E.g., ‘Back in the day the scientific establishment thought that the world was flat, that was until Columbus proved them wrong!  Now they want us to believe that ordinary water is nothing but H 2 O. Are you going to believe them? The government is frantically trying to suppress the truth that our public drinking-water supply actually has nitrogen in it and causes congenital vampirism! And what about Area 51? Don’t you care? Or are you just a kiss-up for the corrupt scientific establishment?’

The opposite of the Bandwagon fallacy.

The ‘Save the Children’ Fallacy

Also: Humanitarian Crisis

A cruel and cynical contemporary media-driven fallacy of pathos, an instance of the fallacious Appeal to Pity, attracting public support for intervention in somebody else’s crisis in a distant country by repeatedly showing in gross detail the extreme (real) suffering of the innocent, defenseless little children (occasionally extended even to their pets!) on ‘our’ side, conveniently ignoring the reality that innocent children on all sides usually suffer the most in any war, conflict, famine or crisis. Recent (2017) examples include the so-called ‘Rohingya’ in Myanmar/Burma (ignoring multiple other ethnicities suffering ongoing hunger and conflict in that impoverished country), children in rebel-held areas of Syria (areas held by our rebels, not by the Syrian government or by Islamic State rebels), and the children of Mediterranean boat-people (light complected children from the Mideast, Afghanistan and North Africa, but not darker, African-complected children from sub-Saharan countries, children who are evidently deemed by the media to be far less worthy of pity). Scholar Glen Greenwald points out that a cynical key part of this tactic is hiding the child and adult victims of one’s own violence while ‘milking’ the tragic, blood-soaked images of children killed by the ‘other side’ for every tear they can generate as a causus belli [a puffed-up excuse for war, conflict or American/Western intervention].

Scapegoating

Also: Blamecasting

The ancient fallacy that whenever something goes wrong there’s always someone other than oneself to blame. Although sometimes this fallacy is a practical denial of randomness or chance itself, today it is more often a mere insurance-driven business decision (‘I don’t care if it was an accident! Somebody with deep pockets is gonna pay for this!’), though often scapegoating is no more than a cynical ploy to shield those truly responsible from blame. The term ‘Scapegoating’ is also used to refer to the tactic of casting collective blame on marginalized or scorned ‘Others,’ e.g., ‘The Jews are to blame!’ A particularly corrupt and cynical example of scapegoating is the fallacy of Blaming the Victim, in which one falsely casts the blame for one’s own evil or questionable actions on those affected, e.g., ‘If you move an eyelash I’ll have to kill you and you’ll be to blame!’ ‘If you don’t bow to our demands, we’ll shut down the government and it’ll be totally your fault!

See also, the Affective Fallacy.

Scare Tactics

Also: Appeal to Fear; Paranoia; the Bogeyman Fallacy; Shock Doctrine [ShockDoc]; Rally ‘Round the Flag; Rally ‘Round the President

A variety of Playing on Emotions, a corrupted argument from pathos, taking advantage of an emergent or deliberately-created crisis and its associated public shock, panic, and chaos in order to impose an argument, action, or solution that would be clearly unacceptable if carefully considered. E.g., ‘If you don’t shut up and do what I say we’re all gonna die! In this moment of crisis, we can’t afford the luxury of criticizing or trying to second-guess my decisions when our very lives and freedom are in peril!  Instead, we need to be united as one!’ Or, in the (2017) words of former White House Spokesperson Sean Spicer, ‘This is about the safety of America!’ This fallacy is discussed at length in Naomi Klein’s (2010) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and her (2017) No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. See also, The Shopping Hungry Fallacy, Dog-Whistle Politics, ‘We Have to do Something!’, and The Worst-Case Fallacy.

‘Scoring’

Also: Moving the Ball Down the Field, the Sports World Fallacy; ‘Hey, Sports Fans!’

An instance of faulty analogy, the common contemporary fallacy of inappropriately and most often offensively applying sports, gaming, hunting or other recreational imagery to unrelated areas of life, such as war or intimacy. E.g., ‘Nope, I haven’t scored with Francis yet, but last night I managed to get to third base!’  or ‘We really need to take our ground game into Kim’s half of the field if we ever expect to score against North Korea.’ This fallacy is almost always soaked in testosterone and machismo. An associated fallacy is that of Evening up the Score (also, Getting Even), exacting tit-for-tat vengeance as though life were some sort of ‘point-score’ sports contest. Counter-arguments to the ‘Scoring’ fallacy usually fall on deaf ears, since the one and only purpose for playing a game is to ‘score,’ isn’t it?

The Scripted Message

Also: Talking Points

A contemporary fallacy related to Big Lie Technique, where a politician or public figure strictly limits her/his statements on a given issue to repeating carefully scripted, often exaggerated or empty phrases developed to achieve maximum acceptance or maximum desired reaction from a target audience. See also, Dog Whistle Politics, and Political Correctness, above.

The opposite of this fallacy is that of ‘Venting.’

Sending the Wrong Message

A dangerous fallacy of logos that attacks a given statement, argument or action, no matter how good, true or necessary, because it will ‘send the wrong message.’ In effect, those who use this fallacy are openly confessing to fraud and admitting that the truth will destroy the fragile web of illusion they have deliberately created by their lies. E.g., ‘Actually, we haven’t a clue about how to deal with this crisis, but if we publicly admit it we’ll be sending the wrong message.’

See also, ‘Mala Fides.’ 

Shifting the Burden of Proof

A classic fallacy of logos that challenges an opponent to disprove a claim rather than asking the person making the claim to defend his/her own argument. E.g., ‘These days space-aliens are everywhere among us, masquerading as true humans, even right here on campus! I dare you to prove it isn’t so! See?  You can’t! You admit it! That means what I say has to be true. Most probably, you’re one of them, since you seem to be so soft on space-aliens!’ A typical tactic in using this fallacy is first to get an opponent to admit that a far-fetched claim, or some fact related to it, is indeed at least theoretically ‘possible,’ and then declare the claim ‘proven’ absent evidence to the contrary. E.g., ‘So you admit that massive undetected voter fraud is indeed possible under our current system and could have happened in this country at least in theory, and you can’t produce even the tiniest scintilla of evidence that it didn’t actually happen! Ha-ha! I rest my case.’

See also, Argument from Ignorance. 

The Shopping Hungry Fallacy : A fallacy of pathos, a variety of Playing on Emotions and sometimes Scare Tactics, making stupid but important decisions (or being prompted, manipulated, or forced to ‘freely’ take public or private decisions that may be later regretted but are difficult to reverse) ‘in the heat of the moment’ when under the influence of strong emotion (hunger, fear, lust, anger, sadness, regret, fatigue, even joy, love or happiness). E.g., Trevor Noah, (2016) host of the Daily Show on American television attributes public approval of draconian measures in the Patriot Act and the creation of the U. S. Department of Homeland Security to America’s ‘shopping hungry’ immediately after 9/11. See also, Scare Tactics; ‘We Have to Do Something; ‘ and The Big ‘But’ Fallacy.

The Silent Majority Fallacy

A variety of the argument from ignorance, this fallacy, famously enunciated by disgraced American President Richard Nixon, alleges special knowledge of a hidden ‘silent majority’ of voters (or of the population in general) that stands in support of an otherwise unpopular leader and his/her policies, contrary to the repeated findings of polls, surveys and popular vote totals. In an extreme case, the leader arrogates to him/herself the title of the ‘ Voice of the Voiceless.’

The Simpleton’s Fallacy

Also: The ‘Good Simpleton’ Fallacy

A corrupt fallacy of logos, described in an undated quote from science writer Isaac Asimov as ‘The false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” The name of this fallacy is borrowed from Walter M. Miller Jr.’s classic (1960) post-apocalyptic novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, in which in the centuries after a nuclear holocaust knowledge and learning become so despised that ‘Good Simpleton’ becomes the standard form of interpersonal salutation. This fallacy is masterfully portrayed in the person of the title character in the 1994 Hollywood movie, ‘Forrest Gump.’ The fallacy is widely alleged to have had a great deal to do with the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election, See also ‘Just Plain Folks,’ and the ‘Plain Truth Fallacy.’ U.S. President Barrack Obama noted to the contrary (2016), ‘In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not real or telling it like it is. That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.’ The term ‘Simpleton’s Fallacy’ has also been used to refer to a deceptive technique of argumentation, feigning ignorance in order to get one’s opponent to admit to, explain, or overexplain something s/he would rather not discuss. E.g., ‘I see here that you have a related prior conviction for something called ‘Criminal Sodomy.’ I may be a poor, naive simpleton but I’m not quite sure what that fine and fancy lawyer-talk means in plain English.  Please explain to the jury in simple terms what exactly you did to get convicted of that crime.’

See also, Argument from Ignorance, and The Third Person Effect.

The Slippery Slope

Also: the Domino Theory

The common fallacy that ‘one thing inevitably leads to another.’ E.g., ‘If you two go and drink coffee together one thing will lead to another and next thing you know you’ll be pregnant and end up spending your life on welfare living in the Projects,’ or ‘If we close Gitmo one thing will lead to another and before you know it armed terrorists will be strolling through our church doors with suicide belts, proud as you please, smack in the middle of the 10:30 a.m. Sunday worship service right here in Garfield, Kansas!’

The Snow Job

Also: Falacia ad Verbosium; Information Bias

A fallacy of logos, ‘proving’ a claim by overwhelming an audience (‘snowing them under’) with mountains of true but marginally-relevant documents, graphs, words, facts, numbers, information, and statistics that look extremely impressive but which the intended audience cannot be expected to understand or properly evaluate. This is a corrupted argument from logos.

See also, ‘Lying with Statistics.’ The opposite of this fallacy is the Plain Truth Fallacy.

The Soldiers’ Honor Fallacy

The ancient fallacy that all who wore a uniform, fought hard, and followed orders are worthy of some special honor or glory or are even ‘heroes,’ whether they fought for freedom or fought to defend slavery, marched under Grant or Lee, Hitler, Stalin, Eisenhower or McArthur, fought to defend their homes, fought for oil or to spread empire, or even fought against and killed U.S. soldiers! A corrupt argument from ethos (that of a soldier), closely related to the ‘Finish the Job’ fallacy (‘Sure, he died for a lie, but he deserves honor because he followed orders and did his job faithfully to the end!’). See also ‘Heroes All.’ This fallacy was recognized and decisively refuted at the Nuremburg Trials after World War II but remains powerful to this day nonetheless. See also ‘Blind Loyalty.’ Related is the State Actor Fallacy , that those who fight and die for their country (America, Russia, Iran, the Third Reich, etc.) are worthy of honor or at least pardonable while those who fight for a non-state actor (armed abolitionists, guerrillas, freedom-fighters, jihadis, mujahideen) are not and remain ‘terrorists’ no matter how noble or vile their cause, until or unless they win and become the recognized state, or are adopted by a state after the fact.

The Standard Version Fallacy

The ancient fallacy, a discursive Argumentum ad Baculum, of choosing a ‘Standard Translation’ or ‘Authorized Version’ of an ancient or sacred text and arbitrarily declaring it ‘correct’ and ‘authoritative,’ necessarily eliminating much of the poetry and underlying meaning of the original but conveniently quashing any further discussion about the meaning of the original text, e.g., the Vulgate or The King James Version. The easily demonstrable fact that translation (beyond three or four words) is neither uniform nor reversible (i.e., never comes back exactly the same when retranslated from another language) gives the lie to any efforts to make the translation of human languages into an exact science. Islam clearly recognizes this fallacy when characterizing any attempt to translate the sacred text of the Holy Qur’an out of the original Arabic as a ‘paraphrase’ at very best. An obverse of this fallacy is the Argumentum ad Mysteriam, above. An extension of the Standard Version Fallacy is the Monolingual Fallacy, at an academic level the fallacy of ignorantly assuming (as a monolingual person) that transparent, in-depth translation between languages is the norm, or even possible at all, allowing one to conveniently and falsely ignore everyday issues of translation when close-reading translated literature or academic text and theory. At the popular level, the Monolingual Fallacy allows monolinguals to blithely demand that visitors, migrants, refugees, and newcomers learn English, either before arriving or else overnight after arrival in the United States, while applying no such demand to themselves when they go to Asia, Europe, Latin America, or even French-speaking areas of Canada. Not rarely, this fallacy descends into gross racism or ethnic discrimination, e.g., the demagogy of warning of ‘Spanish being spoken right here on Main Street and taco trucks on every corner!’

See also, Othering, and Dog-Whistle Politics.

Also: Testimonial, Questionable Authority, Faulty Use of Authority, Falacia ad Vericundiam; Eminence-based Practice

In academia and medicine, a corrupt argument from ethos in which arguments, standpoints, and themes of professional discourse are granted fame and validity or condemned to obscurity solely by whoever may be the reigning ‘stars’ or ‘premier journals’ of the profession or discipline at the moment. E.g., ‘Foster’s take on Network Theory has been thoroughly criticized and is so last week!.This week everyone’s into Safe Spaces and Pierce’s Theory of Microaggressions. Get with the program.’ (See also, the Bandwagon.) Also applies to an obsession with journal Impact Factors. At the popular level this fallacy also refers to a corrupt argument from ethos in which public support for a standpoint or product is established by a well-known or respected figure (i.e.,. a star athlete or entertainer) who is not an expert and who may have been well paid to make the endorsement (e.g., ‘Olympic gold-medal pole-vaulter Fulano de Tal uses Quick Flush Internet–Shouldn’t you?’ Or, ‘My favorite rock star warns that vaccinations spread cooties, so I’m not vaccinating my kids!’ ). Includes other false, meaningless or paid means of associating oneself or one’s product or standpoint with the ethos of a famous person or event (e.g., ‘Try Salsa Cabria, the official taco sauce of the Winter Olympics!’). This fallacy also covers Faulty use of Quotes (also, The Devil Quotes Scripture), including quoting out of context or against the clear intent of the original speaker or author.  E.g., racists quoting and twisting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s statements in favor of racial equality against contemporary activists and movements for racial equality. 

The Straw Man

Also: ‘The Straw Person’ ”The Straw Figure’

The fallacy of setting up a phony, weak, extreme, or ridiculous parody of an opponent’s argument and then proceeding to knock it down or reduce it to absurdity with a rhetorical wave of the hand. E.g., ‘Vegetarians say animals have feelings like you and me. Ever seen a cow laugh at a Shakespeare comedy? Vegetarianism is nonsense!’ Or, ‘Pro-choicers hate babies and want to kill them!’ Or, ‘Pro-lifers hate women and want them to spend their lives barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the kitchen stove!’  A too-common example of this fallacy is that of highlighting the most absurd, offensive, silly or violent examples in a mass movement or demonstration, e.g. ‘Tree huggers’ for environmentalists, ‘bra burners’ for feminists, or ‘rioters’ when there are a dozen violent crazies in a peaceful, disciplined demonstration of thousands or tens of thousands, and then falsely portraying these extreme examples as typical of the entire movement in order to condemn it with a wave of the hand.

See also Olfactory Rhetoric.

Also: Dogmatism

The ancient fallacy of unilaterally declaring certain ‘bedrock’ arguments, assumptions, dogmas, standpoints, or actions ‘sacrosanct’ and not open to discussion, or arbitrarily taking some emotional tones, logical standpoints, doctrines or options ‘off the table’ beforehand. (E.g., ‘ ‘No, let’s no t discuss my sexuality,’ ‘Don’t bring my drinking into this,’ or ‘Before we start, you need to know I won’t allow you to play the race card or permit you to attack my arguments by claiming ‘That’s just what Hitler would say!”)  Also applies to discounting or rejecting certain arguments, facts, and evidence (or even experiences!) out of hand because they are supposedly ‘against the Bible’ or other sacred dogma (See also the A Priori Argument). This fallacy occasionally degenerates into a separate, distracting argument over who gets to define the parameters, tones, dogmas and taboos of the main argument, though at this point reasoned discourse most often breaks down and the entire affair becomes a naked Argumentum ad Baculum

See also, MYOB, Tone Policing, and Calling ‘Cards.’

They’re All Crooks : The common contemporary fallacy of refusing to get involved in public politics because ‘all’ politicians and politics are allegedly corrupt, ignoring the fact that if this is so in a democratic country it is precisely because decent people like you and I refuse to get involved, leaving the field open to the ‘crooks’ by default. An example of Circular Reasoning. Related to this fallacy is ‘ They’re All Biased ,’ the extremely common contemporary cynical fallacy of ignoring news and news media because none tells the ‘objective truth’ and all push some ‘agenda.’  This basically true observation logically requiring audiences to regularly view or read a variety of media sources in order to get any approximation of reality, but for many younger people today (2017) it means in practice, ‘Ignore news, news media and public affairs altogether and instead pay attention to something that’s fun, exciting or personally interesting to you .’ The sinister implication for democracy is, ‘Mind your own business and leave all the ‘big’ questions to your betters, those whose job is to deal with these questions and who are well paid to do so.’

See also the Third Person Effect, and Deliberate Ignorance.

The ‘Third Person Effect’

Also: ‘Wise up!’ and ‘They’re All Liars’

An example of the fallacy of Deliberate Ignorance, the arch-cynical postmodern fallacy of deliberately discounting or ignoring media information a priori , opting to remain in ignorance rather than ‘listening to the lies’ of the mainstream media, the President, the ‘medical establishment,’ professionals, professors, doctors and the ‘academic elite’ or other authorities or information sources, even about urgent subjects (e.g., the need for vaccinations) on which these sources are otherwise publicly considered to be generally reliable or relatively trustworthy. According to Drexel University researchers (2017), the ‘Third Person Effect … suggests that individuals will perceive a mass media message to have more influence on others, than themselves. This perception tends to counteract the message’s intended ‘call-to-action.’ Basically, this suggests that over time people wised up to the fact that some mass media messages were intended to manipulate them — so the messages became less and less effective.’ This fallacy seems to be opposite to and an overreaction to the Big Lie Technique.

See also, Deliberate Ignorance, the Simpleton’s Fallacy, and Trust your Gut.

The ‘Thousand Flowers’ Fallacy

Also: ‘Take names and kick butt.’

A sophisticated, modern ‘Argumentum ad Baculum’ in which free and open discussion and ‘brainstorming’ are temporarily allowed and encouraged (even demanded ) within an organization or country not primarily in order to hear and consider opposing views, but rather to ‘smoke out,’ identify and later punish, fire or liquidate dissenters or those not following the Party Line. The name comes from the Thousand Flowers Period in Chinese history when Communist leader Chairman Mao Tse Tung applied this policy with deadly effect.

Throwing Good Money After Bad

Also: ‘Sunk Cost Fallacy’)

In his excellent book, Logically Fallacious (2015), Author Bo Bennett describes this fallacy as follows: ‘Reasoning that further investment is warranted on the fact that the resources already invested will be lost otherwise, not taking into consideration the overall losses involved in the further investment.’  In other words, risking additional money to ‘save’ an earlier, losing investment, ignoring the old axiom that ‘Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.’  E.g., ‘I can’t stop betting now, because I already bet the rent and lost, and I need to win it back or my wife will kill me when I get home!’

See also Argument from Inertia.

TINA (There Is No Alternative)

Also: the ‘Love it or Leave It’ Fallacy; ‘Get over it,’ ‘Suck it up,’ ‘It is what it is,’ ‘Actions/Elections have consequences,’ or the ‘Fait Accompli’): A very common contemporary extension of the either/or fallacy in which someone in power quashes critical thought by announcing that there is no realistic alternative to a given standpoint, status or action, arbitrarily ruling any and all other options out of bounds, or announcing that a decision has been made and any further discussion is insubordination, disloyalty, treason, disobedience or simply a waste of precious time when there’s a job to be done. (See also, ‘Taboo;’ ‘Finish the Job.’)  TINA is most often a naked power-play, a slightly more sophisticated variety of the Argumentum ad Baculum.

See also Appeal to Closure.

Tone Policing

A corrupt argument from pathos and delivery, the fallacy of judging the validity of an argument primarily by its emotional tone of delivery, ignoring the reality that a valid fact or argument remains valid whether it is offered calmly and deliberatively or is shouted in a ‘shrill’ or even ‘hysterical’ tone, whether carefully written and published in professional, academic language in a respected, peer-reviewed journal or screamed through a bull-horn and peppered with vulgarity. Conversely, a highly urgent emotional matter is still urgent even if argued coldly and rationally.  This fallacy creates a false dichotomy between reason and emotion and thus implicitly favors those who are not personally involved or emotionally invested in an argument, e.g., ‘I know you’re upset, but I won’t discuss it with you until you calm down,’ or ‘I’d believe what you wrote were it not for your adolescent overuse of exclamation points throughout the text.’ Or alternately, ‘You seem to be taking the death of your spouse way too calmly. You’re under arrest for homicide. You have the right to remain silent…’ Tone Policing is frequent in contemporary discourse of power, particularly in response to discourse of protest, and is occasionally used in sexist ways, e.g. the accusation of being ‘shrill’ is almost always used against women, never against men.

See also, The F-Bomb.

Also: Name Dropping

A corrupt argument from ethos, falsely associating a famous or respected person, place or thing with an unrelated thesis or standpoint (e.g. putting a picture of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an advertisement for mattresses, using Genghis Khan, a Mongol who hated Chinese, as the name of a Chinese restaurant, or using the Texas flag to sell more cars or pickups in Texas that were made in Detroit, Kansas City or Korea). This fallacy is common in contemporary academia in the form of using a profusion of scholarly-looking citations from respected authorities to lend a false gravitas to otherwise specious ideas or text.

See also ‘Star Power.’

Trust your Gut

Also: Trust your Heart; Trust Your Feelings; Trust your Intuition; Trust your Instincts; Emotional Reasoning): A corrupt argument from pathos, the ancient fallacy of relying primarily on ‘gut feelings’ rather than reason or evidence to make decisions. A 2017 Ohio State University study finds, unsurprisingly, that people who ‘trust their gut’ are significantly more susceptible to falling for ‘fake news,’ phony conspiracy theories, frauds, and scams than those who insist on hard evidence or logic.

See also Deliberate Ignorance, the Affective Fallacy, and The ‘Third Person Effect.’

Also: ‘You Do it Too!’; also, Two Wrongs Make a Right

A corrupt argument from ethos, the fallacy of defending a shaky or false standpoint or excusing one’s own bad action by pointing out that one’s opponent’s acts, ideology or personal character are also open to question, or are perhaps even worse than one’s own.

Example: ‘Sure, we may have tortured prisoners and killed kids with drones, but we don’t cut off heads like they do!’ Or, ‘You can’t stand there and accuse me of corruption! You guys are all into politics and you know what we have to do to get reelected!’ Unusual, self-deprecating variants of this fallacy are the Ego / Nos Quoque Fallacies (‘I/we do it too!’), minimizing or defending another’s evil actions because I am / we are guilty of the same thing or of even worse. E.g., In response to allegations that  Russian Premier Vladimir Putin is a ‘killer,’ American President Donald Trump (2/2017) told an interviewer, ‘There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?’

This fallacy is related to the Red Herring and to the Ad Hominem Argument.

Two-sides Fallacy

Also: Teach the Controversy

The presentation of an issue that makes it seem to have two sides of equal weight or significance, when in fact a consensus or much stronger argument supports just one side. Also called ‘false balance’ or ‘false equivalence.’ (Thanks to Teaching Tolerance for this definition!)

Example: ‘Scientists theorize that the Earth is a sphere, but there are always two sides to any argument: Others believe that the Earth is flat and is perched on the back of a giant turtle, and a truly balanced presentation of the issue requires teaching both explanations without bias or unduly favoring either side over the other.’

Also: Compartmentalization; Epistemically Closed Systems; Alternative Truth

A very corrupt and dangerous fallacy of logos and ethos, first formally described in medieval times but still common today, holding that there exists one ‘truth’ in one given environment (e.g., in science, work, or school) and simultaneously a different, formally contradictory but equally true ‘truth’ in a different epistemic system, context, environment, intended audience or discourse community (e.g., in one’s religion or at home). This can lead to a situation of stable cognitive dissonance where, as UC Irvine scholar Dr. Carter T. Butts describes it (2016), ‘I know but don’t believe,’ making rational discussion difficult, painful, or impossible. This fallacy also describes the discourse of politicians who cynically proclaim one ‘truth’ as mere ‘campaign rhetoric’ used ‘to mobilize the base,’ or ‘for domestic consumption only,’ and a quite different and contradictory ‘truth’ for more general or practical purposes once in office.

See also Disciplinary Blinders; Alternative Truth.

Also: Letting off Steam; Loose Lips

In the Venting fallacy, a person argues that her/his words are or ought to be exempt from criticism or consequence because s/he was ‘only venting,’ even though this very admission implies that the one ‘venting’ was, at long last, freely expressing his/her true, heartfelt and uncensored opinion about the matter in question. This same fallacy applies to minimizing, denying the significance of, or excusing other forms of frank, unguarded or uninhibited offensive expression as mere ‘ Locker-room Talk ,’ ‘ Alpha-male Speech ‘ or nothing but cute, adorable, perhaps even sexy ‘ Bad-boy Talk .’

Opposites to this fallacy are the fallacies of Political Correctness and the Scripted Message, above.

The ancient fallacy of Venue, a corrupt argument from kairos, falsely and arbitrarily invalidates an otherwise-valid argument or piece of evidence because it is supposedly offered in the wrong place, at the wrong moment or in an inappropriate court, medium or forum. According to PhD student Amanda Thran, ‘Quite often, people will say to me in person that Facebook, Twitter, etc. are ‘not the right forums’ for discussing politically and socially sensitive issues. … In this same vein, I’ve also encountered the following argument: ‘Facebook, which is used for sharing wedding, baby, and pet photos, is an inappropriate place for political discourse; people don’t wish to be burdened with that when they log in.’ In my experience, this line of reasoning is most often employed (and abused) to shut down a conversation when one feels they are losing it. Ironically, I have seen it used when the argument has already been transpiring on the platform [in] an already lengthy discussion.’

See also Disciplinary Blinders.

We Have to Do Something

Also: the Placebo Effect; Political Theater; Security Theater; We have to send a message

The dangerous contemporary fallacy that when ‘People are scared/People are angry/People are fed up/People are hurting/People want change,’ it becomes necessary to do something, anything , at once without stopping to ask ‘What?’ or ‘Why?’, even if what is done is an overreaction, is a completely ineffective sham, an inert placebo, or actually makes the situation worse, rather than ‘just sitting there doing nothing.’ (E.g., ‘Banning air passengers from carrying ham sandwiches onto the plane and making parents take off their newborn infants’ tiny pink baby-shoes probably does nothing to deter potential terrorists, but people are scared and we have to do something to respond to this crisis!’) This is a badly corrupted argument from pathos.

See also ‘Scare Tactic’ and ‘The Big ‘But’ Fallacy.’

Where there’s Smoke, there’s Fire

Also: Hasty Conclusion; Jumping to a Conclusion

The dangerous fallacy of ignorantly drawing a snap conclusion and/or taking action without sufficient evidence.

Example: ‘Captain! The guy sitting next to me in coach has dark skin and is reading a book in some kind of funny language all full of accent marks, weird squiggles above the ‘N’s’ and upside-down question marks. It must be Arabic! Get him off the plane before he blows us all to kingdom come!’

A variety of the ‘Just in Case’ fallacy.

The opposite of this fallacy is the ‘Paralysis of Analysis.’ 

The Wisdom of the Crowd

Also: The Magic of the Market; the Wikipedia Fallacy; Crowdsourcing

A very common contemporary fallacy that individuals may be wrong but ‘the crowd’ or ‘the market’ is infallible, ignoring historic examples like witch-burning, lynching, and the market crash of 2008. This fallacy is why most American colleges and universities currently (2017) ban students from using Wikipedia as a serious reference source.

The Worst-Case Fallacy

Also: ‘Just in case;’ ‘We can’t afford to take chances;’ ‘An abundance of caution;’ ‘Better Safe than Sorry;’ ‘Better to prevent than to lament.’): A pessimistic fallacy by which one’s reasoning is based on an improbable, far-fetched, or even completely imaginary worst-case scenario rather than on reality. This plays on pathos (fear) rather than reason and is often politically motivated

Example: ‘What if armed terrorists were to attack your county grain elevator tomorrow morning at dawn? Are you ready to fight back? Better stock up on assault rifles and ammunition today, just in case!’

The opposite of this is the Positive Thinking Fallacy.

See also Scare Tactics .

The Worst Negates the Bad

Also: Be Grateful for What You’ve Got

The extremely common modern logical fallacy that an objectively bad situation somehow isn’t so bad simply because it could have been far worse, or because someone, somewhere has it even worse. E.g., ‘I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw someone who had no feet.’ Or, ‘You’re protesting because you earn only $7.25 an hour? You could just as easily be out on the street! I happen to know there are people in Uttar Pradesh who are doing the very same work you’re doing for one-tenth of what you’re making, and they’re pathetically glad just to have work at all. You need to shut up, put down that picket sign, get back to work for what I care to pay you, and  thank me each and every day for giving you a job!’ 

Zero Tolerance

Also: Zero Risk Bias, Broken Windows Policing, Disproportionate Response; Even One is Too Many; Exemplary Punishment; Judenrein

the contemporary fallacy of declaring an ’emergency’ and promising to disregard justice and due process and devote unlimited resources (and occasionally, unlimited cruelty) to stamp out a limited, insignificant or even nonexistent problem.E.g., ‘I just read about an actual case of cannibalism somewhere in this country. That’s disgusting, and even one case is way, way too many! We need a Federal Taskforce against Cannibalism with a million-dollar budget and offices in every state, a national SCAN program in all the grade schools (Stop Cannibalism in America Now!), and an automatic double death penalty for cannibals; in other words, zero tolerance for cannibalism in this country!’ This is a corrupt and cynical argument from pathos, almost always politically driven, a particularly sinister variety of Dog Whistle Politics and the ‘We Have to do Something’ fallacy.

See also, ‘Playing on Emotions,’ ‘Red Herring,’ and also the ‘Big Lie Technique.’

OW 7/06 with thanks to the late Susan Spence. Final revision 1/18, with special thanks to Business Insider, Teaching Tolerance, and Vox.com, to Bradley Steffens , to Jackson Katz, Brian Resnick, Glen Greenwald, Lara Bhasin, Danelle M. Pecht, Marc Lawson, Eimar O’Duffy, and Mike Caetano, to Dr. William Lorimer, Dr. Carter T. Butts, Dr. Bo Bennett, Myron Peto, Joel Sax, Thomas Persing, Amanda Thran, and to all the others who suggested corrections, additions and clarifications.

Open Courseware | OCW |This work is dedicated to the Public Domain.

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• Logical Fallacies | Definition, Types, List & Examples

Logical Fallacies | Definition, Types, List & Examples

Published on April 20, 2023 by Kassiani Nikolopoulou . Revised on October 9, 2023.

A logical fallacy is an argument that may sound convincing or true but is actually flawed. Logical fallacies are leaps of logic that lead us to an unsupported conclusion. People may commit a logical fallacy unintentionally, due to poor reasoning, or intentionally, in order to manipulate others.

Because logical fallacies can be deceptive, it is important to be able to spot them in your own argumentation and that of others.

Table of contents

Logical fallacy list (free download), what is a logical fallacy, types of logical fallacies, what are common logical fallacies, logical fallacy examples, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about logical fallacies.

There are many logical fallacies. You can download an overview of the most common logical fallacies by clicking the blue button.

Logical fallacy list (Google Docs)

A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that occurs when invalid arguments or irrelevant points are introduced without any evidence to support them. People often resort to logical fallacies when their goal is to persuade others. Because fallacies appear to be correct even though they are not, people can be tricked into accepting them.

The majority of logical fallacies involve arguments—in other words, one or more statements (called the premise ) and a conclusion . The premise is offered in support of the claim being made, which is the conclusion.

There are two types of mistakes that can occur in arguments:

• A factual error in the premises . Here, the mistake is not one of logic. A premise can be proven or disproven with facts. For example, If you counted 13 people in the room when there were 14, then you made a factual mistake.
• The premises fail to logically support the conclusion . A logical fallacy is usually a mistake of this type. In the example above, the students never proved that English 101 was itself a useless course—they merely “begged the question” and moved on to the next part of their argument, skipping the most important part.

In other words, a logical fallacy violates the principles of critical thinking because the premises do not sufficiently support the conclusion, while a factual error involves being wrong about the facts.

There are several ways to label and classify fallacies, such as according to the psychological reasons that lead people to use them or according to similarity in their form. Broadly speaking, there are two main types of logical fallacy, depending on what kind of reasoning error the argument contains:

Informal logical fallacies

Formal logical fallacies.

An informal logical fallacy occurs when there is an error in the content of an argument (i.e., it is based on irrelevant or false premises).

Informal fallacies can be further subdivided into groups according to similarity, such as relevance (informal fallacies that raise an irrelevant point) or ambiguity (informal fallacies that use ambiguous words or phrases, the meanings of which change in the course of discussion).

“ Some philosophers argue that all acts are selfish . Even if you strive to serve others, you are still acting selfishly because your act is just to satisfy your desire to serve others.”

A formal logical fallacy occurs when there is an error in the logical structure of an argument.

Premise 2: The citizens of New York know that Spider-Man saved their city.

Conclusion: The citizens of New York know that Peter Parker saved their city.  

This argument is invalid, because even though Spider-Man is in fact Peter Parker, the citizens of New York don’t necessarily know Spider-Man’s true identity and therefore don’t necessarily know that Peter Parker saved their city.

A logical fallacy may arise in any form of communication, ranging from debates to writing, but it may also crop up in our own internal reasoning. Here are some examples of common fallacies that you may encounter in the media, in essays, and in everyday discussions.

Red herring logical fallacy

The red herring fallacy is the deliberate attempt to mislead and distract an audience by bringing up an unrelated issue to falsely oppose the issue at hand. Essentially, it is an attempt to change the subject and divert attention elsewhere.

Bandwagon logical fallacy

The bandwagon logical fallacy (or ad populum fallacy ) occurs when we base the validity of our argument on how many people believe or do the same thing as we do. In other words, we claim that something must be true simply because it is popular.

This fallacy can easily go unnoticed in everyday conversations because the argument may sound reasonable at first. However, it doesn’t factor in whether or not “everyone” who claims x is in fact qualified to do so.

Straw man logical fallacy

The straw man logical fallacy is the distortion of an opponent’s argument to make it easier to refute. By exaggerating or simplifying someone’s position, one can easily attack a weak version of it and ignore their real argument.

Person 2: “So you are fine with children taking ecstasy and LSD?”

Slippery slope logical fallacy

The slippery slope logical fallacy occurs when someone asserts that a relatively small step or initial action will lead to a chain of events resulting in a drastic change or undesirable outcome. However, no evidence is offered to prove that this chain reaction will indeed happen.

Hasty generalization logical fallacy

The hasty generalization fallacy (or jumping to conclusions ) occurs when we use a small sample or exceptional cases to draw a conclusion or generalize a rule.

A false dilemma (or either/or fallacy ) is a common persuasion technique in advertising. It presents us with only two possible options without considering the broad range of possible alternatives.

In other words, the campaign suggests that animal testing and child mortality are the only two options available. One has to save either animal lives or children’s lives.

People often confuse correlation (i.e., the fact that two things happen one after the other or at the same time) with causation (the fact that one thing causes the other to happen).

It’s possible, for example, that people with MS have lower vitamin D levels because of their decreased mobility and sun exposure, rather than the other way around.

It’s important to carefully account for other factors that may be involved in any observed relationship. The fact that two events or variables are associated in some way does not necessarily imply that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between them and cannot tell us the direction of any cause-and-effect relationship that does exist.

If you want to know more about fallacies , research bias , or AI tools , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• ChatGPT vs human editor
• ChatGPT citations
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Using ChatGPT for your studies
• Sunk cost fallacy
• Straw man fallacy
• Slippery slope fallacy
• Either or fallacy
• Appeal to emotion fallacy
• Non sequitur fallacy

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Framing bias
• Cognitive bias
• Optimism bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Affect heuristic

An ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”) is a type of informal logical fallacy . Instead of arguing against a person’s position, an ad hominem argument attacks the person’s character or actions in an effort to discredit them.

This rhetorical strategy is fallacious because a person’s character, motive, education, or other personal trait is logically irrelevant to whether their argument is true or false.

Name-calling is common in ad hominem fallacy (e.g., “environmental activists are ineffective because they’re all lazy tree-huggers”).

An appeal to ignorance (ignorance here meaning lack of evidence) is a type of informal logical fallacy .

It asserts that something must be true because it hasn’t been proven false—or that something must be false because it has not yet been proven true.

For example, “unicorns exist because there is no evidence that they don’t.” The appeal to ignorance is also called the burden of proof fallacy .

People sometimes confuse cognitive bias and logical fallacies because they both relate to flawed thinking. However, they are not the same:

• Cognitive bias is the tendency to make decisions or take action in an illogical way because of our values, memory, socialization, and other personal attributes. In other words, it refers to a fixed pattern of thinking rooted in the way our brain works.
• Logical fallacies relate to how we make claims and construct our arguments in the moment. They are statements that sound convincing at first but can be disproven through logical reasoning.

In other words, cognitive bias refers to an ongoing predisposition, while logical fallacy refers to mistakes of reasoning that occur in the moment.

Sources in this article

We strongly encourage students to use sources in their work. You can cite our article (APA Style) or take a deep dive into the articles below.

Nikolopoulou, K. (2023, October 09). Logical Fallacies | Definition, Types, List & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved September 10, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/logical-fallacy/

Jin, Z., Lalwani, A., Vaidhya, T., Shen, X., Ding, Y., Lyu, Z., Sachan, M., Mihalcea, R., & Schölkopf, B. (2022). Logical Fallacy Detection. arXiv (Cornell University) . https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2202.13758

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15 Logical Fallacies to Know, With Definitions and Examples

You’ve seen them on social media. You’ve heard them in movie dialogue. Heck, you’ve probably even used them yourself. 

They’re logical fallacies, those not-quite logically sound statements that might seem solid at first glance, but crumble the moment you give them a second thought. 

Logical fallacies are everywhere . Once you know how to recognize them, you’ll notice just how common they are—and how they can undermine the point their writer is attempting to make. Being able to identify logical fallacies in others’ writing as well as in your own will make you a more critical thinker, which in turn will make you a stronger writer and reader. 

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What is a logical fallacy? 

A logical fallacy is an argument that can be disproven through reasoning. This is different from a subjective argument or one that can be disproven with facts; for a position to be a logical fallacy, it must be logically flawed or deceptive in some way. 

Compare the following two disprovable arguments. Only one of them contains a logical fallacy: 

• If you go outside without a coat, you’ll catch a cold. 
• If you go outside without a coat, you’ll catch a cold and infect the rest of the family. Then your sister will have to miss class and she’ll get a bad grade and fail her course. 

Can you spot the logical fallacy in the second argument? It’s a slippery slope fallacy, a position that claims that very specific consequences will follow an action. Although both statements can be proven wrong by going outside without a coat and staying perfectly healthy (and by pointing to the proven fact that the only way to catch a cold is to be exposed to a virus ), the first one is simply incorrect, not logically flawed. 

The history of logical fallacies

Logical fallacies are likely as old as language itself, but they were first recognized and cataloged as such in the Nyāya-Sūtras , the foundational text of the Nyāya school of Hindu philosophy. This text, written somewhere between the 6th century BCE and the 2nd century CE and attributed to Akṣapāda Gautama, identified five distinct ways that an argument could be logically flawed.

Greek philosopher Aristotle also wrote about logical fallacies. He identified thirteen fallacies, divided into verbal and material fallacies, in his work Sophistical Refutations. By Aristotle’s definition, a verbal fallacy is one where the language used is ambiguous or incorrect, and a material fallacy is an argument that involves faulty or flawed reasoning. 

Today, our understanding of logical fallacies comes from these sources as well as contributions from later scholars like Richard Whately and Francis Bacon. 

Where can I find logical fallacies?

You’ll find logical fallacies just about anywhere you find people debating and using rhetoric , especially in spaces that aren’t academic or professional in nature. In fact, we can almost guarantee that you’ve encountered logical fallacies on social media, especially in the comments under divisive posts. But keep in mind that they can and often do appear in academic writing, especially in the kinds of writing where the author has to defend a position, like argumentative essays and persuasive writing . They can even show up in expository writing .

Logical fallacies aren’t restricted to just one age group, political affiliation, gender, race, religion, subculture, or other shared characteristic—they’re universally human. Our brains aren’t perfect, and even smart people can fall prey to making logically inconsistent statements and arguments. Usually, people make these kinds of statements because they haven’t taken the time to think through them logically, not because they intend to make flawed arguments. But in some cases, the writer or speaker does intend to make a flawed argument, usually in an attempt to sway readers’ opinions or make their opposition look worse. 

The best way to avoid making logical fallacies in your own writing is to familiarize yourself with them and learn how to recognize them. That way, they’ll stick out to you when you’re reading your first draft, and you’ll see exactly where your writing needs thoughtful revision. 

What are 15 common types of logical fallacies?

As you’ll see below, there are a lot of ways an argument can be flawed. Take a look at fifteen of the most commonly used logical fallacies. 

1 Ad hominem

An ad hominem fallacy is one that attempts to invalidate an opponent’s position based on a personal trait or fact about the opponent rather than through logic. 

Example: Katherine is a bad choice for mayor because she didn’t grow up in this town. 

2 Red herring

A red herring is an attempt to shift focus from the debate at hand by introducing an irrelevant point. 

Example: Losing a tooth can be scary, but have you heard about the Tooth Fairy? 

3 Straw man

A straw man argument is one that argues against a hyperbolic, inaccurate version of the opposition rather than their actual argument. 

Example: Erin thinks we need to stop using all plastics, right now, to save the planet from climate change. 

4 Equivocation

An equivocation is a statement crafted to mislead or confuse readers or listeners by using multiple meanings or interpretations of a word or simply through unclear phrasing. 

Example: While I have a clear plan for the campus budget that accounts for every dollar spent, my opponent simply wants to throw money at special interest projects. 

5 Slippery slope

With a slippery slope fallacy, the arguer claims a specific series of events will follow one starting point, typically with no supporting evidence for this chain of events. 

Example: If we make an exception for Bijal’s service dog, then other people will want to bring their dogs. Then everybody will bring their dog, and before you know it, our restaurant will be overrun with dogs, their slobber, their hair, and all the noise they make, and nobody will want to eat here anymore. 

6 Hasty generalization

A hasty generalization is a statement made after considering just one or a few examples rather than relying on more extensive research to back up the claim. It’s important to keep in mind that what constitutes sufficient research depends on the issue at hand and the statement being made about it. 

Example: I felt nauseated both times I ate pizza from Georgio’s, so I must be allergic to something in pizza. 

7 Appeal to authority

In an appeal to authority , the arguer claims an authority figure’s expertise to support a claim despite this expertise being irrelevant or overstated. 

Example: If you want to be healthy, you need to stop drinking coffee. I read it on a fitness blog. 

8 False dilemma

A false dilemma, also known as a false dichotomy, claims there are only two options in a given situation. Often, these two options are extreme opposites of each other, failing to acknowledge that other, more reasonable, options exist. 

Example: If you don’t support my decision, you were never really my friend. 

9 Bandwagon fallacy

With the bandwagon fallacy, the arguer claims that a certain action is the right thing to do because it’s popular. 

Example: Of course it’s fine to wait until the last minute to write your paper. Everybody does it!

10 Appeal to ignorance

An appeal to ignorance is a claim that something must be true because it hasn’t been proven false. It can also be a claim that something must be false because it hasn’t been proven true. This is also known as the burden of proof fallacy. 

Example: There must be fairies living in our attic because nobody’s ever proven that there aren’t fairies living in our attic.

11 Circular argument

A circular argument is one that uses the same statement as both the premise and the conclusion. No new information or justification is introduced. 

Example: Peppers are the easiest vegetable to grow because I think peppers are the easiest vegetable to grow. 

12 Sunk cost fallacy

With the sunk cost fallacy, the arguer justifies their decision to continue a specific course of action by the amount of time or money they’ve already spent on it. 

Example: I’m not enjoying this book, but I bought it, so I have to finish reading it. 

13 Appeal to pity

An appeal to pity attempts to sway a reader’s or listener’s opinion by provoking them emotionally. 

Example: I know I should have been on time for the interview, but I woke up late and felt really bad about it, then the stress of being late made it hard to concentrate on driving here.

14 Causal fallacy

A causal fallacy is one that implies a relationship between two things where one can’t actually be proven. 

Example: When ice cream sales are up, so are shark attacks. Therefore, buying ice cream increases your risk of being bitten by a shark. 

15 Appeal to hypocrisy

An appeal to hypocrisy , also known as a tu quoque fallacy, is a rebuttal that responds to one claim with reactive criticism rather than with a response to the claim itself. 

Example: “You don’t have enough experience to be the new leader.” “Neither do you!”

Although this list covers the most commonly seen logical fallacies, it’s not exhaustive. Other logical fallacies include the no true Scotsman fallacy (“New Yorkers fold their pizza, so you must not really be from New York if you eat yours with utensils.”) and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy (cherry-picking data to support a claim rather than drawing a logical conclusion from a broad body of evidence). 

Logical fallacy examples

Take a look at these examples and see if you can spot the logical fallacy:

• My dad scolded me for getting a speeding ticket, so I asked him about all the tickets he racked up when he was my age. 
• Aliens don’t exist. If they did, we would have seen one by now. 
• I want to change my major to English, but I’m so close to finishing my chemistry degree.

These are just a few examples of common logical fallacies (appeal to hypocrisy, appeal to ignorance, and sunk cost, respectively) we encounter in everyday speech. Next time you’re listening to conversations or reading online discussions, think carefully about the arguments being made and determine if they fit into one of the fallacy categories listed above. 

How to avoid using logical fallacies

The most effective way to avoid using logical fallacies in your work is to carefully think through every argument you make, tracing your mental steps to ensure that each can be supported with facts and doesn’t contradict other statements you’ve made in your work. Do this during the brainstorming stage so you can separate strong ideas from weak ones and choose which to include in your paper. Continue validating (and when necessary, invalidating) your ideas as you work through the outlining stage by noting the evidence you have to support your claims under each header.

Don’t just back up your claims, challenge them! Pretend you’re arguing an opposing position and you want to expose the flaws in your original argument. 

If you come across logical fallacies in your writing, take time to reconstruct your positions so they’re logically sound. This could mean changing how you approach and explain your argument or adjusting the argument itself. Remember, using a logical fallacy doesn’t necessarily mean the idea being argued is incorrect—it could be an objective fact or a defendable opinion, but simply being presented in an illogical way. 

Logical fallacy FAQs

What is a logical fallacy.

A logical fallacy is an argument that can be disproven through reasoning.

Why do people use logical fallacies? 

People use logical fallacies for different reasons. In some cases, speakers and writers intentionally use logical fallacies in an effort to make their opposition look worse, to simplify an issue, or make their own position look superior. In other cases, people use them unintentionally, either because they haven’t thought their statements through or don’t understand why their arguments are logically flawed. 

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9 Logical Fallacies That You Need to Know To Master Critical Thinking

When you learn about logic, language becomes a game you can win..

William James, who was known as the grandfather of psychology, once said: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” All of us think, every day. But there’s a difference between thinking for thinking’s sake, and thinking in a critical way. Deliberate, controlled, and reasonable thinking is rare.

There are multiple factors that are impairing people’s ability to think critically, from technology to changes in education. Some experts have speculated we’re approaching a crisis of critical thinking , with many students graduating “without the ability to construct a cohesive argument or identify a logical fallacy.”

RELATED: How to Tell if ‘Political Correctness’ Is Hurting Your Mental Health

That's a worrying trend, as critical thinking isn’t only an academic skill, but essential to living a high-functioning life. It’s the process by which to arrive at logical conclusions. And in through that process, logical fallacies are a significant hazard.

This article will explore logical fallacies in order to equip you with the knowledge on how to think in skillful ways, for the biggest benefits. As a result, you'll be able to detect deception of flawed logic, in others, and yourself. And you'll be equipped to think proper thoughts, rather than simply rearrange prejudices.

What Is a Logical Fallacy?

The study of logic originates back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e), who started to systematically identify and list logical fallacies. The origin of logic is linked to the Greek logos , which translates to language, reason, or discourse. Logical fallacies are errors of reason that invalidate an argument. The use of logical fallacies changes depending on a person’s intention. Although for many, they’re unintentional, others may deliberately use logical fallacies as a type of manipulative behavior .

Detecting logical fallacies is crucial to improve your level of critical thinking, to avoid deceit, and to spot poor reasoning; within yourself and others. The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once said; “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.”

RELATED: Fundamental Attribution Error: Definition & Examples

Throughout history, the world’s greatest thinkers have promoted the value of reasoning. Away from academia, reason is the ability to logically process information, and arrive at an accurate conclusion, in the quest for truth. Striving to be more reasonable or calm under pressure is a virtuous act. It’s a noble pursuit, one which in its nature will inspire your personal development, and allow you to become the best version of yourself.

Why Critical Thinking Is Important

It seems like humanity has never been so polarized, separated into different camps and stances; Democrats vs. Liberals, vegans vs. meat eaters, vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, pro-life vs. pro-choice. There’s nothing inherently wrong with thinking critically, and taking a stand. However, what is unusual is the tendency for people to lean into one extreme or the other, neglecting to explore gray areas or complexity.

Many of the positions people take are chosen for them. It takes a lot of effort to research a point of view. And even then, we’re faced with the challenge of information overload, fake news, conspiracy, and even credible news which is dismissed as conspiracy. Far from academic debates or politicians facing off during leadership races, the ability to share respectful dialogue is an essential part of understanding our place in the world, and maintaining human relationships.

The hot topics facing humanity aren’t going to be resolved by reactivity or over-emotionality . There should be room for all sorts of emotions to surface; it’s understandable to feel anger, grief, anxiety, etc, faced with global events. But critical thinking asks for a more reasoned, calm consideration, not getting completely carried away with emotions, but appealing to higher judgment.

Examples of When to Use Critical Thinking

It’s not always clear why critical thinking is so valuable. Isn’t it only useful for education, philosophy, science, or politics? Not quite. When applied appropriately, logic has a universal appeal in life. Examples include:

• Problem-solving : “The problem is not that there are problems,” wrote psychiatrist Theodore Isaac Rubin, “the problem is expecting otherwise, and thinking that having problems is a problem.” Life is full of problems. Fortunately, that means life is full of opportunities to problem solve. Critical thinking is an essential problem-solving skill, from managing your time to organizing your finances.
• Making optimal decisions : the more logical you are, and the less you fall into logical fallacies, the better your decision-making becomes . Decisions are the steps towards your goals, each decision making you closer to, or away from, what you really desire.
• Understanding complex subjects : with attention spans reducing due to social media and technology, it’s becoming rare to take time to attempt to understand complex topics, away from repeating what others have said. Whether through self-study or to comprehend global events, critical thinking is essential to understand complexity.
• Improving relationships : adding a dose of logic to your interactions will allow you to make better choices in relationships. Many “messy” forms of communication, from guilt-tripping to passive aggression, are illogical. By tapping into a more balanced point of view, you’ll better overcome conflict, argue your point (when necessary), or explain the way you feel.

The Most Common Logical Fallacies

When you begin to explore logical fallacies, language becomes a game. There’s a sense of having a cheat sheet in communication, understanding the underlying dynamics at play. Of course, it’s not as straightforward as a mechanical understanding — emotional intelligence, and non-verbal body language has a role to play, too. We’re humans, not computers. But gaining mastery of logic puts you ahead of the majority of people, and helps you avoid cognitive bias.

What’s more, most people fall into logical fallacies without being aware. Once you can detect these mechanisms, within yourself and with others, you’ll have an upper hand in many key areas of life, not least in a professional setting, or in any place you need to persuade or argue a point. The list is ever-growing and vast, but below are the most common logical fallacies to get the ball rolling:

1. Ad Hominem

Originating from a Latin phrase meaning “to the person,” ad hominem is an attack on the person, not the argument. This has a twofold impact — it deflects attention away from the validity of the argument, and second, it can provoke the person to enter a defensive mindset. If you’re aware of this fallacy, it can keep you from taking the bait, and instead keeping the focus on the argument.

Perhaps the most popular example of this in recent times is the viral interview between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman. Love him or hate him, Peterson is an embodiment of logic, sidestepping Newman’s ad hominem attacks and fallacies in a calm and controlled manner. 

2. Red Herring

You might have heard of this phrase in the context of fiction: a red herring is an irrelevant piece of information thrown into the mix, in order to distract from other relevant details, commonly used in detective stories. In a political context, you might see a politician respond to criticism by talking about something positive they’ve done. For example, when asked why unemployment is so high, they may say “we’ve made a lot of effort to improve working conditions in certain areas.”

A popular type of red herring in modern discourse is "what aboutism," a form of counter-accusation. If the person mentioning unemployment is a fellow politician, the same politician may say: “what about unemployment rates when your party was in charge?”

3. Tu Quoque Fallacy

Closely related to the above, and in some ways, a mixture of the ad hominem and a red herring, is the tu quoque fallacy (pronounced tu-KWO-kway and originating from the Latin “you too”). This is a counter-accusation that accuses someone of hypocrisy. Rather than acknowledging what's been said, someone responds with a direct allegation. For example, if you’re in an argument and your partner raises their voice, you may bring that to their attention, only for them to say: “you raise your voice all the time!”.

4. Straw Man

The straw man logical fallacy is everywhere, especially in dialogue on hot-topic issues, because it's effective in shutting down someone else’s perspective. The person runs with someone’s point, exaggerates it, then attacks the exaggerated version — the straw man — seemingly in an appropriate way. For example, when your partner asks if you could do the washing up, you might respond: “are you saying I don’t support you around the house? That’s unfair.”

On the global stage, one of the big straw man arguments in recent times is the rhetoric of the anti-vaxxer, applied to resistance to mandated vaccines, social distancing, or lockdowns. The simplified term is a way of positioning someone as extreme, even if raising valid points, or looking to open dialogue about the repercussions of certain political choices, made without the option for the population to have their say.

5. Appeal to Authority

If someone in a position of authority says something is true, it must be true. This type of logical fallacy is ingrained in the psyche in childhood, where your parents' (or adults around you) word was final. Society is moving increasingly in this direction, especially in the fields of science. But that doesn’t come without risk, as even experts are known not to get things right. 

In addition, many positions of authority aren’t always acting in pursuit of honesty or truth, if other factors (such as financial donations) have influence. While appeals to authority used to gravitate around religious leaders, a 2022 study found that, when linked with scientists, untrue statements are more likely to be believed, in what researchers call the Einstein effect .

6. False Dichotomy

Also known as the false dilemma, this logical fallacy presents limited options in certain scenarios in a way that is inaccurate. It’s closely linked to black-or-white thinking or all-or-nothing thinking, presenting two extremes without options in between. This is perhaps one of the most invasive logical fallacies in navigating life’s demands. For example, you either go to the gym or become unhealthy.

These limitations require a dose of psychological flexibility and creative thinking to overcome. They require exploring other alternatives. In the example above, that would mean looking at other ways to become healthy and exercise, such as running outdoors or going swimming.

7. Slippery Slope Fallacy

Similar to the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope is a way of taking an issue to a hypothetical extreme and then dismissing it based on what could happen. The potential of one thing leading to another, and the repercussions of that chain of events, may cause the original issue to be overlooked. For example, if you fail to set a boundary in one situation, you’ll forever be stuck in accepting certain behaviors.

The issue with this fallacy is that a valid process of critical thinking is to look at what decisions can lead to in the future. Rather than dismiss outright, however, it pays to make reasoned decisions, avoid jumping to conclusions, and see how things unfold over time.

8. Sunk Cost Fallacy

This is the logical fallacy that, when having already invested in something, you continue to invest in order to get return on your sunk costs. Although using gambling terminology (such as chasing losses on roulette) the sunk cost can apply to any area of life. The investment itself doesn’t have to be financial. For example, investing lots of time and energy into a creative project, or a relationship.

The sunk cost fallacy causes people to overlook a true and accurate analysis of the situation in the present moment, instead choosing to continue because of past decisions.

9. Hasty Generalisation

Also known as an over-generalization or faulty generalization, this logical fallacy makes general claims based on little evidence. Before writing this article, I went to a new gym, where my toiletry bag was stolen. You could argue it’s bad luck for something like that to happen on your first visit. If I decide that the gym isn’t safe, and make a hasty generalization, I may end up not going again. But what if the rate of theft in this gym was below the average in the city, and I was just unlucky? What if it wasn’t stolen, but someone absent-mindedly put it in their bag?

The opposite of a hasty generalization is to find the appropriate context for events. A logical conclusion, on the other hand, takes time. It’s reasonable, doesn’t jump in, and collects as much data as possible. If I go to the same gym, and something else is stolen, and I then see in Google reviews that others have had the same, it’d be logical for me to conclude there’s a high rate of theft.

How to Detect and Overcome Logical Fallacies

Both logic and critical thinking can be improved with practice. The knowledge of the nature of logical fallacies, and the above examples, will get you started. Deciphering when certain fallacies are active in real time is part of applied learning. Be conscious of applying the same level of rigor to your own level of reason as you do others.

There are a few components to detect and overcome logical fallacies. The first is self-awareness. As mentioned above, we’re humans, not machines. In situations where the stakes are high, we’re usually driven by factors other than logic, ulterior motives, or strong emotions that run the show. How often, when angry or triggered, do you say or act in ways you later regret?

Emotional regulation is useful in being calm enough to engage in critical thinking. But at times, logic isn’t the most skillful. For example, in conflict with a loved one, it’s more important to attempt to have compassion and understanding than to be the “most logical.” Sometimes, there are factors outside of reason that influence us, matters of the heart that can’t be captured, defined, or deconstructed by the mind.

Knowing how to apply logic, and when, is a vital skill. Through practice, over time, you’ll cultivate an even greater virtue — wisdom. A precious commodity in short supply, if you’re able to achieve wisdom and reason, the world is your oyster, a positive slippery slope to supercharge your growth.

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Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio's True Friendship

Kate Winslet has not always been sure of herself. "I was always comparing myself to others. You see I've been bullied at school, they call me blubber, they teased me for wanting to act."

While it's nearly impossible to think of the gorgeous and talented Winslet as anything other than a force to be reckoned with, years of being teased and the media's love for taking shots at her weight did their damage.

"I was sort of made to feel ashamed of myself, my appearance."

But when co-star and friend, Leonardo DiCaprio stepped in, he had only a few words of encouragement that helped to shape a new outlook for the Titanic actress. An outlook that she was able to share with other women, including her young daughter , Mia.

"You know, happiness it isn't a search for, you know ,facial physical perfection. You know, it comes from inside."

Rude Customer Has a Disagreement Over $6 - Teen Employees Have the Perfect Response

Teens Applauded For the Way They Handled This Angry Customer

Working in customer service can be challenging, especially when you’re dealing with rude and demanding clients. That’s particularly true for some teens, who work these jobs for part-time money and are often bullied by adults. Perhaps that’s why people are applauding these teen girls for the way they expertly handled an over-the-top customer.

An Angry Customer

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It was a tough day for employees at Keke’s Snow Balls in Texas when an angry woman approached the window. She had placed a pickup order for a snow cone and because of a shift change, the snow cone wasn’t ready. Two days later, the customer came back and demanded a refund of $6.

A girl named Victoria was working the counter and listened to the woman’s complaints. According to Inside Edition , it was immediately clear this woman didn’t want to resolve things in the right way, and was trying to pick a fight. Another employee named Kaeley overheard it all.

“I was just listening in the back and, eventually, I could just hear she’s angry the whole time. So I was like, clearly she just wants to have a problem,” Kaeley recalled to the publication. “And I’m not about that, so I was like, ‘Okay let me just go give her $6 and we can move on, move past this.’ It was $6.”

An Unexpected Turn

At that point, the situation should have been resolved. However, Kaeley noticed the sign outside the window had fallen over during the dispute. So, she opened the window to fix it. That’s when the woman came by, slapped the sign out of the 17-year-old girl’s hand, and called her a derogatory name.

“M’am, please don’t act like that. You’re a grown woman,” Kaeley responded in a video that the restaurant then posted to TikTok . “You’re a grown woman. I’m 17. Get out of here. Don’t come back. Don’t come back. We don’t need your business.”

“I was scared and very confused,” Victoria added. “I wasn’t understanding what was going on.”

A Brilliant Online Reaction

After the owner posted the video online, it went viral and many people reached out to support the girls for their perfect reaction to the customer.

“People were traveling to come and see us from hours away,” the owner, Kyle, told Inside Edition . “We had people reaching out to us on TikTok asking how to tip the girls. We even had people going and leaving Google reviews that haven’t even been to the shop, saying they’re so proud of the girls and how they dealt with it,” he continued.

Kyle explained that he posted the video to remind everyone that the employees behind the counter are people, too. Adults, in particular, should try to remember that oftentimes, these are kids working to save up for cars, school, and other big life steps.

“Mistakes happen, but for you to go up and act like that as an adult, my whole point in uploading that video is to simply remind us all that we need to treat people better,” Kyle added.

"I am proud of the way our supervisor handled the situation," he added in the initial post . "We must strive for better behavior and respect in all interactions. It’s all about just being a kind person and approaching every situation with willingness to come to a good resolution."

We Are All the Same

As Kyle himself said, mistakes happen and no one is perfect. But demanding perfection of others can be a very lonely way to live. Rather than getting upset over an honest mistake and making someone feel bad or yelling at them, lead with grace and understanding. Not only will you help someone else feel respected, but you’ll probably get a better result from the situation, too.

When life doesn’t go our way, it can be easy to overreact or blame someone else. But by remembering that mistakes happen and this too shall pass, we can all live a little more peacefully.

Many of us are in these jobs because we’re trying to provide for our families or ourselves and our futures. Going to work can be hard enough, so remember to thank those who help you in the customer service industry and to tip well when appropriate. After all, we all want to feel appreciated at work.

Poor Boy Couldn’t Afford to Bury His Mom - So He Takes Matters Into His Own Hands

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Stranger's Video Helps Grandma Selling Baked Goods Go Viral

Every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday without fail, Inez Hudson can be found stationed outside Super Choice Foods supermarket in Lakeland, Florida.

The 73-year-old woman sells homemade pies and cakes to support herself as her fixed income isn't enough to cover her living expenses.

She has her good days and bad days. That is, until now. Because thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of social media she just became a viral sensation. And now? Her baked goods are selling like hotcakes.

Elderly Woman Sells Homemade Pies and Cakes 

@mannierants Store address: 610 W Memorial Blvd, Lakeland, #ourElders 💙 FL 33815 #Localsupport #fy #pielady #sweetelder #payitforward

Inez has been setting up shop outside her local grocery store since November 2018, frequently rising at midnight to start baking. Her specialties include pecan pie, sweet potato pie, pineapple pound cake, and red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.

Recently, Lakelander resident, Mannie (who posts on TikTok as @mannierants), came across Inez selling her cakes in the blistering Florida heat.

In a now-viral video , Mannie zooms in on her small business, consisting of a tray table and footstool draped in white tablecloths and covered in baked goods.

"I love sweet potato pie. I would like to get two," the TikToker tells her.

Mannie starts counting out the money...and doesn't stop...completely emptying his wallet as Inez cries with gratitude.

"I don't know what your challenge is. I wish I had more, I wish I had more. I want this to be bigger for you. I want more people to come and support you, I really do." - Mannie told Inez

However, Mannie didn't just wish it; the TikToker did something about it, putting a call out on social media.

"I don't know her, neither her situation," the text overlay reads. "But my heart says she needs our support. If you're able to please stop by if you're in Lakeland Fl. It will be greatly appreciated."

Mannie tells Fox13 New s that he wasn't looking for fame. He just wanted to help a grandma out and support local.

“That’s the main reason why I made it. Not to go viral for social media purposes. I just wanted local people to support each other because that’s the best rewarding experience."

A TikTok Video Goes Viral

73-year-old Inez Hudson sets up shop outside a local Lakeland grocery store to raise money so she can support herself.

It worked! Mannie's post took off, garnering more than 800,000 views and nearly 6,000 comments.

"That cry broke my heart. I can't stand to see our elderly forced to worry how to make ends instead of enjoying their latter years😢🙏❤❤"

"We’re coming GRANNY🤗🤗🤗🤗💖💖💖💖🖤🖤"

"Im in Orlando! Momma we will be there soon ❤️"

"She's so grateful 🙏 I'm from tampa im coming 2 support."

People from all over the area, and even beyond, started making the trip to Super Choice Foods to buy Inez's baked goods. And they keep on coming.

Her long-time friends are beyond thrilled for her as they know how tough it's been financially.

"I shared with her, God said, ‘stop worrying.' Trust Him and he's going to make things go to where you're not going to have to stress," said one friend, Jamie Overstreet. "Gradually, more people are coming, and to hear it's going viral, ah! That's so exciting!"

Now the only thing Inez has to worry about is selling out.

While the elderly woman is excited about the uptick in customers, she does admit her newfound fame makes her a bit nervous. Overall, however, she's ecstatic that all of her hard work is paying off.

"It makes me feel happy because I've been doing this for so long and it's something I've always wanted to do." - Inez Hudson

Supporting Local Business

Inez joins a growing number of seniors who can no longer afford to live off their fixed incomes. According to the Pew Research Center , the older workforce has nearly quadrupled in size since the mid-1980s, equating to roughly 11 million people.

As inflation continues to hammer the country and the cost of housing skyrockets, more and more people who should be enjoying their retirement are forced to continue working.

It's also why supporting local businesses and the "little guy" is so important. Buying local ensures that our money goes to the people who need it most, rather than to huge corporations that value profits over people.

When we choose to buy from small, independent sellers we are directly contributing to the livelihoods of our neighbors and friends. So next time you're deciding where to spend your money, consider businesses like Inez's.

Your support could be the difference between struggle and success.

Copyright © 2024 Goalcast

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Module Four: Delivery of Demonstration Speeches

Critical thinking & reasoning: understanding fallacies.

When we form arguments or examine others’ arguments, we need to be cognizant of possible fallacies. A fallacy can be defined as a flaw or error in reasoning. At its most basic, a logical fallacy refers to a defect in the reasoning of an argument that causes the conclusion(s) to be invalid, unsound, or weak. The existence of a fallacy in a deductive argument makes the entire argument invalid. The existence of a fallacy in an inductive argument weakens the argument but does not invalidate it.

It is important to study fallacies so you can avoid them in the arguments you make. Studying fallacies also provides you with a foundation for evaluating and critiquing other arguments as well. Once you start studying and thinking about fallacies, you’ll find they are everywhere. You could say that we live in a fallacious world!

The study of fallacies can be dated back to the start of the study of logic. In ancient Greece, Aristotle classified fallacies into two categories—linguistic and non-linguistic. Within these two categories, he identified 13 individual fallacies. Through time we have reclassified fallacies using various typologies and criteria. For our purposes, we will focus on formal and informal fallacies.

“Exclamation in a circle” by Orikrin1998. CC-BY .

• Chapter 6 Understanding Fallacies. Authored by : Terri Russ, J.D., Ph.D.. Provided by : Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN. Located at : http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html . Project : The Public Speaking Project. License : CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Exclamation in a circle IS. Authored by : Orikrin1998. Located at : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Exclamation_in_a_circle_IS.svg . License : CC BY: Attribution

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Think Again IV: How to Avoid Fallacies

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There are 6 modules in this course

We encounter fallacies almost everywhere we look. Politicians, salespeople, and children commonly use fallacies in order to get you to think whatever they want you to think. It’s important to learn to recognize fallacies so that you can avoid being fooled by them. It’s also important to learn about fallacies so that you avoid making fallacious arguments yourself. This course will show you how to identify and avoid many of the fallacies that lead people astray.

In this course, you will learn about fallacies. Fallacies are arguments that suffer from one or more common but avoidable defects: equivocation, circularity, vagueness, etc. It’s important to learn about fallacies so that you can recognize them when you see them, and not be fooled by them. It’s also important to learn about fallacies so that you avoid making fallacious arguments yourself. Suggested Readings Students who want more detailed explanations or additional exercises or who want to explore these topics in more depth should consult Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic, Ninth Edition, Concise, Chapters 13-17, by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Robert Fogelin. Course Format Each week will be divided into multiple video segments that can be viewed separately or in groups. There will be short ungraded quizzes after each segment (to check comprehension) and a longer graded quiz at the end of the course.

Welcome to the Course

Welcome to Think Again: How to Avoid Fallacies! This course is the fourth in the specialization Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, based on our original Coursera course titled Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. We are excited that you are taking this course, and we hope that you will take all four courses in the series, because there is a great deal of important material to learn. In the series as a whole, you learn how to analyze and evaluate arguments and how to avoid common mistakes in reasoning. These important skills will be useful to you in deciding what to believe and what to do in all areas of your life. We encounter fallacies almost everywhere we look. Politicians, salespeople, and children commonly use fallacies in order to get us to think what they want us to think. Think Again: How to Avoid Fallacies will show how to identify and avoid many of the fallacies that people use to get us to think the way they want us to think. The first part of this course introduces the series and the course. It also clarifies some peculiarities you may find with this course. We encourage you to watch the "Introduction to the Specialization" video first as it will help you learn more from the materials that come later.

What's included

1 video 1 reading

1 video • Total 4 minutes

• Introduction to the Specialization • 4 minutes • Preview module

1 reading • Total 10 minutes

• Course Logistics (Start Here) • 10 minutes

Fallacies of Unclarity

In this module's material we will describes two phenomena that are both common and useful in the languages that human beings speak, but both of which give rise to the potential for fallacious reasoning. A word or phrase is vague when its meaning is not precise, and it is ambiguous when it has more than one meaning. When we use vague or ambiguous phrases in our reasoning, it is very easy for us to make a number of different kinds of fallacies. This module will teach you what these different kinds of fallacies are, and give us some practice in spotting them, so you can make sure to avoid them in the future. If you want more examples or more detailed discussions of the fallacies that result from vagueness or ambiguity, we recommend Understanding Arguments, Ninth Edition, Chapters 13-14.

9 videos 7 quizzes 6 discussion prompts

9 videos • Total 71 minutes

• Introduction to Fallacies • 6 minutes • Preview module
• Argument from the Heap • 7 minutes
• Vagueness • 8 minutes
• Conceptual Slippery Slopes • 6 minutes
• Fairness Slippery Slopes • 6 minutes
• Causal Slippery Slopes • 6 minutes
• Ambiguity • 8 minutes
• Semantic and Syntactic Ambiguity • 13 minutes
• Fallacies of Equivocation • 6 minutes

7 quizzes • Total 210 minutes

• Introduction to Fallacies • 30 minutes
• Vagueness • 30 minutes
• Slippery Slopes • 30 minutes
• Fairness Slippery Slopes • 30 minutes
• Causal Slippery Slopes • 30 minutes
• Semantic and Syntactic Ambiguity • 30 minutes
• Fallacies of Equivocation • 30 minutes

6 discussion prompts • Total 60 minutes

• Share Your Thoughts: Vagueness • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Slippery Slopes • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Out of the Box Argument • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Proper Names Ambiguous? • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: What's the Difference? • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Equivocation • 10 minutes

Fallacies of Relevance

This module describes two of the most common fallacies that people make: ad hominem fallacies and appeals to authority. Part of what makes these fallacies so common, and so difficult to avoid, is that many ad hominem arguments, and many appeals to authority, are actually not fallacies at all! Only some of them are. And figuring out which of them are fallacies is more of an art than a science. There is no simple recipe, but there are some rules of thumb you can use. We hope that the practice that you get in this module will help you to improve your skills at distinguish the fallacious from the non-fallacious instances of ad hominem reasoning, as well as appeal to authority. If you want more examples or more detailed discussions of these topics, we recommend Understanding Arguments, Ninth Edition, Chapter 15.

10 videos 5 quizzes 4 discussion prompts

10 videos • Total 67 minutes

• Fallacies of Relevance and Vacuity • 11 minutes • Preview module
• Fallacies of Relevance: Ad Hominem • 8 minutes
• Silencers • 10 minutes
• Dismissers • 6 minutes
• Deniers • 6 minutes
• Appeals to Authority • 6 minutes
• Amplifiers • 4 minutes
• Supporters • 4 minutes
• Affirmers • 5 minutes
• Appeals to Popular Opinion • 3 minutes

5 quizzes • Total 150 minutes

• Dismissers • 30 minutes
• Deniers • 30 minutes
• Supporters • 30 minutes
• Affirmers • 30 minutes
• Appeals to Popular Opinion • 30 minutes

4 discussion prompts • Total 40 minutes

• Share Your Thoughts: Ad Hominem • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Your Examples • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Appeals to Authority • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Other Authorities • 10 minutes

Fallacies of Vacuity and Circularity

Now we will describe another common set of fallacies: fallacies that occur when an argument makes no progress from its premises to its conclusion. Sometimes, arguments make no progress because the conclusion is already contained in the premises. Sometimes, arguments make no progress because the conclusion is presupposed by the premises. And sometimes, arguments make no progress because the premises don’t make any claim at all, even if they might sound like they do. When you know how to identify such fallacies, you will find that they are more common than you think! If you want more examples or more detailed discussions of these topics, we recommend Understanding Arguments, Ninth Edition, Chapter 16.

3 videos 3 quizzes 2 discussion prompts

3 videos • Total 17 minutes

• Fallacies of Vacuity • 4 minutes • Preview module
• Circularity and Begging the Question • 4 minutes
• Self-Sealers • 8 minutes

3 quizzes • Total 90 minutes

• Fallacies of Vacuity • 30 minutes
• Circularity and Begging the Question • 30 minutes
• Self-Sealers • 30 minutes

2 discussion prompts • Total 20 minutes

• Share Your Thoughts: Vacuity • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: What's Wrong with the Argument? • 10 minutes

Refutation: Its Varieties and PItfalls

This module we will teach you various strategies for refuting a fallacious argument. To refute an argument is to show that the argument is unsuccessful. Even if you are able to identify a fallacious argument as a fallacy, you might still not be able to prove to others that it is a fallacy. In this module, you will learn a variety of techniques for proving to others that the argument is a fallacy. If you want more examples or more detailed discussions of these topics, we recommend Understanding Arguments, Ninth Edition, Chapter 17.

7 videos 4 quizzes 5 discussion prompts

7 videos • Total 71 minutes

• Refutation • 5 minutes • Preview module
• Refutation by Parallel Reasoning • 11 minutes
• False Dichotomy • 16 minutes
• Reductio Ad Absurdum • 7 minutes
• Counterexamples • 10 minutes
• Attacking a Straw Man • 12 minutes
• Why Walter Should Shave His Head • 6 minutes

4 quizzes • Total 120 minutes

• Refutation by Parallel Reasoning • 30 minutes
• Reductio Ad Absurdum • 30 minutes
• Counterexamples • 30 minutes
• Attacking a Straw Man • 30 minutes

5 discussion prompts • Total 50 minutes

• Share Your Thoughts: Refutation by Parallel Reasoning • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Share Your Parallel Reasoning Example • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Reductio Ad Absurdum • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Share Your Reductio Ad Absurdum Examples • 10 minutes
• Share Your Thoughts: Should Walter Shave His Head? • 10 minutes

Catch-Up and Final Quiz

This module gives you time to catch up and review, because we realize that the previous modules include a great deal of challenging material. It will also be provide enough time to take the final quiz as often as you want, with different questions each time. We explain the answers in each exam so that you can learn more and do better when you try the exam again. You may take the quiz as many times as you want in order to learn more and do better, with different questions each time. You will be able to retake the quiz three times every eight hours. You might not need to take more than one version of the exam if you do well enough on your first try. That is up to you. However many versions you take, we hope that all of the exams will provide additional learning experiences.

1 video 1 quiz 1 peer review

1 video • Total 5 minutes

• The Great Shave • 5 minutes • Preview module

1 quiz • Total 30 minutes

• Final Exam • 30 minutes

1 peer review • Total 60 minutes

• Make your own argument! • 60 minutes

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Reviewed on Sep 29, 2016

I had a lot of fun with it and learned a lot. It was a nice experience for me.

Reviewed on Jun 28, 2017

This course is interesting, there are some concepts useful I can use on life.

Reviewed on Mar 6, 2021

Interesting course although it might get too technical at times when it could have been by common sense/reasoning - and a great way to end the course with that video!

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Will i receive a transcript from duke university for completing this course.

No. Completion of a Coursera course does not earn you academic credit from Duke; therefore, Duke is not able to provide you with a university transcript. However, your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile.

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Critical thinking skills, watch the fallacies.

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Although there are more than two dozen types and subtypes of logical fallacies, these are the most common forms that you may encounter in writing, argument, and daily life:

Example: Special education students should not be required to take standardized tests because such tests are meant for nonspecial education students.

Example: Two out of three patients who were given green tea before bedtime reported sleeping more soundly. Therefore, green tea may be used to treat insomnia.

• Sweeping generalizations  are related to the problem of hasty generalizations. In the former, though, the error consists in assuming that a particular conclusion drawn from a particular situation and context applies to all situations and contexts. For example, if I research a particular problem at a private performing arts high school in a rural community, I need to be careful not to assume that my findings will be generalizable to all high schools, including public high schools in an inner city setting.

Example: Professor Berger has published numerous articles in immunology. Therefore, she is an expert in complementary medicine.

Example: Drop-out rates increased the year after NCLB was passed. Therefore, NCLB is causing kids to drop out.

Example: Japanese carmakers must implement green production practices, or Japan‘s carbon footprint will hit crisis proportions by 2025.

In addition to claims of policy, false dilemma seems to be common in claims of value. For example, claims about abortion‘s morality (or immorality) presuppose an either-or about when "life" begins. Our earlier example about sustainability (―Unsustainable business practices are unethical.‖) similarly presupposes an either/or: business practices are either ethical or they are not, it claims, whereas a moral continuum is likelier to exist.

Begging the Question/Circular Reasoning

Hasty Generalization

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Common Critical Thinking Fallacies

Critical thinking is the process of reaching a decision or judgment by analyzing, evaluating, and reasoning with facts and data presented. However, nobody is thinking critically 100% of the time. Logical reasoning can be prone to fallacies.

How can critical thinking fallacies be avoided? The first step is to be aware of the possible fallacies that can be committed. This article will highlight the most common logical fallacies.

Common fallacies fall under two categories:

Under fallacies of relevance are:.

“Ad Hominem” is Latin for “to the person”. It’s a fallacy that uses attacks on the person making the argument instead of the argument itself.

This is a fallacy of distraction. It sidetracks the main argument by offering a different issue and then claims that this new issue is relevant to the current one. People who do this aim to divert the audience or another person from their arguments.

Appeal to Authority fallacy claims that an argument is true because someone who has the “authority” on the subject believes that it’s true. For example, a policeman believes that guns should not have permits. This argument should be accepted as the truth because policemen know what they are talking about. Policemen know how to use guns properly, therefore can be called “experts” to the subject matter.

This is very similar to appeal to popularity. The only difference is that this fallacy claims that something is true because it has been believed to be true for a long time. It doesn’t depend on how many believe on it, but rather on how long people have believed it.

The fallacy of composition claims that because some parts of the whole are true, that means the whole must be true. The fallacy of division claims that because the whole is true, all parts of the whole must be true.

The fallacy of equivocation uses key words in an ambiguous way. The key words will mean different when used in one claim and then when used in another claim.

This fallacy says that there are only two available options and only one of them are correct. In short, it creates a black or white choice. Both cannot be correct, and they are the only possible options.

This fallacy creates generalizations from hurried samples. The generalizations might have been made based on a small sample only or a sample that doesn’t entirely represent something properly.

This is just a testament that these fallacies have existed before and continue to exist now, so we must be aware of them.

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Two competing conceptions of fallacies are that they are false but popular beliefs and that they are deceptively bad arguments. These we may distinguish as the belief and argument conceptions of fallacies. Academic writers who have given the most attention to the subject of fallacies insist on, or at least prefer, the argument conception of fallacies, but the belief conception is prevalent in popular and non-scholarly discourse. As we shall see, there are yet other conceptions of what fallacies are, but the present inquiry focuses on the argument conception of fallacies.

Being able to detect and avoid fallacies has been viewed as a supplement to criteria of good reasoning. The knowledge of fallacies is needed to arm us against the most enticing missteps we might take with arguments—so thought not only Aristotle but also the early nineteenth century logicians Richard Whately and John Stuart Mill. But as the course of logical theory from the late nineteenth-century forward turned more and more to axiomatic systems and formal languages, the study of reasoning and natural language argumentation received much less attention, and hence developments in the study of fallacies almost came to a standstill. Until well past the middle of the twentieth century, discussions of fallacies were for the most part relegated to introductory level textbooks. It was only when philosophers realized the ill fit between formal logic, on the one hand, and natural language reasoning and argumentation, on the other, that the interest in fallacies has returned. Since the 1970s the utility of knowing about fallacies has been acknowledged (Johnson and Blair 1993), and the way in which fallacies are incorporated into theories of argumentation has been taken as a sign of a theory’s level of adequacy (Biro and Siegel 2007, van Eemeren 2010).

In modern fallacy studies it is common to distinguish formal and informal fallacies. Formal fallacies are those readily seen to be instances of identifiable invalid logical forms such as undistributed middle and denying the antecedent. Although many of the informal fallacies are also invalid arguments, it is generally thought to be more profitable, from the points of view of both recognition and understanding, to bring their weaknesses to light through analyses that do not involve appeal to formal languages. For this reason it has become the practice to eschew the symbolic language of formal logic in the analysis of these fallacies; hence the term ‘informal fallacy’ has gained wide currency. In the following essay, which is in four parts, it is what is considered the informal-fallacy literature that will be reviewed. Part 1 is an introduction to the core fallacies as brought to us by the tradition of the textbooks. Part 2 reviews the history of the development of the conceptions of fallacies as it is found from Aristotle to Copi. Part 3 surveys some of the most recent innovative research on fallacies, and Part 4 considers some of the current research topics in fallacy theory.

1. The core fallacies

2.1 aristotle, 2.3 arnauld and nicole, 2.6 bentham, 2.7 whately, 2.9 sidgwick, 3.1 renewed interest, 3.2 doubts about fallacies, 3.3 the informal logic approach to fallacies, 3.4 the formal approach to informal fallacies, 3.5 the epistemic approach to fallacies, 3.6 dialectical/dialogical approaches to fallacies, 4.1 the nature of fallacies, 4.2 the appearance condition, 4.3 teaching, other internet resources, related entries.

Irving Copi’s 1961 Introduction to Logic gives a brief explanation of eighteen informal fallacies. Although there is some variation in competing textbooks, Copi’s selection captured what for many was the traditional central, core fallacies. [ 1 ] In the main, these fallacies spring from two fountainheads: Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). By way of introduction, a brief review of the core fallacies, especially as they appear in introductory level textbooks, will be given. Only very general definitions and illustrations of the fallacies can be offered. This proviso is necessary first, because, the definitions (or identity conditions) of each of the fallacies is often a matter of contention and so no complete or final definition can be given in an introductory survey; secondly, some researchers wish that only plausible and realistic instances of each fallacy be used for illustration. This also is not possible at this stage. The advantage of the stock examples of fallacies is that they are designed to highlight what the mistake associated with each kind of fallacy is supposed to be. Additional details about some of the fallacies are found in Sections 2 and 3. As an initial working definition of the subject matter, we may take a fallacy to be an argument that seems to be better than it really is.

1. The fallacy of equivocation is an argument which exploits the ambiguity of a term or phrase which has occurred at least twice in an argument, such that on the first occurrence it has one meaning and on the second another meaning. A familiar example is:

The end of life is death. Happiness is the end of life. So, death is happiness.

‘The end of life’ first means ceasing to live, then it means purpose. That the same set of words is used twice conceals the fact that the two distinct meanings undermine the continuity of the reasoning, resulting in a non-sequitur .

2. The fallacy of amphiboly is, like the fallacy of equivocation, a fallacy of ambiguity; but here the ambiguity is due to indeterminate syntactic structure. In the argument:

The police were told to stop drinking on campus after midnight. So, now they are able to respond to emergencies much better than before

there are several interpretations that can be given to the premise because it is grammatically ambiguous. On one reading it can be taken to mean that it is the police who have been drinking and are now to stop it; this makes for a plausible argument. On another reading what is meant is that the police were told to stop others (e.g., students) from drinking after midnight. If that is the sense in which the premise is intended, then the argument can be said to be a fallacy because despite initial appearances, it affords no support for the conclusion.

3 & 4. The fallacies of composition and division occur when the properties of parts and composites are mistakenly thought to be transferable from one to the other. Consider the two sentences:

• Every member of the investigative team was an excellent researcher.
• It was an excellent investigative team.

Here it is ‘excellence’ that is the property in question. The fallacy of composition is the inference from (a) to (b) but it need not hold if members of the team cannot work cooperatively with each other. The reverse inference from (b) to (a)—the fallacy of division—may also fail if some essential members of the team have a supportive or administrative role rather than a research role.

5. The fallacy of begging the question ( petitio principii ) can occur in a number of ways. One of them is nicely illustrated with Whately’s (1875 III §13) example: “to allow everyman an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State; for it is highly conducive to the interest of the Community, that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited, of expressing his sentiments.” This argument begs the question because the premise and conclusion are the very same proposition, albeit expressed in different words. It is a disguised instance of repetition which gives no reason for its apparent conclusion.

Another version of begging the question can occur in contexts of argumentation where there are unsettled questions about key terms. Suppose, for example, that everyone agrees that to murder someone requires doing something that is wrong, but not everyone agrees that capital punishment is a form of ‘murder’; some think it is justified killing. Then, should an arguer gives this argument:

Capital punishment requires an act of murdering human beings. So, capital punishment is wrong.

one could say that this is question-begging because in this context of argumentation, the arguer is smuggling in as settled a question that remains open. That is, if the premise is accepted without further justification, the arguer is assuming the answer to a controversial question without argument.

Neither of these versions of begging the question are faulted for their invalidity, so they are not charged with being non-sequitors like most of the core fallacies; they are, however, attempted proofs that do not transparently display their weakness. This consideration, plus its ancient lineage back to Aristotle, might explain begging the question’s persistent inclusion among fallacies. But, given our allegiance to the modern conception of logic as being solely concerned with the following-from relation, forms of begging the question should be thought of as epistemic rather than logical fallacies.

Some versions of begging the question are more involved and are called circular reasoning. They include more than one inference. Descartes illustrated this kind of fallacy with the example of our belief in the Bible being justified because it is the word of God, and our belief in God’s existence being justified because it is written in the Bible. [ 2 ] The two propositions lead back and forth to each other, in a circle, each having only the support of the other.

6. The fallacy known as complex question or many questions is usually explained as a fallacy associated with questioning. For example, in a context where a Yes or No answer must be given, the question, “Are you still a member of the Ku Klux Klan?” is a fallacy because either response implies that one has in the past been a member of the Klan, a proposition that may not have been established as true. Some say that this kind of mistake is not really a fallacy because to ask a question is not to make an argument.

7. There are a number of fallacies associated with causation, the most frequently discussed is post hoc ergo propter hoc , (after this, therefore because of this). This fallacy ascribes a causal relationship between two states or events on the basis of temporal succession. For example,

Unemployment decreased in the fourth quarter because the government eliminated the gasoline tax in the second quarter.

The decrease in unemployment that took place after the elimination of the tax may have been due to other causes; perhaps new industrial machinery or increased international demand for products. Other fallacies involve confusing the cause and the effect, and overlooking the possibility that two events are not directly related to each other but are both the effect of a third factor, a common cause. These fallacies are perhaps better understood as faults of explanation than faults of arguments.

8. The fallacy of ignoratio elenchi , or irrelevant conclusion, is indicative of misdirection in argumentation rather than a weak inference. The claim that Calgary is the fastest growing city in Canada, for example, is not defeated by a sound argument showing that it is not the biggest city in Canada. A variation of ignoratio elenchi , known under the name of the straw man fallacy, occurs when an opponent’s point of view is distorted in order to make it easier to refute. For example, in opposition to a proponent’s view that (a) industrialization is the cause of global warming, an opponent might substitute the proposition that (b) all ills that beset mankind are due to industrialization and then, having easily shown that (b) is false, leave the impression that (a), too, is false. Two things went wrong: the proponent does not hold (b), and even if she did, the falsity of (b) does not imply the falsity of (a).

There are a number of common fallacies that begin with the Latin prefix ‘ ad ’ (‘to’ or ‘toward’) and the most common of these will be described next.

9. The ad verecundiam fallacy concerns appeals to authority or expertise. Fundamentally, the fallacy involves accepting as evidence for a proposition the pronouncement of someone who is taken to be an authority but is either not really an authority or a relevant authority. This can happen when non-experts parade as experts in fields in which they have no special competence—when, for example, celebrities endorse commercial products or social movements. Similarly, when there is controversy, and authorities are divided, it is an error to base one’s view on the authority of just some of them. (See also 2.4 below.)

10. The fallacy ad populum is similar to the ad verecundiam , the difference being that the source appealed to is popular opinion, or common knowledge, rather than a specified authority. So, for example:

These days everyone (except you) has a car and knows how to drive; So, you too should have a car and know how to drive.

Often in arguments like this the premises aren’t true, but even if they are generally true they may provide only scant support for their conclusions because that something is widely practised or believed is not compelling evidence that it is true or that it should be done. There are few subjects on which the general public can be said to hold authoritative opinions. Another version of the ad populum fallacy is known as “playing to the gallery” in which a speaker seeks acceptance for his view by arousing relevant prejudices and emotions in his audience in lieu of presenting it with good evidence.

11. The ad baculum fallacy is one of the most controversial because it is hard to see that it is a fallacy or even that it involves bad reasoning. Ad baculum means “appeal to the stick” and is generally taken to involve a threat of injury of harm to the person addressed. So, for example,

If you don’t join our demonstration against the expansion of the park, we will evict you from your apartment; So, you should join our demonstration against the expansion of the park.

Such threats do give us reasons to act but, unpleasant as the interlocutor may be, there seems to be no fallacy here. In labour disputes, and perhaps in international relations, using threats such as going on strike, or cutting off trade routes, are not normally considered fallacies, even though they do involve intimidation and the threat of harm. However, if we change to doxastic considerations, then the argument that you should believe that candidate \(X\) is the one best suited for public office because if you do not believe this you will be evicted from your apartment, certainly is a good instance of irrelevant evidence.

12. The fallacy ad misericordiam is a companion to the ad baculum fallacy: it occurs not when threats are out of place but when appeals for sympathy or pity are mistakenly thought to be evidence. To what extent our sympathy for others should influence our actions depends on many factors, including circumstances and our ethical views. However, sympathy alone is generally not evidence for believing any proposition. Hence,

You should believe that he is not guilty of embezzling those paintings; think of how much his family suffered during the Depression.

Ad misericordiam arguments, like ad baculum arguments, have their natural home in practical reasoning; it is when they are used in theoretical (doxastic) argumentation that the possibility of fallacy is more likely.

13. The ad hominem fallacy involves bringing negative aspects of an arguer, or their situation, to bear on the view they are advancing. There are three commonly recognized versions of the fallacy. The abusive ad hominem fallacy involves saying that someone’s view should not be accepted because they have some unfavorable property.

Thompson’s proposal for the wetlands may safely be rejected because last year she was arrested for hunting without a license.

The hunter Thompson, although she broke the law, may nevertheless have a very good plan for the wetlands.

Another, more subtle version of the fallacy is the circumstantial ad hominem in which, given the circumstances in which the arguer finds him or herself, it is alleged that their position is supported by self-interest rather than by good evidence. Hence, the scientific studies produced by industrialists to show that the levels of pollution at their factories are within the law may be undeservedly rejected because they are thought to be self-serving. Yet it is possible that the studies are sound: just because what someone says is in their self-interest, does not mean it should be rejected.

The third version of the ad hominem fallacy is the tu quoque . It involves not accepting a view or a recommendation because the espouser him- or herself does not follow it. Thus, if our neighbor advises us to exercise regularly and we reject her advice on the basis that she does not exercise regularly, we commit the tu quoque fallacy: the value of advice is not wholly dependent on the integrity of the advisor.

We may finish our survey of the core fallacies by considering just two more.

14. The fallacy of faulty analogy occurs when analogies are used as arguments or explanations and the similarities between the two things compared are too remote to support the conclusion.

If a child gets a new toy he or she will want to play with it; So, if a nation gets new weapons, it will want to use them.

In this example (due to Churchill 1986, 349) there is a great difference between using (playing with) toys and using (discharging) weapons. The former is done for amusement, the latter is done to inflict harm on others. Playing with toys is a benign activity that requires little justification; using weapons against others nations is something that is usually only done after extensive deliberation and as a last resort. Hence, there is too much of a difference between using toys and using weapons to conclude that a nation, if it acquires weapons, will want to use them as readily as children will want to play with their toys.

15. The fallacy of the slippery slope generally takes the form that from a given starting point one can by a series of incremental inferences arrive at an undesirable conclusion, and because of this unwanted result, the initial starting point should be rejected. The kinds of inferences involved in the step-by-step argument can be causal, as in:

You have decided not to go to college; If you don’t go to college, you won’t get a degree; If you don’t get a degree, you won’t get a good job; If you don’t get a good job, you won’t be able to enjoy life; But you should be able to enjoy life; So, you should go to college.

The weakness in this argument, the reason why it is a fallacy, lies in the second and third causal claims. The series of small steps that lead from an acceptable starting point to an unacceptable conclusion may also depend on vague terms rather than causal relations. Lack of clear boundaries is what enables the puzzling slippery slope arguments known as “the beard” and “the heap.” In the former, a person with a full beard eventually becomes beardless as hairs of the beard are removed one-by-one; but because the term ‘beard’ is vague it is unclear at which intermediate point we are to say that the man is now beardless. Hence, at each step in the argument until the final hair-plucking, we should continue to conclude that the man is bearded. In the second case, because ‘heap’ is vague, it is unclear at what point piling scattered stones together makes them a heap of stones: if it is not a heap to begin with, adding one more stone will not make it a heap, etc. In both these cases apparently good reasoning leads to a false conclusion.

Many other fallacies have been named and discussed (see, e.g., Nickerson 2021, ch. 6), some of them quite different from the ones mentioned above, others interesting and novel variations of the above. Some of these will be mentioned in the review of historical and contemporary sources that follows.

2. History of Fallacy Theory

The history of the study of fallacies begins with Aristotle’s work, On Sophistical Refutations . It is among his earlier writings and the work appears to be a continuation of the Topics , his treatise on dialectical argumentation. Although his most extensive and theoretically detailed discussion of fallacies is in the Sophistical Refutations , Aristotle also discusses fallacies in the Prior Analytics and On Rhetoric . Here we will concentrate on summarizing the account given in the Sophistical Refutations . In that work, four things are worth noting: (a) the different conceptions of fallacy; (b) the basic concepts used to explain fallacies; (c) Aristotle’s explanation of why fallacies can be deceptive; and (d) his enumeration and classification of fallacies.

2.1.1 Definitions

At the beginning of Topics (I, i), Aristotle distinguishes several kinds of deductions (syllogisms). They are distinguished first on the basis of the status of their premises. (1) Those that begin from true and primary premises, or are owed to such, are demonstrations. (2) Those which have dialectical premises—propositions acceptable to most people, or to the wise—are dialectical deductions. (3) Deductions that start from premises which only appear to be dialectical, are fallacious deductions because of their starting points, as are (4) those “deductions” that do have dialectical premises but do not really necessitate their conclusions. Other fallacies mentioned and associated with demonstrations are (5) those which only appear to start from what is true and primary ( Top ., I, i 101a5). What this classification leaves out are (6) the arguments that do start from true and primary premises but then fail to necessitate their conclusions; two of these, begging the question and non-cause are discussed in Prior Analytics (II, 16, 17). It is the “fallacious deductions” characterized in (4), however, that come closest to the focus of the Sophistical Refutations . Nevertheless, in many of the examples given what stands out is that the premises are given as answers in dialogue and are to be maintained by the answerer, not necessarily that they are dialectical in the sense of being common opinions. This variation on dialectical deductions Aristotle calls examination arguments ( SR 2 165b4).

2.1.2 The basic concepts

There are three closely related concepts needed to understand sophistical refutations. By a deduction (a syllogism [ 3 ] ) Aristotle meant an argument which satisfies three conditions: it “is based on certain statements made in such a way as necessarily to cause the assertion of things other than those statements and as a result of those statements” ( SR 1 165a1–2). Thus an argument may fail to be a syllogism in three different ways. The premises may fail to necessitate the conclusion, the conclusion may be the same as one of the premises, and the conclusion may not be caused by (grounded in) the premises. The concept of a proof underlying Sophistical Refutations is similar to what is demanded of demonstrative knowledge in Posterior Analytics (I ii 71b20), viz., that the premises must be “true, primary, immediate, better known than, prior to, and causative of the conclusion,” except that the first three conditions do not apply to deductions in which the premises are obtained through questioning. A refutation , Aristotle says, is “a proof of the contradictory” ( SR 6, 168a37)—a proof of the proposition which is the contradictory of the thesis maintained by the answerer. In a context of someone, S , maintaining a thesis, T , a dialectical refutation will consist in asking questions of S , and then taking S ’s answers and using them as the premises of a proof via a deduction of not-T : this will be a refutation of T relative to the answerer ( SR 8 170a13). The concept of contradiction can be found in Categories : it is those contraries which are related such that “one opposite needs must be true, while the other must always be false” (13b2–3). A refutation will be sophistical if either the proof is only an apparent proof or the contradiction is only an apparent contradiction. Either way, according to Aristotle, there is a fallacy. Hence, the opening of his treatise: “Let us now treat of sophistical refutations, that is, arguments which appear to be refutations but are really fallacies and not refutations” ( SR 1 164a20).

2.1.3 The appearance condition

Aristotle observed that “reasoning and refutation are sometimes real and sometimes not, but appear to be real owing to men’s inexperience; for the inexperienced are like those who view things from a distance” ( SR , 1 164b25). The ideas here are first that there are arguments that appear to be better than they really are; and second that people inexperienced in arguments may mistake the appearance for the reality and thus be taken in by a bad argument or refutation. Apparent refutations are primarily explained in terms of apparent deductions: thus, with one exception, Aristotle’s fallacies are in the main a catalogue of bad deductions that appear to be good deductions. The exception is ignoratio elenchi in which, in one of its guises, the deduction contains no fallacy but the conclusion proved only appears to contradict the answerer’s thesis.

Aristotle devotes considerable space to explaining how the appearance condition may arise. At the outset he mentions the argument that turns upon names ( SR 1 165a6), saying that it is the most prolific and usual explanation: because there are more things than names, some names will have to denote more than one thing, thereby creating the possibility of ambiguous terms and expressions. That the ambiguous use of a term goes unnoticed allows the illusion that an argument is a real deduction. The explanation of how the false appearance can arise is in the similarity of words or expressions with different meanings, and the smallness of differences in meaning between some expressions ( SR 7 169a23–169b17).

2.1.4 List and classification

Aristotle discusses thirteen ways in which refutations can be sophistical and divides them into two groups. The first group, introduced in Chapter 4 of On Sophistical Refutations , includes those Aristotle considers dependent on language ( in dictione ), and the second group, introduced in Chapter 5, includes those characterized as not being dependent on language ( extra dictionem ). Chapter 6 reviews all the fallacies from the view point of failed refutations, and Chapter 7 explains how the appearance of correctness is made possible for each fallacy. Chapters 19–30 advise answerers on how to avoid being taken in by sophistical refutations.

The fallacies dependent on language are equivocation, amphiboly, combination of words, division of words, accent and form of expression. Of these the first two have survived pretty much as Aristotle thought of them. Equivocation results from the exploitation of a term’s ambiguity and amphiboly comes about through indefinite grammatical structure. The one has to do with semantical ambiguity, the other with syntactical ambiguity. However, the way that Aristotle thought of the combination and division fallacies differs significantly from modern treatments of composition and division. Aristotle’s fallacies are the combinations and divisions of words which alter meanings, e.g., “walk while sitting” vs. “walk-while-sitting,” (i.e., to have the ability to walk while seated vs. being able to walk and sit at the same time). For division, Aristotle gives the example of the number 5: it is 2 and 3. But 2 is even and 3 is odd, so 5 is even and odd. Double meaning is also possible with those words whose meanings depend on how they are pronounced, this is the fallacy of accent, but there were no accents in written Greek in Aristotle’s day; accordingly, this fallacy would be more likely in written work. What Aristotle had in mind is something similar to the double meanings that can be given to ‘unionized’ and ‘invalid’ depending on how they are pronounced. Finally, the fallacy that Aristotle calls form of expression exploits the kind of ambiguity made possible by what we have come to call category mistakes, in this case, fitting words to the wrong categories. Aristotle’s example is the word ‘flourishing’ which may appear to be a verb because of its ‘ing’ ending (as in ‘cutting’ or ‘running’) and so belongs to the category of actions, whereas it really belongs in the category of quality. Category confusion was, for Aristotle, the key cause of metaphysical mistakes.

There are seven kinds of sophistical refutation that can occur in the category of refutations not dependent on language: accident, secundum quid , consequent, non-cause, begging the question, ignoratio elenchi and many questions.

The fallacy of accident is the most elusive of the fallacies on Aristotle’s list. It turns on his distinction between two kinds of predication, unique properties and accidents ( Top . I 5). The fallacy is defined as occurring when “it is claimed that some attribute belongs similarly to the thing and to its accident” ( SR 5 166b28). What belongs to a thing are its unique properties which are counterpredicable (Smith 1997, 60), i.e., if \(A\) is an attribute of \(B\), \(B\) is an attribute of \(A\). However, attributes that are accidents are not counterpredicates and to treat them as such is false reasoning, and can lead to paradoxical results; for example, if it is a property of triangles that they are equal to two right angles, and a triangle is accidentally a first principle, it does not follow that all first principles have two right angles (see Schreiber 2001, ch. 7).

Aristotle considers the fallacy of consequent to be a special case of the fallacy of accident, observing that consequence is not convertible, i.e., “if \(A\) is, \(B\) necessarily is, men also fancy that, if \(B\) is, \(A\) necessarily is” ( SR 5 169b3). One of Aristotle’s examples is that it does not follow that “a man who is hot must be in a fever because a man who is in a fever is hot” ( SR 5 169b19). This fallacy is sometimes claimed as being an early statement of the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent.

The fallacy of secundum quid comes about from failing to appreciate the distinction between using words absolutely and using them with qualification. Spruce trees, for example, are green with respect to their foliage (they are ‘green’ with qualification); it would be a mistake to infer that they are green absolutely because they have brown trunks and branches. It is because the difference between using words absolutely and with qualification can be minute that this fallacy is possible, thinks Aristotle.

Begging the question is explained as asking for the answer (the proposition) which one is supposed to prove, in order to avoid having to make a proof of it. Some subtlety is needed to bring about this fallacy such as a clever use of synonymy or an intermixing of particular and universal propositions ( Top . VIII, 13). If the fallacy succeeds the result is that there will be no deduction: begging the question and non-cause are directly prohibited by the second and third conditions respectively of being a deduction ( SR 6 168b23).

The fallacy of non-cause occurs in contexts of ad impossibile arguments when one of the assumed premises is superfluous for deducing the conclusion. The superfluous premise will then not be a factor in deducing the conclusion and it will be a mistake to infer that it is false since it is a non-cause of the impossibility. This is not the same fallacy mentioned by Aristotle in the Rhetoric (II 24) which is more akin to a fallacy of empirical causation and is better called false cause (see Woods and Hansen 2001).

Aristotle’s fallacy of many questions occurs when two questions are asked as if they are one proposition. A proposition is “a single predication about a single subject” ( SR 6 169a8). Thus with a single answer to two questions one has two premises for a refutation , and one of them may turn out to be idle, thus invalidating the deduction (it becomes a non-cause fallacy). Also possible is that extra-linguistic part-whole mistakes may happen when, for example, given that something is partly good and partly not-good, the double question is asked whether it is all good or all not-good? Either answer will lead to a contradiction (see Schreiber 2000, 156–59). Despite its name, this fallacy consists in the ensuing deduction, not in the question which merely triggers the fallacy.

On one interpretation ignoratio elenchi is considered to be Aristotle’s thirteenth fallacy, in which an otherwise successful deduction fails to end with the required contradictory of the answerer’s thesis. Seen this way, ignoratio elenchi is unlike all the other fallacies in that it is not an argument that fails to meet one of the criteria of a good deduction, but a genuine deduction that turns out to be irrelevant to the point at issue. On another reading, ignoratio elenchi is not a separate fallacy but an alternative to the language dependent / language independent way of classifying the other twelve fallacies: they all fail to meet, in one way or another, the requirements of a sound refutation.

[A] refutation is a contradiction of one and the same predicate, not of a name but of a thing, and not of a synonymous name but of an identical name, based on the given premises and following necessarily from them (the original point at issue not being included) in the same respect, manner and time. ( SR 5 167a23–27)

Each of the other twelve fallacies is analysed as failing to meet one of the conditions in this definition of refutation ( SR 6). Aristotle seems to favour this second reading, but it leaves the problem of explaining how refutations that miss their mark can seem like successful refutations. A possible explanation is that a failure to contradict a given thesis can be made explicit by adding the negation of the thesis as a last step of the deduction, thereby insuring the contradiction of the thesis, but only at the cost (by the last step) of introducing one of the other twelve fallacies in the deduction.

2.1.5 Different interpretations

I have given only the briefest possible explanation of Aristotle’s fallacies. To really understand them a much longer engagement with the original text and the secondary sources is necessary. The second chapter of Hamblin’s (1970) book is a useful introduction to the Sophistical Refutations , and a defence of the dialectical nature of the fallacies. Hamblin thinks that a dialectical framework is indispensable for an understanding of Aristotle’s fallacies and that part of the poverty of contemporary accounts of fallacies is due to a failure to understand their assumed dialectical setting. This approach to the fallacies is continued in contemporary research by some argumentation theorists, most notably Douglas Walton (1995) who also follows Aristotle in recognizing a number of different kinds of dialogues in which argumentation can occur; Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (2004) who combine dialectical and pragmatic insights with an ideal model of a critical discussion; and Jaakko Hintikka who analyses the Aristotelian fallacies as mistakes in question-dialogues (Hintikka 1987; Bachman 1995.) According to Hintikka (1997) it is an outright mistake to think of Aristotle’s fallacies primarily as mistaken inferences, either deductive or inductive. A non-dialogue oriented interpretation of Aristotle fallacies is found in Woods and Hansen (1997 and 2001) who argue that the fallacies (apparent deductions) are basic to apparent refutations, and that Aristotle’s interest in the fallacies extended beyond dialectical contests, as is shown by his interest in them in the Prior Analytics and the Rhetoric (II 24). What gives unity to Aristotle’s different fallacies on this view is not a dialogue structure but rather their dependence on the concepts of deduction and proof. The most thorough recent study of these questions is in Schreiber (2003), who emphasizes Aristotle’s concern with resolving (exposing) fallacies and argues that it is Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics that is needed for a full understanding of the fallacies in the Sophistical Refutations .

Francis Bacon deserves a brief mention in the history of fallacy theory, not because he made any direct contribution to our knowledge of the fallacies but because of his attention to prejudice and bias in scientific investigation, and the effect they could have on our beliefs. He spoke of false idols (1620, aphorisms 40–44) as having the same relation to the interpretation of nature that fallacies have to logic. The idol of the tribe is human nature which distorts our view of the natural world (it is a false mirror). The idol of the cave is the peculiarity of each individual man, our different abilities and education that affect how we interpret nature. The idols of the theatre are the acquired false philosophies, systems and methods, both new and ancient, that rule men’s minds. These three idols all fall into the category of explanations of why we may misperceive the world. A fourth of Bacon’s idols, the idol of the market place, is the one that comes closest to the Aristotelian tradition as it points to language as the source of our mistaken ideas: “words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies” (1620, aphorism 43). Although Bacon identifies no particular fallacies in Aristotle’s sense, he opens the door to the possibility that there may be false assumptions associated with the investigation of the natural world. The view of The New Organon is that just as logic is the cure for fallacies, so will the true method of induction be a cure for the false idols.

Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole were the authors of Logic, or the Art of Thinking (1662), commonly known as the Port-Royal Logic. According to Benson Mates (1965, 214) it “is an outstanding early example of the ‘how to think straight’ genre.” The work includes chapters on sophisms, with the justification that “examples of mistakes to be avoided are often more striking than the examples to be imitated” (Bk. III, xix). The Port-Royal Logic does not continue Aristotle’s distinction between fallacies that are dependent on language and those that are not; instead there is a division between sophisms associated with scientific subjects (ibid.)—these are nearly all from the Sophistical Refutations —and those committed in everyday life and ordinary discourse (Bk III, xx). The division is not exclusive, with some of the sophisms fitting both classes.

The Port-Royal Logic includes eight of Aristotle’s original thirteen fallacies, several of them modified to fit the bent to natural philosophy rather than dialectical argumentation. Several kinds of causal errors are considered under the broad heading, non causa pro causa and they are illustrated with reference to scientific explanations that have assigned false causes for empirical phenomena. Also identified as a common fallacy of the human mind is post hoc, ergo propter hoc : “This happened following a certain thing, hence that thing must be its cause” (Bk. III, xix 3). Begging the questions is included and illustrated, interestingly, with examples drawn from Aristotelian science. Two new sophisms are included: one is imperfect enumeration, the error of overlooking an alternative, the other is a faulty (incomplete) induction, what we might call hasty generalization. Although the discussions here are brief, they mark the entry of inductive fallacies into the pool of present day recognized fallacies. Ignoratio elenchi retains its dialogical setting but is extended beyond the mere failure to contradict a thesis, “to attribut[ing] to our adversaries something remote from their views to gain an advantage over them, or to impute to them consequences we imagine can be drawn from their doctrines, although they disavow and deny them” (Bk. III, xix 1). The other Aristotelian fallacies included are accident, combination and division, secundum quid and ambiguity.

The sophisms of everyday life and ordinary discourse are eight in number and two of them, the sophisms of authority and manner, should be noticed. In these sophisms, external marks of speakers contribute to the persuasiveness of their arguments. Although authority is not to be doubted in church doctrines, in matters that God has left to the discernment of humans we can be led away from the truth by being too deferential. Here we find one of the earliest statements of the modern appeal to false authority: people are often persuaded by certain qualities that are irrelevant to the truth of the issue being discussed. Thus there are a number of people who unquestioningly believe those who are the oldest and most experienced, even in matters that depend neither on age nor experience, but only on mental insight (Bk. III, xx 6). To age and experience Arnauld and Nicole add noble birth as an unwarranted source of deference in matters intellectual (Bk. III, xx 7), and towards the end of their discussion they add the sophism of manner, cautioning that “grace, fluency, seriousness, moderation and gentleness” is not necessarily a mark of truth (Bk. III, xx 8). The authors seem to have the rhetorical flourishes of royal courtiers especially in mind.

It is John Locke who is credited with intentionally creating a class of ad -arguments, and inadvertently giving birth to the class of ad -fallacies. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), he identified three kinds of arguments, the ad verecundiam , ad ignorantiam , and ad hominem arguments, each of which he contrasted with ad judicium arguments which are arguments based on “the foundations of knowledge and probability” and are reliable routes to truth and knowledge. Locke did not speak of ad -arguments as fallacies—that was left to others to do later—but rather as kinds of arguments “that men, in their reasoning with others, do ordinarily make use of to prevail on their assent; or at least so to awe them as to silence their opposition.” (Bk IV, xvii, 19–22).

Two of the ad arguments have developed beyond how Locke originally conceived them. His characterization of the ad verecundiam is considered the locus classicus of appeal-to-authority arguments. When it is a fallacy it is either on the ground that authorities (experts) are fallible or for the reason that appealing to authority is an abandonment of an individual’s epistemic responsibility. It seems unlikely, however, that Locke thought we should never rely on the expertise and superior knowledge of others when engaged in knowledge-gathering and argumentation. This leads us to consider what kind of authority Locke might have had in mind. In addition to epistemic and legal (command) authority there is also what might be called social authority, demanding respect and deference from others due to one’s higher social standing, something much more a part of seventeenth-century society than it is a part of ours. The language that Locke used in connection with the ad verecundiam , words like ‘eminency’, ‘dignity’, ‘breach of modesty’, and ‘having too much pride’ suggests that what he had in mind was the kind of authority that demands respect for the social standing of sources rather than for their expertise; hence, by this kind of authority a person could be led to accept a conclusion because of their modesty or shame, more so than for the value of the argument (see Goodwin 1998). Hence, we understand Locke better when we translate ad verecundiam literally, as “appeal to modesty.”

The argumentum ad hominem , as Locke defined it, has subsequently developed into three different fallacies. His original description was that it was a way “to press a man with consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions.” That is, to argue that an opponent’s view is inconsistent, logically or pragmatically, with other things he has said or to which he is committed. Locke’s observation was that such arguments do not advance us towards truth, but that they can serve to promote agreement or stall disagreement. To argue that way is not a fallacy but an acceptable mode of argumentation. Henry Johnstone (1952) thought it captured the essential character of philosophical argumentation. The modern descendants of the Lockean ad hominem are the abusive ad hominem which is an argument to the effect that a position should not be accepted because of some telling negative property of its espouser; the circumstantial ad hominem , an argument to the effect that someone’s position should be rejected because circumstances suggest that their view is the result of self-interested bias; and finally, the tu quoque ad hominem argument which attempts to deflect a criticism by pointing out that it applies equally to the accuser. Recent scholarship suggests that these post-Lockean kinds of ad hominem arguments are sometimes used fairly, and sometimes fallaciously; but none of them is what Locke described as the argumentum ad hominem .

Ad ignorantiam translates as “appeal to ignorance.” Locke’s characterization of this kind of argument is that it demands “the adversary to admit what they allege as a proof, or to assign a better.” The ignorance in question is comparative, it is not that the opponent has no evidence, it is that s/he has no better evidence. However, the inability of an opponent to produce a better argument is not sufficient reason to think the proponent’s argument must be accepted. Modern versions of this kind of argument take it as a fallacy to infer a proposition to be true because there is no evidence against it (see Krabbe, 1995).

The introduction and discussion of the ad -arguments appears almost as an afterthought in Locke’s Essay . It is found at the end of the chapter, “Of Reason,” in which Locke devotes considerable effort to criticizing syllogistic logic. Reasoning by syllogisms, he maintained, was neither necessary nor useful for knowledge. Locke clearly thought that the three ad -arguments were inferior to ad judicium arguments, but he never used the term ‘fallacy’ in connection with them, although he did use it in connection with errors of syllogistic reasoning.

Was Locke the first to discuss these kinds of arguments? Hamblin (1970, 161–62) and Nuchelmans (1993) trace the idea of ad hominem arguments back to Aristotle, and Locke’s remark that the name argumentum ad hominem was already known has been investigated by Finocchiaro (1974) who finds the term and the argument kind in Galileo’s writings more than a half-century before the Essay Concerning Human Understanding . And Arnauld and Nicole’s discussion of the sophism of authority, that “people speak the truth because they are of noble birth or wealthy or in high office,” which seems to be part of Locke’s ad verecundiam , was most likely known to him. Subsequently more ad -arguments were added to the four that Locke identified (see Watts, and Copi, below).

Isaac Watts in his Logick; or, The Right Use of Reason (1724), furthered the ad -argument tradition by adding three more arguments: argumentum ad fidem (appeal to faith), argumentum ad passiones (appeal to passion), and argumentum ad populum (a public appeal to passions). Like Locke, Watts does not consider these arguments as fallacies but as kinds of arguments. However, the Logick does consider sophisms and introduces “false cause” as an alternative name for non causa pro causa which here, as in the Port-Royal Logic, is understood as a fallacy associated with empirical causation. According to Watts it occurs whenever anyone assigns “the reasons of natural appearances, without sufficient experiments to prove them” (1796, Pt. III, 3 i 4). Another sophism included by Watts is imperfect enumeration or false induction, the mistake of generalizing on insufficient evidence. Also, the term ‘strawman fallacy’ may have its origins in Watts’s discussion of ignoratio elenchi : after having dressed up the opinions and sentiments of their adversaries as they please to make “images of straw”, disputers “triumph over their adversary as though they had utterly confuted his opinions” (1796, Pt. III 3 i 1).

Jeremy Bentham’s Handbook of Political Fallacies (1824) was written in the years leading up to the first Reform Bill (1832). His interest was in political argumentation, particularly in exposing the different means used by parliamentarians and law makers to defeat or delay reform legislation. Hence, it was not philosophy or science that interested him, but political debate. Fallacies he took to be arguments or topics that would through the use of deception produce erroneous beliefs in people (1824, 3). These tactics he (or his editor) divided into four classes: fallacies of authority, danger, delay and confusion. Bentham was aware of the developing ad -fallacies tradition since each of the thirty or so fallacies he described is also labelled as belonging either to the kind ad verecundiam (appeal to shame or modesty), ad odium (appeal to hate or contempt), ad metum (appeal to fear or threats), ad quietem (appeal to rest or inaction), ad judicium , and ad socordiam (appeal to postponement or delay). Most of Bentham’s fallacies have not become staples of fallacy theory but many of them show interesting insights into the motives and techniques of debaters (see e.g., Rudanko’s (2021) analyses of the ad socordiam ).

Bentham’s Handbook has not taken a central place in the history of fallacy studies (Hamblin 1970, 165–69); nevertheless, it is historically interesting in several respects. It discusses authority at length, identifying four conditions for reliable appeals to authority and maintaining that the failure of any one of them cancels the strength of the appeal. Fallacies of authority in political debate occur when authority “is employed in the place of such relevant arguments as might have been brought forward” (1824, 25). Bentham’s fear is that debaters will resort to “the authority” of traditional beliefs and principles instead of considering the advantages of the reform measures under discussion.

Under the heading “fallacies of danger” Bentham named a number of what he called vituperative fallacies—imputations of bad character, bad motive, inconsistency, and suspicious connections—which have as their common characteristic, “the endeavour to draw aside attention from the measure to the man , in such a way as to cause the latter’s badness to be imputed to the measure he supports, or his goodness to his opposition” (1824, 83). This characterization fits well with the way we have come to think of the ad hominem fallacy as a view disparaged by putting forth a negative characterization of its supporter or his circumstances.

Bentham places the fallacies in the immediate context of debate, identifying ways in which arguers frustrate the eventual resolution of disagreements by using insinuations of danger, delaying tactics, appeals to questionable authorities and, generally, confusing issues. Modern argumentation theorists who hold that any impediment to the successful completion of dialogical discussions is a fallacy, may find that their most immediate precursor was Bentham (see Grootendorst 1997).

Book III of Richard Whately’s Elements of Logic (1826) is devoted to giving an account of fallacies based on “logical principles,”. Whately was instrumental in the revival of interest in logic at the beginning of the nineteenth century and, being committed to deductivism, he maintained that only valid deductive inferences counted as reasoning. Thus, he took every fallacy to belong to either the class of deductive failures (logical fallacies) or the class of non-logical failures (material fallacies).

By ‘fallacy’ Whately meant “any unsound mode of arguing, which appears to demand our conviction, and to be decisive of the question at hand, when in fairness it is not”’ (Bk. III, intro.). The logical fallacies divide into the purely logical and the semi-logical fallacies. The purely logical fallacies are plain violations of syllogistic rules like undistributed middle and illicit process. The semi-logical fallacies mostly trade on ambiguous middle terms and are therefore also logical fallacies, but their detection requires extra-logical knowledge including that of the senses of terms [ 4 ] and knowledge of the subject matter (Bk. III, §2); they include, among others, the fallacies of ambiguity, and division and composition. The non-logical, material fallacies are also divided into two classes: fallacies with premises ‘unduly assumed,’ and fallacies of irrelevant conclusions. Begging the question fits under the heading of a non-logical, material fallacy in which a premise has been unduly assumed, and ignoratio elenchi is a non-logical, material fallacy in which an irrelevant conclusion has been reached. The ad -arguments are all placed under the last division as variants of ignoratio elenchi , but they are said to be fallacies only when they are used unfairly. Whately’s version of the ad hominem argument resembles Locke’s in that it is an ex concessis kind of argument: one that depends on the concessions of the person with whom one is arguing. From the concessions, one might prove that one’s opponent is ‘committed to p, ’ but an attempt to make it seem as if this constitutes a proof of the absolute (non-relative) proposition ‘ p ’ would be a fallacy. This kind of ad hominem fallacy can be seen as falling under the broader ignoratio elenchi category because what is proved is not what is needed.

The creation of the category of non-logical fallacies was not really a break with Aristotle as much as it was a break with what had become the Aristotelian tradition. Aristotle thought that some fallacies were due to unacceptable premises although these are not elaborated in Sophistical Refutations (see section 2.1.1 above). Whately’s creation of the category of non-logical fallacies solved the problem of what to do with begging the question which is not an invalid form of argument, and it also created a place in fallacy taxonomy for the ad -fallacies.

John Stuart Mill’s contribution to the study of fallacies is found in Book V of his comprehensive A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive , first published in 1843. It stands out most strikingly for placing the study of fallacies within his framework of inductive reasoning, a direct rejection of Whately’s deductivist approach to reasoning and fallacies. Mill held that only inductive reasoning counts as inferring and accordingly he introduces new categories as well as a new classification scheme for fallacies.

Mill drew a division between the moral and the intellectual causes of fallacies. The former are aspects of human nature such as biases and indifference to truth which incline us to make intellectual mistakes. These dispositions are not themselves fallacies. It is the intellectual errors, the actual taking of insufficient evidence as sufficient, that are fallacious. The various ways in which this can happen are what Mill took as the basis for classifying fallacies. “A catalogue of the varieties of evidence which are not real evidence,” he wrote, “is an enumeration of fallacies” (1891, Bk.V iii §1).

Mill divided the broad category of argument fallacies into two groups: those in which the evidence is distinctly conceived and those in which it is indistinctly conceived. Fallacies falling under evidence indistinctly conceived (Bk. V, vii) were further described as fallacies of confusion. These result from an indistinct conception of the evidence leading to a mistaking of its significance and thereby to an unsupported conclusion. Some of the traditional Aristotelian fallacies such as ambiguity, composition and division, petitio principii , and ignoratio elenchi , are placed in this category. Although Mill followed Whately closely in his exposition of the fallacies of confusion, he does not mention any ad -arguments in connection with ignoratio elenchi .

As for the category of fallacies of evidence distinctly conceived, it too is divided. The two sub-classes are fallacies of ratiocination (deduction) and fallacies of induction. The deductive fallacies (Bk.V, vi) are those that explicitly break a rule of the syllogism, such as the three-term rule. But also included are the conversion of universal affirmatives and particular negatives (“All PS” does not follow from “All SP,” and “Some P not S” does not follow from “Some S not P”). Also included in this category is the secundum quid fallacy.

The other sub-class of fallacies distinctly conceived bring out what is distinctive about Mill’s work on the fallacies: that it is the first extensive attempt to deal with fallacies of induction. He divided inductive fallacies into two further groups: fallacies of observation (V, iv) and fallacies of generalization (Bk. V, v). Fallacies of observation can occur either negatively or positively. Their negative occurrence consists in non-observation in which one has overlooked negatively relevant evidence. This is similar to what the Port-Royal Logic considered a faulty enumeration, and one of Mill’s examples is the continued faith that farmers put in the weather forecasts found in almanacs despite their long history of false predictions. Observation fallacies occur positively when the mistake is based on something that is seen wrongly, i.e., taken to be something that it is not. Such mal-observations occur when we mistake our inferences for facts, as in our inference that the sun rises and sets (Bk. V, iv, 5).

Fallacies of generalization, the other branch of inductive fallacies, result from mistakes in the inductive process which can happen in several ways. As one example, Mill pointed to making generalizations about what lies beyond our experience: we cannot infer that the laws that operate in remote parts of the universe are the same as those in our solar system (Bk. V, v, 2). Another example is mistaking empirical laws stating regularities for causal laws—his example was because women as a class have not hitherto equalled men as a class, they will never be able to do so (Bk. V, v, 4). Also placed in the category of fallacies of generalization is post hoc ergo propter hoc , which tends to single out a single cause when there are in reality many contributing causes (Bk. V, v, 5). Analogical arguments are identified as a false basis for generalizations; they are “at best only admissible as an inconclusive presumption, where real proof is unattainable” (Bk. V, v, 6).

Mill also included what he calls fallacies of inspection, or a priori fallacies (Bk. V, iii) in his survey of fallacies. These consist of non-inferentially held beliefs, so they fit the belief conception of fallacies rather than the argument conception. Among Mill’s examples of a priori fallacies are metaphysical assumptions such as that distinctions of language correspond to distinctions in nature, and that objects cannot affect each other at a distance. Even the belief in souls or ghosts is considered an a priori fallacy. Such beliefs will not withstand scrutiny, thought Mill, by the inductive method strictly applied.

A System of Logic is the most extensive work on fallacies since Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations . Mill’s examples are taken from a wide range of examples in science, politics, economics, religion and philosophy. His classificatory scheme is original and comprehensive. Frederick Rosen (2006) argues that Mill’s pre-occupation with the detection and prevention of fallacies is part of what motivates the celebrated second chapter of On Liberty . Despite these considerations, the Logic is not much referenced by fallacy theorists.

In a series of articles and books beginning in 1878 and continuing well into the twentieth century, Alfred Sidgwick wrote repeatedly about fallacies. Unlike Whately and Mill who thought that searching for fallacies was a supplement to their logical methods (deduction and induction, respectively), Sidgwick wanted to put argument evaluation by fallacies at the centre of logic. In his view, the negative method of evaluating arguments by searching them for fallacies is a more practical and efficient way of judging arguments in actual life than the positive method of trying to match arguments with the positive standards of formal logic. His earliest proposal (1878) was to pass arguments through a sieve, or filter, which would eliminate arguments if they had the marks of any of the fallacies. Sidgwick placed the category of fallacies of confusion (those due to ambiguity or vagueness), including ignoratio elenchi , at the top of the sieve. At the next level down is petitio principii and arguments from occult causes, and below that fallacies of ratiocination (deductive, syllogistic fallacies) and inductive reasoning. An argument that succeeds in passing all the way through the sieve should be considered logically good. He thought most fallacies would be revealed at the top level as fallacies of confusion.

Sidgwick’s contribution is not to the definition of fallacies, nor to the identification of new fallacies, but rather to his promotion of the idea, worked out in some detail in Fallacies: A view of logic from the practical side (1884), that a systematic search for fallacy mistakes could be a comprehensive and practical method of evaluating arguments found in daily life. He was one of the first to argue that the new mathematical interpretations of logic being advanced in the second-half of the nineteenth century could not do justice to natural language arguments, and he was also an advocate for reform in how logic should be taught so as to make it practically valuable to students. Although Sidgwick’s work is little known today, it is fair to say that he anticipated many of the concerns that would occupy informal logic a hundred years later.

Irving Copi’s Introduction to Logic —an influential text book from the mid-twentieth century—defines a fallacy as “a form of argument that seems to be correct but which proves, upon examination, not to be so.” (1961, 52) The term ‘correct’ is sufficiently broad to allow for both deductive invalidity, inductive weakness, as well as some other kinds of argument failure. Of the eighteen informal fallacies Copi discusses, eleven can be traced back to the Aristotelian tradition, and the other seven to the burgeoning post-Lockean ad -fallacy tradition.

The first division in Copi’s classification is between formal and informal fallacies. Formal fallacies are invalid inferences which “bear a superficial resemblance” to valid forms of inference, so these we may think of as deductive fallacies. They include affirming the consequent, denying the antecedent, the fallacy of four terms, undistributed middle, and illicit major. Informal fallacies are not characterized as resembling formally valid arguments; they gain their allure some other way. One division of informal fallacies is the fallacies of relevance which are “errors in reasoning into which we may fall because of carelessness and inattention to our subject matter” (1961, 53). This large class of fallacies includes accident, converse accident, false cause, petitio principii , complex question, ignoratio elenchi , ad baculum , ad hominem abusive, ad hominem circumstantial, ad ignorantiam , ad misericordiam , ad populum , and ad verecundiam . The other division of informal fallacies is called fallacies of ambiguity and it includes equivocation, amphiboly, accent, composition and division.

It seems that Copi took Whately’s category of semi-logical fallacies and moved them under a new heading of ‘informal fallacies,’ presumably for the reason that extra-logical knowledge is needed to uncover their invalidity. This has the result that the new wide category of informal fallacies is a mixed bag: some of them are at bottom logical failures (equivocation, composition, ad misericordiam ) and some are logically correct but frustrate proof (begging the question, ignoratio elenchi ). [ 5 ] Copi’s classification, unlike Whately’s which sought to make a distinction on logical grounds, may be seen as based on three ways that fallacies resemble good arguments: formal fallacies have invalid forms that resemble valid forms, fallacies of ambiguity resemble good arguments through the ambiguity of terms, and fallacies of relevance exploit psychological (non-logical) associations. Hence, we may think of Copi’s divisions as between logical, semantic and psychological fallacies.

Copi’s treatment of the fallacies is a fair overview of the traditional list of fallacies, albeit he did not pretend to do any more than give an introduction to existing fallacy-lore for beginning logic students. Hamblin (1970, ch. 1) criticized Copi’s work, along with that of several others, and gave it the pejorative name, “the standard treatment of fallacies.” His criticisms rang true with many of his readers, thereby provoking contempt for the traditional treatment of fallacies as well as stimulating research in what we may call the new, or post-Hamblin, era, of fallacy studies. Let us next consider some of these developments.

3. New approaches to fallacies

A common complaint since Whately’s Elements of Logic is that our theory and teaching of fallacies are in want of improvement—he thought they should be put on a more logical footing to overcome the loose and vague treatments others had proffered.

It is on Logical principles therefore that I propose to discuss the subject of Fallacies. … the generality of Logical writers have usually followed so opposite a plan. Whenever they have to treat of anything that is beyond the mere elements of Logic, they totally lay aside all reference to the principles they have been occupied in establishing and explaining, and have recourse to a loose, vague, and popular kind of language … [which is] … strangely incongruous in a professional Logical treatise. (1875, III, intro.)

Charles Hamblin’s 1970 book, Fallacies , revives Whately’s complaint. We may view Fallacies as the dividing line between traditional approaches to the study of fallacies and new, contemporary approaches. At the time of its publication it was the first book-length work devoted to fallacies in modern times. The work opens with a critique of the standard treatment of fallacies as it was found in mid-twentieth century textbooks; then, in subsequent chapters, it takes a historical turn reviewing Aristotle’s approach to fallacies and exploring the tradition it fostered (as in the previous section of this entry). Other historically-oriented chapters include one on the Indian tradition, and one on formal fallacies. Hamblin’s more positive contributions to fallacy studies are concentrated in the book’s later chapters on the concept of argument, formal dialectics, and equivocation.

What Hamblin meant by “the standard treatment of fallacies” was:

The typical or average account as it appears in the typical short chapter or appendix of the average modern textbook. And what we find in most cases, I think it should be admitted, is as debased, worn-out and dogmatic a treatment as could be imagined—incredibly tradition bound, yet lacking in logic and in historical sense alike, and almost without connection to anything else in modern Logic at all. (1970, 12)

Let us consider what came before Hamblin as the traditional approach to fallacies and what comes after him as new approaches. The new approaches (since the 1970’s) show a concern to overcome Hamblin’s criticisms, and they also vie with each to produce the most defensible alternative to the traditional approach. One thing that nearly all the new approaches have in common is that they reject what Hamblin presents as the nearly universally accepted definition of “fallacy” as an argument “that seems to be valid but is not so” (1970, 12). Although this definition of fallacy is not nearly as widely accepted as Hamblin intimated (see Hansen 2002), others have taken to calling it “the standard definition of fallacies” and for convenience we can refer to it as SDF. SDF has three necessary conditions: a fallacy (i) is an argument, (ii) that is invalid, and (iii) appears to be valid. These can be thought of as the argument condition, the invalidity condition and the appearance condition. All three conditions have been brought into question.

Maurice Finocchiaro continued Hamblin’s criticism of the modern textbook treatment of fallacies, observing that they contain very few examples of actual fallacies, leading him to doubt the validity of ‘fallacy’ as a genuine logical category. Although he allows that errors in reasoning are common in real life, he thinks that “types of logically incorrect arguments”—fallacies—are probably not common (1981, 113). For that reason Finocchiaro prefers to speak of fallacious arguments —by which he means arguments in which the conclusion fails to follow from the premises—rather than fallacies (1987, 133). He further distances himself from SDF by not considering the appearance condition.

Finocchiaro distinguishes six ways in which arguments can be fallacious. (1) Formal fallaciousness is simply the case where the conclusion does not follow validly from the premises; this type of error can be demonstrated by producing a suitable analogous counter-example in which the premises are true and the conclusion is false. (2) Explanatory fallaciousness occurs when a specified conclusion follows with no more certainty from the given premises than does a rival conclusion; it occurs most often in the context of proposing explanatory hypotheses. (3) Presuppositional fallaciousness occurs in those cases where an argument depends on a false presupposition; this kind of fallaciousness is demonstrated by making a sound argument showing the presupposition to be false. (4) Positive fallaciousness occurs when the given premises, complemented by other propositions taken as true, are shown to support a conclusion inconsistent with the given conclusion. (5) Semantical fallaciousness results from the ambiguity of terms; the conclusion will follow if the sense given to the term in the premises makes the premises false, but if the other sense is ascribed to the term, making the premises true, the conclusion does not follow (it becomes an instance of formal fallaciousness). (6) Finally, Finocchiaro singles out persuasive fallaciousness , in which the conclusion does not follow from the premises because it is the same as one of the premises. As a test of completeness of this six-fold division of fallaciousness, Finocchiaro (1987) observes that it is adequate to classify all the kinds of errors which Galileo found in the arguments of the defenders of the geocentric view of the solar system.

Gerald Massey (1981) has voiced a strong objection to fallacy theory and the teaching of fallacies. He argues that there is no theory of invalidity—no systematic way to show that an argument is invalid other than to show that it has true premises and a false conclusion (1981, 164). Hence, there is an asymmetry between proving arguments valid and proving them invalid: they are valid if they can be shown to be an instance of a valid form, but they are not proved invalid by showing that they are an instance of an invalid form, because both valid and invalid arguments instantiate invalid forms. Thus, showing that a natural language argument is an instance of an invalid form does not preclude the possibility that it is also an instance of a valid form, and therefore valid. Since upholders of SDF maintain that fallacies are invalid arguments, Massey’s asymmetry thesis has the consequence that no argument can be convicted of being a fallacy on logical grounds. [ 6 ]

The informal logic approach to fallacies is taken in Johnson and Blair’s Logical Self-Defense , a textbook first published in 1977. It was prompted in part by Hamblin’s indictment of the standard treatment and it further develops an initiative taken by Kahane (1971) to develop university courses that were geared to everyday reasoning. Johnson and Blair’s emphasis is on arming students to defend themselves against fallacies in everyday discourse, and a fundamental innovation is in their conception of a good argument. In place of a sound argument—a deductively valid argument with true premises—Johnson and Blair posit an alternative ideal of a cogent argument , one whose premises are acceptable, relevant to and sufficient for its conclusion. Acceptability replaces truth as a premise requirement, and the validity condition is split in to two different conditions, premise relevance and premise sufficiency. Acceptability is defined relative to audiences—the ones for whom arguments are intended—but the other basic concepts, relevance and sufficiency, although illustrated by examples, remain as intuitive, undefined concepts (see Tindale, 2007). Premise sufficiency (strength) is akin to probability in that it is a matter of degree but Johnson and Blair do not pursue giving it numerical expression.

The three criteria of a cogent argument, individually necessary and jointly sufficient, lead to a conception of fallacy as “any argument that violates one of the criteria of good argument … and is committed frequently in argumentative discourse” (1993, 317–18). This shares only one condition with SDF: that a fallacy is an argument. (Deductive) validity is replaced with the broader concept sufficiency, and the appearance condition is not included. Johnson (1987) argued that the appearance condition makes the occurrence of fallacies too subjective since how things appear may vary from perceiver to perceiver, and it should therefore be replaced by a frequency requirement. To be a fallacy, a mistake must occur with sufficient frequency to be worth our attention.

The adoption of the concept of a cogent argument as an ideal has several consequences. The category of fallacies with problematic premises (reminiscent of Whately’s “premises unduly assumed”) shows a concern with argument evaluation over and beyond logical or inference evaluation, drawing the informal logic approach away from purely logical concerns towards an epistemic conception of fallacies. Having both sufficiency and relevance as criteria (instead of the single validity criterion) has the benefit of allowing the making of nuanced judgments about the level of premise support: for example, we might say that an argument’s premises, although insufficient, are nevertheless positively relevant to the conclusion. Irrelevant premise fallacies are those with no premise support at all, whereas insufficient premise fallacies are those in which there is some support, but not enough of it. The informal logicians’ conception of fallacies is meant to be broader and more suitable to natural language argumentation than would be a conception tied only to deductive invalidity.

Johnson and Blair concern themselves exclusively with informal fallacies. Many of the familiar Aristotelian fallacies that are part of the standard treatment are missing from their inventory (e.g., accident, composition and division) and the ones retained find themselves in new categories: begging the question and ambiguity are together under the heading of Problematic Premise; appeals to authority and popularity are placed under the heading of Hasty Conclusion fallacies; ad hominem is among the fallacies that belong in the third category, Fallacies of Irrelevant Reason. This new list of fallacies has a different bent than many earlier lists, being more geared to deal with arguments in popular, everyday communication than philosophical or scientific discourse; this is evident both by the omission of some of the traditional fallacies as well as by the introduction of new ones, such as dubious assumption, two wrongs, slippery slope, and faulty analogy.

The kinds of mistakes one can make in reasoning are generally thought to be beyond enumeration and, hence, it has been maintained that there can be no complete stock of fallacies that will guard against every kind of mistake. Johnson and Blair’s approach is responsive to this problem in that it allows the names of the classes of fallacies — ‘unacceptable premise,’ ‘irrelevant reason’ and ‘hasty conclusion’ — to stand for fallacies themselves, fallacies broad-in-scope; i.e., to serve “both as general principles of organization, and as back-ups to fill in any gaps between specific labels belonging within each genus” (1993, 52). Hence, any violation of one of the criteria of a cogent argument can be considered a fallacy.

In addition to this alternative theoretical approach to fallacies built on the three criteria of a cogent argument—an approach also taken up by others [ 7 ] —informal logic’s contribution to fallacy studies lies in its attempts to provide better analyses of fallacies, a programme pursued by a large number of researchers, including Govier (1982) on the slippery slope, Wreen (1989) on the ad baculum , Walton (1991) on begging the question, Brinton (1995) on the ad hominem , Freeman (1995) on the appeal to popularity, Pinto (1995) on post hoc ergo propter hoc and Finocchiaro (2023) on the fallacy of composition.

John Woods also despairs of the standard treatment but he sees in it something of importance; namely that the fallacies most often reviewed in introductory level logic textbooks “are a kind of caricature of their associated improprieties, which lie deeply imbedded in human practice” (Woods 1992, 25). The fallacies are then behavioural symptoms of kinds of irrationality to which humans are highly susceptible, and that makes them an important subject for study because they say something about human nature. Therefore, the problem with the standard treatment, according to Woods, is not that it is a misdirected research programme, but rather that it has been poorly carried out, partly because logicians have failed to appreciate that a multi-logical approach is necessary to understand the variety of fallacies. This idea, pursued jointly by Woods and Douglas Walton (1989), is that, for many of the fallacies standard formal logic is inadequate to uncover the unique kind of logical mistakes in question—it is too coarse conceptually to reveal the unique character of many of the fallacies. To get a satisfactory analysis of each of the fallacies they must be matched with a fitting logical system, one that has the facility to uncover the particular logical weakness in question. Inductive logic can be employed for analysis of hasty generalization and post hoc ergo propter hoc ; relatedness logic is appropriate for ignoratio elenchi ; plausible reasoning theory for the ad verecundiam , and dialectical game theory for begging the question and many questions. Woods (1992, 43) refers to this approach to studying the fallacies as methodological pluralism. Thus, like the informal logicians, there is here an interest in getting the analyses of each of the fallacies right, but the Woods and Walton approach involves embracing formal methods, not putting them aside.

Woods (2013) has continued his research on fallacies, most recently considering them in the context of what he calls a naturalized logic (modelled on Quine’s naturalized epistemology). The main point of this naturalizing move is that a theory of reasoning should take into account the abilities and motivations of reasoners. Past work on the fallacies has identified them as failing to satisfy the rules of either deductive or inductive logic, but Woods now wants to consider the core fallacies in light of what he calls third-way reasoning (comparable to non-monotonic reasoning), an account of the cognitive practices that closely resemble our common inferential practices. From the perspective of third-way reasoning the “rules” implicit in the fallacies present themselves as heuristic directives to reasoners rather than as fallacies; hence, it may be that learning from feedback (having errors corrected) is less trouble than learning the rules to avoid fallacies in the first place (Woods 2013, p. 215). Woods illustrates his point by recalling many of the fallacies he originally identified in his 1992 paper, and subjecting them to this revised model of analysis thereby overturning the view that these types of argument are always to be spurned.

SDF may be seen as closely tied to the logical approach to fallacies—the fault in arguments it singles out is their deductive invalidity. But this conception of fallacies turns out to be inadequate to cover the variety of the core fallacies in two ways: it is too narrow because it excludes begging the question which is not invalid, and it is too wide because it condemns good but non-deductive arguments as fallacies (given that they also satisfy the appearance condition) because they are invalid. Even if we replace the invalidity condition in SDF with some less stringent standard of logical weakness which could overcome the “too wide” problem, it would still leave the difficulty of accounting for the fallacy of begging the question unsolved.

Siegel and Biro (1992, 1995) hold an epistemic account of fallacies, contrasting their view with dialectical/rhetorical approaches, because matters extraneous to arguments, such as being a practice that leads to false beliefs or not being persuasive, are not in their view a sufficient condition to make an argument a fallacy. They take the position that “it is a conceptual truth about arguments that their central … purpose is to provide a bridge from known truths or justified beliefs to as yet unknown … truths or as yet unjustified beliefs” (1992, 92). Only arguments that are “epistemically serious” can accomplish this; that is, only arguments that satisfy the extra-formal requirement that premises are knowable independently of their conclusions, and are more acceptable epistemically than their conclusions, can fulfill this function. A purely logical approach to argument will not capture this requirement because arguments of the same valid form, but with different contents, may or may not be epistemically serious, depending on whether the premises are epistemically acceptable relative to the conclusion.

Modifying Biro’s (1977, 265–66) examples we can demonstrate how the requirement of epistemic seriousness plays out with begging the question. Consider these two arguments:

All men are mortal; Obama is a man; So, Obama is mortal.

All members of the committee are old Etonians; Fortesque is a member of the committee; Fortesque is an old Etonian.

In the first argument the premises are knowable independently of the conclusion. The major premise can be deduced from other universal premises about animals, and the minor premise, unlike the conclusion which must be inferred, can be known by observation. Hence, this argument does not beg the question. However, in the second argument (due to Biro, 1977) given the minor premise, the major cannot be known to be true unless the conclusion is known to be true. Consequently, on the epistemic approach to fallacies taken by Biro and Siegel, the second argument, despite the fact that it is valid, is non-serious, it begs the question, and it is a fallacy. If there was some independent way of knowing whether the major premise was true, such as that it was a bylaw that only old Etonians could be committee members, the argument would be a serious one, and not beg the question.

Biro and Siegel’s epistemic account of fallacies is distinguishable in at least three ways. First, it insists that the function of arguments is epistemic, and therefore anything that counts as a fallacy must be an epistemic fault, a breaking of a rule of epistemic justification. But since logical faults are also epistemic faults, the epistemic approach to fallacies will include logical fallacies, although these must also be explicable in terms of epistemic seriousness. Second, since the epistemological approach does not insist that all justification must be deductive, it allows the possibility of their being fallacies (as well as good arguments) by non-deductive standards, something precluded by SDF. Finally, we notice that the appearance condition is not considered a factor in this discussion of fallacies.

Ulrike Hahn and Mike Oaksford (2006a, 2006b) see themselves as contributing to the epistemic approach to fallacy analysis by developing a probabilistic analysis of the fallacies. It is part of their programme for a normative theory of natural language argumentation. They are motivated by what they perceive as the shortcomings in other approaches. The logical (deductive) approach falls short in that it simply divides arguments into valid and invalid arguments thereby failing to appreciate that natural language arguments come in various degrees of strength. The alternative approaches to fallacies, given by procedural (dialectical) and consensual accounts, they criticize on the basis that they fail to address the central problem raised by the fallacies: that of the strength of the reason-claim complex. In Hahn and Oaksford’s view the strength or weakness of the classical fallacies (they are concerned mostly with the post-Aristotelian ones) is not a result of their structure or their context of use. It is instead a matter of the relationship between the evidence and the claim (the contents of the premises and the conclusion). Evaluation of this relationship is thought to be best captured by a probabilistic Bayesian account; accordingly, they adapt Bayes’ theorem to arguments evaluation with the proviso that the probabilities are subjective degrees of belief, not frequencies. “An argument’s strength,” they write, “is a function of an individual’s initial level of belief in the claim, the availability and observation of confirmatory (or disconfirmatory) evidence, and the existence and perceived strength of competing hypotheses” (Corner, et al. 1145). With Korb (2003) they view a fallacy as an argument with a low probability on the Bayesian model.

Since the variance in input probabilities will result in a range of outputs in argument strength, this probabilistic approach has the potential to assign argument strengths anywhere between 0 and 1, thereby allowing that different tokens of one argument type can vary greatly in strength, i.e., some will be fallacies and others not. Also, and this seems to concur with our experience, different arguers may disagree on the strength of the same arguments since they can differ in the assignments of the initial probabilities. Hahn and Oaksford also claim as advantages for their normative theory that it gives guidance for persuasion since it takes into account the initial beliefs of audiences. Moreover, their approach contributes to the study of belief change; that is, to what extent our confidence in the conclusion changes with the availability of new evidence.

Some of the most active new researchers on fallacies take a dialectical and/or dialogical approach. This can be traced back to Hamblin (1970, ch. 8) and Lorenzen’s (1969) dialogue theory. The panacea for fallacies that Whately recommended was more logic; Hamblin, however, proposed a shift from the logical to the dialectical perspective.

[W]e need to extend the bounds of Formal Logic; to include features of dialectical contexts within which arguments are put forward. To begin with, there are criteria of validity of argument that are additional to formal ones: for example, those that serve to proscribe question-begging. To go on with, there are prevalent but false conceptions of the rules of dialogue, which are capable of making certain argumentative moves seem satisfactory and unobjectionable when, in fact, they conceal and facilitate dialectical malpractice. (Hamblin 1970, 254)

The proposal here is to shift the study of fallacies from the contexts of arguments to the contexts of dialogues (argumentation), formulate rules for reasonable dialogue activity, and then connect fallacies to failures of rule-following. Barth and Martens’s paper (1977), which studied the argumentum ad hominem by extending Lorenzen’s dialogue tableaux method to include the definitions of the concepts “line of attack” and “winning strategy,” leads to a conception of fallacies as either failures to meet one of the necessary conditions of rational dialogical argumentation, or failures to satisfy sufficient conditions as specified by production rules of the dialogical method (1977, 96).

The Barth and Martens paper is a bridge between the earlier (quasi-) formal and subsequent informal dialectical theories, and is explicitly acknowledged as a major influence by the Pragma-dialectical theory, the brainchild of Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (1984). Rather than beginning from a logical or epistemological perspective they start with the role of argumentation in overcoming interpersonal disagreements. The Pragma-dialecticians propose that inter-personal argumentation can be analysed as two-party-discussions having four analytical stages: a confrontation stage in which the participants become aware of the content of their disagreement; an opening stage in which the parties agree (most likely implicitly) to shared starting points and a set of rules to govern the ensuing discussion; an argumentation stage wherein arguments and doubts about arguments are expressed and recognized; and a final stage in which a decision about the initial disagreement is made, if possible, based on what happened in the argumentation stage.

The Pragma-dialectical theory stipulates a normative ideal of a critical discussion which serves both as a guide to the reconstruction of natural language argumentation, as well as a standard for the evaluation of the analysed product of reconstruction. A set of ten rules has been proposed as constitutive of the critical-discussion ideal, and the proponents of the theory believe that rational arguers would accept them. If followed by both parties to the disagreement, the rules constrain the argumentation decision procedure such that any resolution reached will be deemed reasonable, and “every violation of any of the rules of the discussion procedure for conducting a critical discussion” will be a fallacy (2004, 175). The rules range over all the four stages of argumentation: at the confrontation stage there is a rule which says one may not prevent the other party from expressing their view; for the argumentation stage there is a rule which requires argumentation to be logically strong and in accord with one or another of three general argumentation schemes; at the closing stage there is a rule that the participants themselves are to decide which party was successful based on the quality of the argumentation they have made: if the proponent carries the day, the opponent should acknowledge it, and vice versa .

The Pragma-dialectical theory proposes that each of the core fallacies can be assigned a place as a violation of one of the rules of a critical discussion. For example, the ad baculum fallacy is a form of intimidation that violates the rule that one may not attempt to prevent one’s discussion partner from expressing their views; equivocation is a violation of the rule that formulations in arguments must be clear and unambiguous; post hoc ergo propter hoc violates the rule that arguments must be instances of schemes correctly applied. Moreover, on this theory, since any rule violation is to count as a fallacy this allows for the possibility that there may be hitherto unrecognized “new fallacies.” Among those proposed are declaring a standpoint sacrosanct because that breaks the rule against the freedom to criticize points of view, and evading the burden of proof which breaks the rule that you must defend your standpoint if asked to do so (see van Eemeren 2010, 194).

Clearly not all the rules of critical discussions apply directly to arguments. Some govern other goal-frustrating moves which arguers can make in the course of settling a difference of opinion, such as mis-allocating the burden of proof, asking irrelevant questions, suppressing a point of view, or failing to clarify the meaning of one’s argumentation. In short, the Pragma-dialectical rules of a critical discussion are not just rules of logic or epistemology, but rules of conduct for rational discussants, making the theory more like a moral code than a set of logical principles. Accordingly, this approach to fallacies rejects all three of the necessary conditions of SDF: a fallacy need not be an argument, thus the invalidity condition will not apply either, and the appearance condition is excluded because of its subjective character (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, 175).

The Pragma-dialectical analysis of fallacies as rule-breakings in a procedure for overcoming disagreements has recently been expanded to take account of the rhetorical dimension of argumentation. Pragma-dialectics takes the rhetorical dimension to stem from an arguer’s wish to have their view accepted which leads dialoguers to engage in strategic maneuvering vis-à-vis their dialogue partners. However, this desire must be put in balance with the dialectical requirement of being reasonable; that is, staying within the bounds of the normative demands of critical discussions. The ways of strategic maneuvering identified are basically three: topic selection, audience orientation, and the selection of presentational devices, and these can be effectively deployed at each stage of argumentation (Van Eemeren 2010, 94). “All derailments of strategic maneuvering are fallacies,” writes van Eemeren (2010, 198), “in the sense that they violate one or more of the rules for critical discussion and all fallacies can be viewed as derailments of strategic maneuvering.” This means that all fallacies are ultimately attributable to the rhetorical dimension of argumentation since, in this model, strategic maneuvering is the entry of rhetoric into argumentation discussions. “Because each fallacy has, in principle, sound counterparts that are manifestations of the same mode of strategic maneuvering” it may not appear to be a fallacy and it “may pass unnoticed” (Van Eemeren 2010, 199). Nevertheless, Pragma-dialectics prefers to keep the appearance condition outside the definition of ‘fallacy’, treating the seeming goodness of fallacies as a sometime co-incidental property, rather than an essential one.

Although the Pragma-dialectical theory continues to evolve into a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of argumentation (van Eemeren, 2018, ch. 8), it maintains that the model of a critical discussion can be used for argument appraisal across the various fields in which argumentation takes place such as the legal, the political, the interpersonal, etc. Each of the fields has developed its own stylized kind of discourse where different genres of argumentation are favoured (adjudication, deliberation, mediation, etc.), but the reasonableness of arguments in any of the fields will depend on how well they accord with the model of a critical discussion. This approach has been challenged by Douglas Walton who has written more about fallacies and fallacy theory than anyone else. He has published individual monographs on many of the well-known fallacies, among them, Begging the Question (1991), Slippery Slope Arguments (1992), Ad Hominem Arguments (1998), and a comprehensive work on fallacy theory, A Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy (1995). Over the years his views have evolved. He has referred to his theory as “the Pragmatic theory,” and like the Pragma-dialectical theory it has a dialectical/dialogical basis; however, Walton envisions a number of distinct normative dialectical frameworks (persuasion dialogue, inquiry dialogue, negotiation dialogue, etc.) rather than the single model of a critical discussion proposed by Pragma-dialectics. Postulating different kinds of dialogues with different starting points and different goals, thinks Walton, will bring argumentation into closer contact with argumentation reality. At one point Walton had the idea that fallacies happened when there was an illicit shift from one kind of a dialogue to another (1995, 118–23), for example, using arguments appropriate for a negotiation dialogue in a persuasion dialogue, but more recently he has turned to other ways of explicating fallacies.

Although Walton recognizes the class of formal fallacies, his main interest is in informal fallacies, especially the ones associated with argumentation schemes. The idea of an argumentation scheme is central to Walton’s theory. Schemes are patterns of commonly used kinds of defeasible reasoning/argumentation such as appeals to expert opinion and ad hominem arguments. Schemes do not identify fallacies but rather argument kinds that are sometimes used fairly, and, other times, fallaciously. With each kind of scheme is associated a set of critical questions which guide us in deciding whether a given use of an argument is correct, weak or fallacious. So, if we consider:

\(E\) is an expert in subject area \(S\); \(E\) asserts \(p\) based on \(E\)’s knowledge of \(S\); So, \(p\).

to be the scheme for the appeal-to-expertise kind of argument, [ 8 ] then there will be a question for each premise: Is \(E\) really an expert in \(S\)? Did \(E\) say \(p\) when s/he was acting in her/his professional capacity? (… or did s/he blurt it out while drunk at an association party?). If the answer to both questions is Yes, then the argument creates a presumption for the conclusion—but not a guarantee, for the reasoning is defeasible: other information may come to light that will override the presumption. If one of the questions cannot be answered clearly this is an indication that the argument is weak, and answering No to either of the two questions cancels the presumption for the conclusion, i.e., makes the argument into a bad argument from expert opinion. If the bad argument has “a semblance of correctness about it in [the] context, and poses a serious obstacle to the realization of the goal of the dialog,” then it is a fallacy (2011, 380). [ 9 ]

The definition of fallacy Walton proposes (1995, 255) has five parts. A fallacy:

• an argument (or at least something that purports to be an argument) that
• falls short of some standard of correctness;
• is used in a context of dialogue;
• has a semblance of correctness about it; and
• poses a serious problem to the realization of the goal of the dialogue.

Here we find that Walton has relaxed two of the necessary conditions of SDF. Purporting to be an argument is enough (it doesn’t really have to be an argument), while falling short of a standard (one that will vary with the kind of dialogue under consideration) replaces the invalidity condition. However, the appearance condition, here expressed as fallacies having a semblance of correctness about them, remains in full force. The two extra conditions added to fallacy are that they occur only in contexts of dialogue and that they frustrate the realization of the goal of the kind of dialogue in which they occur. In insisting on this dialogical dimension, Walton is in full sympathy with those who think that fallacies can only be rightly analysed within a dialectical framework similar to the ones Aristotle originally studied, and later better defined by Hamblin and Lorenzen. Walton volunteers a shorter version of the definition of a fallacy as “a deceptively bad argument that impedes the progress of a dialogue” (1995, 256).

Walton divides fallacies into two kinds: paralogisms and sophisms. A paralogism is “the type of fallacy in which an error of reasoning is typically committed by failing to meet some necessary requirement of an argumentation scheme” whereas “the sophism type of fallacy is a sophistical tactic used to try to unfairly get the best of a speech partner in an exchange of arguments” (2010, 171; see also 1995, 254). Paralogisms are instances of identifiable argumentation schemes, but sophisms are not. The latter are associated more with infringing a reasonable expectation of dialogue than with failing some standard of argument (2011, 385; 2010, 175). A further distinction is drawn between arguments used intentionally to deceive and arguments that merely break a maxim of argumentation unintentionally. The former count as fallacies; the latter, less condemnable, are blunders (1995, 235).

Among the informal paralogisms Walton includes: ad hominem , ad populum , ad misericordiam , ad ignorantiam , ad verecundiam , slippery slope, false cause, straw man, argument from consequences, faulty analogy, composition and division. In the category of sophisms he places ad baculum , complex question, begging the question, hasty generalization, ignoratio elenchi , equivocation, amphiboly, accent, and secundum quid . He also has a class of formal fallacies very much the same as those identified by Whately and Copi. The largest class in Walton’s classification is the one associated with argumentation schemes and ad -arguments, and these are the ones that he considers to be the most central fallacies. Nearly all the Aristotelian fallacies included find themselves relegated to the less studied categories of sophisms. Taking a long look at the history of fallacies, then, we find that the Aristotelian fallacies are no longer of central importance. The main focus of interest is now the list of fallacies that have grown out of Locke’s creation of the ad -argument genre.

Another recent approach comes from virtue argumentation theory (modelled on virtue epistemology). Virtue argumentation theory is characterized by a distinct set of virtues thought to be essential to good argumentation: willingness to engage in argumentation, willingness to listen to others and willingness to modify one’s own position (see, e.g., Cohen 2009). These may be supplemented with epistemic virtues and even in some cases moral virtues. Although virtues and vices are dispositions of arguers and fallacies are arguments, it is claimed that good argumentation generally results from the influence of argumentation virtues and bad argumentation (including the fallacies) arise because of the vices of arguers.

Taking the Aristotelian view that virtues are a mean between opposite kinds of vices, fallacious arguments can be seen as resulting from arguers moving in one or another direction away from a mean of good argumentation. Aberdein (2013, 2016) especially has developed this model for understanding many of the fallacies. We can illustrate the view by considering appeals to expertise: the associated vices might be too little respect for reliable authorities at one extreme and too much deference to authorities at the other extreme. Aberdein develops the fallacies-as-argumentation-vices analysis in some detail for other of the ad-arguments and sketches how it might be applied to the other core fallacies, suggesting it can profitably be extended to all of them.

All the fallacies, it is claimed, can be fitted in somewhere in the classification of argumentational vices, but the converse is not true although it is possible to bring to light other shortcomings to which we may fall prey in argumentation. Another aspect of the theory is that it distributes argumentation vices among both senders and audiences. Speakers may infect their arguments with vices when they are, for example, closed minded or lack respect for persons, and audiences can contribute to fallaciousness by letting their receptivity be influenced by naïvety, an over-reliance on common sense, or an unfounded bias against a speaker. Perhaps the development of the virtue argumentation theory approach to fallacies provides a supplement to Mill’s theory of fallacies. He distinguished (1891, V, i, 3) what he called the moral (dispositional) and intellectual causes of fallacy. The study of the argumentative vices envisioned above seems best included under the moral study of fallacies as the vices can be taken to be the presdisposing causes to commit intellectual mistakes, i.e., misevaluations of the weight of evidence.

Finocchiaro (2023, 24) has introduced a distinction between ground-level arguments and meta-argument. The former are about natural phenomena, historical events, human actions, abstract entities, etc. and the latter are about one or more arguments, or about argumentation in general. When we justify our judgments that an argument, x , has committed a fallacy we are making a meta-argument about x . Finocchiaro uses the fallacy of composition as an example saying it is primarily a meta-argument concept used to assess an argument at the ground-level as a fallacy.

Akin and Casey take this line of analysis further, arguing that there are indeed fallacies best understood as fallacies of meta-argumentation. They have studied three of them: the straw man fallacy (2022a), bothsiderism (2022b), and what they call the free-speech fallacy (2023). These are all fallacies that may occur in the process of argumentation, i.e., exchanges between arguers. On this view, straw man fallacies happen when someone in the course of argumentation inaccurately and unfavourable distorts a ground-level argument in an attempt to refute it or discredit its source. In the case of bothsiderism, there are conflicting arguments each drawing on prima facie evidence. This can lead to the meta-argument that the truth lies somewhere in the middle between the opposed ground-level conclusions. This is considered a fallacy because purported contrary evidence noticed at the meta-level is insufficient reason to abandon both the ground-level conclusions in favour of a compromise. Cases where people claim their right to free speech is infringed, say Akin and Casey, also admit of the possibility of meta-argumentation fallacies. One of the ways is when criticism of a view is mistaken for censorship of that view; another is when parties are excluded from participation in a discussion for good reasons such as lack of qualifications or holding repugnant social views. From their exclusion they may make the meta-argument that the outcome of the discussion is epistemically unwarranted because of evidence not taken into consideration, or they may even think that the fact that their view was excluded is a sign that it has merit its opponents would rather not admit. The authors say that these kinds of mistakes are meta-argumentation fallacies and anticipate that there are more of them waiting for analysis.

4. Current issues in fallacy theory

A question that continues to dog fallacy theory is how we are to conceive of fallacies. There would be advantages to having a unified theory of fallacies. It would give us a systematic way of demarcating fallacies and other kinds of mistakes; it would give us a framework for justifying fallacy judgments, and it would give us a sense of the place of fallacies in our larger conceptual schemes. Some general definition of ‘fallacy’ is wanted but the desire is frustrated because there is disagreement about the identity of fallacies. Are they inferential, logical, epistemic or dialectical mistakes? Some authors insist that they are all of one kind: Biro and Siegel, for example, that they are epistemic, and Pragma-dialectics that they are dialectical. There are reasons to think that all fallacies do not easily fit into one category.

Together the Sophistical Refutations and Locke’s Essay are the dual sources of our inheritance of fallacies. However, for four reasons they make for uneasy bedfellows. First, the ad fallacies seem to have a built-in dialectical character, which, it can be argued, Aristotle’s fallacies do not have (they are not sophistical refutations but are in sophistical refutations). Second, Aristotle’s fallacies are logical mistakes: they have no appropriate employment outside eristic argumentation whereas the ad -fallacies are instances of ad -arguments, often appropriately used in dialogues. Third, the appearance condition is part of the Aristotelian inheritance but it is not intimately connected with the ad -fallacies tradition. A fourth reason that contributes to the tension between the Aristotelian and Lockean traditions in fallacies is that the former grew out of philosophical problems, largely what are logical and metaphysical puzzles (consider the many examples in Sophistical Refutations ), whereas the ad -fallacies are more geared to social and political topics of popular concern, the subject matter that most intrigues modern researchers on fallacy theory.

As we look back over our survey we cannot help but observe that fallacies have been identified in relation to some ideal or model of good arguments, good argumentation, or rationality. Aristotle’s fallacies are shortcomings of his ideal of deduction and proof, extended to contexts of refutation. The fallacies listed by Mill are errors of reasoning in a comprehensive model that includes both deduction and induction. Those who have defended SDF as the correct definition of ‘fallacy’ [ 10 ] take logic simpliciter or deductive validity as the ideal of rationality. Informal logicians view fallacies as failures to satisfy the criteria of what they consider to be a cogent argument. Defenders of the epistemic approach to fallacies see them as shortfalls of the standards of knowledge-generating arguments. Finally, those who are concerned with how we are to overcome our disagreements in a reasonable way will see fallacies as failures in relation to ideals of debate or critical discussions.

The standard treatment of the core fallacies has not emerged from a single conception of good argument or reasonableness but rather, like much of our unsystematic knowledge, has grown as a hodgepodge collection of items, proposed at various time and from different perspectives, that continues to draw our attention, even as the standards that originally brought a given fallacy to light are abandoned or absorbed into newer models of rationality. Hence, there is no single conception of good argument or argumentation to be discovered behind the core fallacies, and any attempt to force them all into a single framework, must take efforts to avoid distorting the character originally attributed to each of them.

From Aristotle to Mill the appearance condition was an essential part of the conception of fallacies. However, some of the new, post-Hamblin, scholars have either ignored it (Finocchiaro, Biro and Siegel) or rejected it because appearances can vary from person to person, thus making the same argument a fallacy for the one who is taken in by the appearance, and not a fallacy for the one who sees past the appearances. This is unsatisfactory for those who think that arguments are either fallacies or not. Appearances, it is also argued, have no place in logical or scientific theories because they belong to psychology (van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 2004). But Walton (e.g., 2010) continues to consider appearances an essential part of fallacies as does Powers (1995, 300) who insists that fallacies must “have an appearance, however quickly seen through, of being valid.” If the mistake in an argument is not masked by an ambiguity that gives it the appearance of being a better argument than it really is, Powers denies it is a fallacy.

The appearance condition of fallacies serves at least two purposes. First, it can be part of explanations of why reasonable people make mistakes in arguments or argumentation: it may be due in part to an argument’s appearing to be better than it really is. Second, it serves to divide mistakes into two groups: those which are trivial or the result of carelessness (for which there is no cure other than paying better attention), and those which we need to learn to detect through an increased awareness of their seductive nature. Without the appearance condition, it can be argued, no division can be made between these two kinds of errors: either there are no fallacies or all mistakes in argument and/or argumentation are fallacies; a conclusion that some are willing to accept, but which runs contrary to tradition. One can also respond that there is an alternative to using the appearance condition as the demarcation property between fallacies and casual mistakes, namely, frequency. Fallacies are those mistakes we must learn to guard against because they occur with noticeable frequency. To this it may be answered that ‘noticeable frequency’ is vague, and is perhaps best explained by the appearance condition.

Oswald and Herman (2020) explain the possibility that an argument might seem better than it really is by appealing to both cognitive and rhetorical factors. The cognitive factor is that the information set of a sender making a fallacious argument might be greater than the information set of an argument receiver, thus potentially putting the receiver in a position to be deceived. Persuasive skills can exploit such a difference in information sets by manipulating the relevant contextual evidence; that is, by bringing forward what favours the fallacious argument and holding back critical factors against it. The receiver may thus be taken in by a fallacy because of the way the argument was presented to them. Hansen (2023) considers the causal factors that might lead to misperception of bad arguments as good arguments. They include structural properties of arguments, perceptual perspectives, the social atmosphere in which the arguments are presented, and misperceptions due to abnormalities in the argument receiver.

On the more practical level, there continues to be discussion about the value of teaching the fallacies to students. Is it an effective way for them to learn to reason well and to avoid bad arguments? One reason to think that it is not effective is that the list of fallacies is not complete, and that even if the group of core fallacies was extended to incorporate other fallacies we thought worth including, we could still not be sure that we had a complete prophylactic against bad arguments. Hence, we are better off teaching the positive criteria for good arguments/ argumentation which give us a fuller set of guidelines for good reasoning. But some (Pragma-dialectics and Johnson and Blair) do think that their stock of fallacies is a complete guard against errors because they have specified a full set of necessary conditions for good arguments/argumentation and they hold that fallacies are just failures to meet one of these conditions.

Another consideration about the value of the fallacies approach to teaching good reasoning is that it tends to make students overly critical and lead them to see fallacies where there are not any; hence, it is maintained we could better advance the instilling of critical thinking skills by teaching the positive criteria of good reasoning and arguments (Hitchcock, 1995). In response to this view, it is argued that, if the fallacies are taught in a non-perfunctory way which includes the explanations of why they are fallacies—which normative standards they transgress—then a course taught around the core fallacies can be effective in instilling good reasoning skills (Blair 1995).

In more recent work, Blair (2023) has moved closer to Hitchcock’s recommendation that fallacies not be taught in introductory level courses, but his reason is that the study of fallacies has become so complex with many dimensions and overlapping approaches that it has become a subject too challenging for undergraduate students; moreover, few instructors are familiar with the extensive literature that has developed on fallacies. Hitchcock (2023) has followed up his earlier article with a study of six of the most widely used textbooks (each having at least ten editions) that have a section on the fallacies and asked whether they have benefitted from Hamblin’s (1970) critique of the standard treatment (see above section 3.1). He finds that by the standard implicit in Hamblin’s critique, there has been little improvement in the analysis and presentation of fallacies in those textbooks.

Biases are “inclinations to see things one way rather than another,” explains Nickerson (2021, 208). He reviews the literature on biases that can affect reasoning, discussing both the motivational and cognitive factors that may lead to the presence of biases (ch. 7). Like fallacies, there is no fixed definitive list, and the individuation of biases largely depends on the goal of our inquiries. Correia (2011) has taken Mill’s insight that biases are predisposing causes of fallacies a step further by connecting identifiable biases with particular fallacies. Biases can influence the committing of fallacies even where there is no intent to be deceptive, he observes. Taking biases to be “systematic errors that invariably distort the subject’s reasoning and judgment,” the picture drawn is that particular biases are activated by desires and emotions (motivated reasoning) and once they are in play, they negatively affect the fair evaluation of evidence. Thus, for example, the “focussing illusion” bias inclines a person to focus on just a part of the evidence available, ignoring or denying evidence that might lead in another direction. Correia (2011, 118) links this bias to the fallacies of hasty generalization and straw man, suggesting that it is our desire to be right that activates the bias to focus more on positive or negative evidence, as the case may be. Other biases he links to other fallacies.

Thagard (2011) is more concerned to stress the differences between fallacies and biases than to find connections between them. He claims that the model of reasoning articulated by informal logic is not a good fit with the way that people actually reason and that only a few of the fallacies are relevant to the kinds of mistakes people actually make. Thagard’s argument depends on his distinction between argument and inference. Arguments, and fallacies, he takes to be serial and linguistic, but inferences are brain activities and are characterized as parallel and multi-modal. By “parallel” is meant that the brain carries out different processes simultaneously, and by “multi-modal” that the brain uses non-linguistic and emotional, as well as linguistic representations in inferring. Biases (inferential error tendencies) can unconsciously affect inferring. “Motivated inference,” for example, “involves selective recruitment and assessment of evidence based on unconscious processes that are driven by emotional considerations of goals rather than purely cognitive reasoning” (2011, 156). Thagard volunteers a list of more than fifty of these inferential error tendencies. Because motivated inferences result from unconscious mental processes rather than explicit reasoning, the errors in inferences cannot be exposed simply by identifying a fallacy in a reconstructed argument. Dealing with biases requires identification of both conscious and unconscious goals of arguers, goals that can figure in explanations of why they incline to particular biases. “Overcoming people’s motivated inferences,” Thagard concludes, “is therefore more akin to psychotherapy than informal logic” (157), and the importance of fallacies is accordingly marginalized.

In response to these findings, one can admit their relevance to the pedagogy of critical thinking but still recall the distinction between what causes mistakes and what the mistakes are. The analysis of fallacies belongs to the normative study of arguments and argumentation, and to give an account of what the fallacy in a given case is will involve making reference to some relevant norm of argument or argumentation. It will be an explanation of what the mistake in the argument is. Biases are relevant to understanding why people commit fallacies, and how we are to help them get past them, but they do not help us understand what the fallacy-mistakes are in the first place—this is not a question of psychology. Continued research at this intersection of interests will hopefully shed more light on both biases and fallacies.

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• Curtis, Gary N., Fallacy Files
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• Hansen, H.V., and C. Fioret, 2016. A searchable bibliography of fallacies—2016 , Informal Logic , 36: 432–72.
• Informal Logic , an open-access journal.
• Labossiere, Michael C., Fallacies , hosted by The Nizkor Project.
• RAIL , a blog about Reasoning, Argumentation, and Informal Logic.

logic: informal | relativism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the executive and subject editors who suggested a way to improve the discussion of begging the question .

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Pursuing Truth: A Guide to Critical Thinking

Chapter 9 informal fallacies.

A fallacy is a mistake in reasoning. A formal fallacy is a fallacy that can be identified merely by examining the argument’s form or using a tool like a truth table. An informal fallacy cannot be detected from the argument’s form. There are no foolproof tools for detecting informal fallacies. Unlike validity, these fallacies can occur in degrees. Sometimes, it is clear that a fallacy has been committed, at other times, there can be legitimate questions about whether a fallacy has been committed.

9.1 Emotions and Critical Thinking

There are two important uses of language that play an important role in critical thinking. The first is to convey information, or what is sometimes called cognitive content. The premises and the conclusion of an argument all have cognitive content. It is on the basis of the information they convey that we can evaluate them as true or false. Another use of language, however, is to express emotion, which often tends to evoke similar feelings in the audience. The emotions that are expressed by the language is its emotive content.

Good critical thinkers are persuaded by relevant cognitive content, and are not unduly persuaded by irrelevant emotive content.

9.2 Slanters

Slanters are words or phrases that are used to manipulate by using emotive language. Slanters can have both positive and negative connotations. Slanters are types of non-argumentative persuasion. Sometimes, people will use them innocently, maybe because they have passionate feelings about the subject being discussed. Other time, though, they are used because the speaker knows that he does not have a good argument for his position. They are ways for people to affect the beliefs of others without offering reasons for their positions.

9.2.1 Euphemisms and Dysphemisms

Different words and phrases passages can have the same cognitive content but differ in their emotive content. A euphemism is a positive synonym for some neutral term. A dysphemism is a negative synonym. For example, think of the words that we use to talk about the death of a pet:

• Neutral: euthanize
• Euphemism: put to sleep
• Dysphemism: ?

Euphemisms are common in the military and in advertising. Here are some examples:

• Enhanced interrogation methods
• Collateral damage
• Depopulated area
• Pre-owned, Pre-loved
• Genuine imitation leather

In other cases, a person may use a euphemism when they have been caught doing something wrong, but want to minimize the wrongness of the action. I heard a politician once, who was caught telling a falsehood, admit to having “committed terminological inexactitude.”

Dysphemisms convey a negative attitude towards something. Examples of dysphemisms include:

• Cancer stick
• Dead tree edition

9.2.2 Innuendoes

Innuendoes imply something by what is not said. A common scene in crime films has a gangster go into a store and say something like “Nice store you got. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.” Notice that he didn’t actually say he would damage the store, although he certainly implied it.

Another use of an innuendo is to condemn with faint praise. Imagine receiving a reference letter for a student applying to graduate school. The letter only says that the student was never late to class. The implication is that her punctuality is the best that can be said of her.

Finally, there is the apophasis, which is mentioning something by saying that it won’t be mentioned. For example, “I’m not going to talk about your failure to turn assignments in on time.”

9.2.3 Weaselers

A weaseler is a way of qualifying a claim in order to avoid criticism. Weaselers include words and phrases like “perhaps,” “there’s a good chance that,” and “it’s possible that.” A weaseler that is common in advertising is “up to” — “By using our diet plan, you can lose up to ten pounds in a month.” Notice that “up to ten pounds” means “no more than ten pounds.” So, if a customer loses no weight at all, then there is no grounds for a lawsuit.

9.2.4 Downplayers

A downplayer is a way of making something seem less important than it is. The most common downplayers are “mere, merely, and so-called.” A person might say, “That’s merely your opinion” to avoid having to respond with facts. A politician might talk about his opponent’s “so-called” plan to cut spending, implying that it isn’t much of a plan at all. Improper use of quotation marks can also serve as a downplayer.

9.2.5 Proof surrogate

A proof surrogate offers no real support, but just claims that support exists. Examples are using “studies show” without saying what those studies are and where they can be found. Another proof surrogate is just to say that “It’s obvious that….” Doing so implies that proof is simply not needed.

9.2.6 Hyperbole

Hyperbole is an inappropriate or extreme exaggeration. “Taking critical thinking is the most exciting thing you’ll do in your whole life!” Since it is an extreme exaggeration, no one will be fooled into believing it, so what’s the danger? The danger of hyperbole is that once the exaggeration is made, the listener is then prepared to accept a weaker version of the statement. The weaker version, compared to the extreme exaggeration, sounds more believable.

9.3 Fallacies of Ambiguity and Vagueness

An ambiguous word or phrase is one that has more than one meaning. “Bank” is an ambiguous term, it can refer to a financial institution, a riverbank, a kind of basketball or pool shot, etc. A vague term is one that does not have a precise meaning. That is, there will be cases where a vague term clearly applies, cases in which it clearly does not apply, and cases in the middle where it’s just not clear whether it applies. Terms like “rich” and “heap” are vague terms.

9.3.1 Equivocation

The fallacy of equivocation is committed by using the same term in two different senses in the same argument. Here is my favorite example:

• God is love.
• Love is blind
• Ray Charles is blind.
• Ray Charles is God.

There are several things wrong with this argument, one of them is equivocating on “blind.” To say that love is blind, is to say that people overlooks the faults of those they love. To say that Ray Charles is blind is to say that he cannot physically see anything, not that he just overlooks things.

9.3.2 Amphiboly

Amphibolies rely on syntactic ambiguities. Those are ambiguities that result from the arrangement of the words. Church bulletin bloopers are good places to find amphibolies: “The Rev. Adams spoke briefly, much to the delight of his audience.”

9.3.3 Accent

The fallacy of accent is an equivocation resulting from accenting different words in a sentence. Think about the different meanings that are implied from accenting different words in this sentence: “I didn’t take the exam yesterday.”

9.3.4 Division and Composition

The last two fallacies of ambiguity are division and composition. The fallacy of division improperly attributes a property of the whole to its parts. The fallacy of division improperly attributes a property of the parts to the whole. Here is an example of division: “That wall weighs more than 500 pounds, so each brick in it weighs more than 500 pounds.” A similar example of composition is “Each brick in that wall weighs less than a pound, so the entire wall weighs less than a pound.”

Some properties, however, can be attributed from the parts to the whole or the whole to the parts. For example, “Each link in that chain is solid gold, so the whole chain is solid gold.”

9.3.5 Line-Drawing Fallacy

The line-drawing fallacy is a fallacy of vagueness, having the form “Since there is no precise line that can be drawnd between A and not-A, there is no real difference between A and not-A.” Example: “Since no one can say where the line should be drawn between legitimate uses of force and excessive uses of force, then no one can honestly claim that any use of force is excessive.”

9.4 Fallacies of Relevance

A good critical thinker will offer arguments that have premises that are logically relevant to their conclusions. A fallacy of relevance is committed when the premises of the argument are not logically relevant to the truth of the conclusion. They may be, however, psychologically relevant, so that we can be deceived in thinking that the argument is valid, when in fact it is not.

9.4.1 Ad Hominem

The Ad Hominem fallacy is committed by attacking the person giving the argument, rather than responding to the argument itself. There are four common types:

9.4.1.1 Personal Attack

This is also known as an ad hominem abusive. This is committed when one verbally attacks the person giving the argument instead of responding to the argument itself. For example:

Jack: “There are so many unexplored planets out there. Surely, there must be life somewhere out there”

Jill: “You can’t be right, you’re just a loser who watches too much television.”

9.4.1.2 Circumstantial Ad Hominem

A person commits the circumstantial ad hominem by referring to circumstances that discredit the arguer. This is often a charge of bias or vested interest. A person has a vested interest when they stand to gain, financially or otherwise, by something. For example, a doctor has a vested interest in a pharmaceutical study when she owns stock in the company that produces the drug. Bias or vested interest is a good reason to examine an argument carefully, but not a good reason to simply dismiss it.

Jill: John has made an excellent case for increasing the budget of the church’s youth program.

Jack: Of course he would say that — he’s the youth minister! You can just forget everything he said.

9.4.1.3 Tu Quoque

This is also known as a pseudorefutation. It accuses the arguer of hypocrisy. Example: “Don’t tell me I shouldn’t start smoking. I know how many packs a day you inhale!”

A person’s behavior may very well be inconsistent with their argument, but that doesn’t mean that the argument is bad.

9.4.1.4 Poisoning the Well

Poisoning the well is an ad hominem committed before the arguer has spoken. The goal is to provide harmful information about the speaker to preemptively discredit anything that the speaker might say. Any of the previous examples can be turned into examples of poisoning the well. For example: “John is about make his case for increasing the church’s youth budget. Don’t pay any attention to him — he’s the youth minister, what else would he say?”

9.4.2 Appeal to Force

The appeal to force, also called scare tactics, is a threat, either explicit or implicit. For example, imagine a student saying to a professor, “I deserve an A because my father is a major donor to this university and a very good friend of the dean.” The appeal to force tries to instill fear in the listener, and to be fallacious, the fear must be irrelevant to the truth of the claim. These are common in both advertising and politics. An example of an appeal to force in advertising would be an ad for a Medicare supplement policy with an elderly woman weeping in front of a pile of unpaid bills. The advertisement works by making the viewer afraid of ending up like the person in the commercial.

9.4.3 Appeal to Pity

The appeal to pity is like the appeal to force, except that the goal is to evoke pity, not fear. For example: “I deserve an A because my mother is very ill, and I had to spend most of my time caring for her this semester.”

9.4.4 Popular Appeal

This is also called appeal to the people. Here, the goal is to use the desire to be loved, admired, accepted, etc. to get others to accept the conclusion. Two important types are the bandwagon fallacy and the appeal to vanity.

9.4.4.1 Bandwagon

The bandwagon fallacy tells the listener that since everyone does, or believes, something, then they should too.

Example: “Everyone supports Smith for president. You need to get with the program and support him too!”

9.4.4.2 Appeal to Vanity

This is a claim that you will be admired if you do this. Unlike bandwagon, which claims that everyone does this, the appeal to vanity is usually about something that not everyone can do or have.

Example: “Wear a Rolex — that way everyone will know that you’re not just somebody.”

9.4.5 Appeal to Ignorance

9.4.5.1 burden of proof.

On most issues, one side will have the burden of proof. That means that if that side fails to make its case, then the other side wins by default. There are two standard rules for determining burden of proof:

• Especially for existence claims, the side making the positive case has the burden of proof.
• The side making the more implausible claim has the burden of proof.

Sometimes, these conditions can conflict. Here is an example:

Jill: Surely, there are species of insects that we have not yet discovered.

Jack: I don’t think that’s true.

Who has the burden of proof? Jill is making a positive existence claim, but it is one that very plausible. That makes Jack’s claim very implausible. In this case, I’d say that Jack has the burden of proof.

9.4.5.2 The Law

One area where these rules do not apply is the American legal system. There, the prosecution always has the burden of proof. That is, if the prosecution fails to make its case against the defendant, then the defense wins.

Burden of proof should not be confused with standard of proof. Burden of proof is concerned with who needs to make their case. Standard of proof is concerned with how strong a case needs to be made. There are four different levels of standard of proof in the law:

• Beyond a reasonable doubt
• Clear and convincing evidence
• Preponderance of evidence
• Probable cause

Criminal cases use the highest standard of proof, which is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” This is a high degree of probability. It does not mean that no doubt at all is possible, but that any doubt, given the evidence, would be unreasonable. The next two level are used in civil cases. Most civil cases are tried at the “preponderance of evidence” level. This means that, given the evidence, it is more likely that the defendant is liable than not. Clear and convincing evidence is a standard of proof between preponderance of evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt. It is used in civil cases that involve the potential loss of important rights or interests, such as the termination of potential rights. The lowest standard of proof is probable cause. This is used to determine if a search or arrest is warranted, and also used by grand juries to issue indictments.

9.4.6 Straw Man

The straw man fallacy Distorts a position so that it can be easily attacked. It does not address the actual view held by the opponent, but responds to a weaker version. It is often committed by making the conclusion of an argument more extreme than it actually is, since extreme views are often easy to attack.

Example: “Senator Snodgrass has argued that there be a mandatory waiting period before any handgun purchase. Obviously, the senator wants to make all firearm ownership illegal.”

Here some subtle ways of committing the fallacy:

• Taking words out of context.
• Treating extreme views as representative.
• Criticizing early versions of a position.
• Criticizing deliberately simplified versions of a position.

9.4.7 Red Herring

The goal of the red herring fallacy is to lead the opponent off the track, by subtly changing the issue being discussed. The arguer changes the subject to a different but related one. To determine if something is a red herring, ask yourself if the issue at the beginning of the argument is the same as the issue at the end. Here is an example:

The American Cancer Society has argued that smoking is bad for your health. Many people in the Southeastern United States are dependent upon the tobacco industry for their jobs. Making smoking illegal would have a devastating economic effect on many states. Therefore, the ACS is simply wrong.

Notice the original isse is whether smoking has bad health consequences. By the end of the paragraph, the issue has been changed to the economic impact of making smoking illegal.

9.4.8 Horse Laugh

This occurs when someone simply ridicules the position held, and offers no real response to the argument at all. For example: “Mr. Jones has argued that watching television is emotionally unhealthy. If you believe that, then I’ve got a great deal on some swampland for you.”

9.5 Fallacies of Unwarranted Assumptions

9.5.1 begging the question.

An argument begs the question if it is impossible to believe at least one of the premises unless one already believes the conclusion. Note that if this is the case, then the premises cannot serve as reasons to believe the conclusion, since believing the premises requires already believing the conclusion. There are three common types of arguments that beg the question.

The first is a circular argument. That occurs when one explicitly uses the conclusion as support for one of the premises. Here is an example:

• The Bible says that God exists.
• The Bible is the inspired word of God.
• God exists.

The Bible can’t be the inspired word of God unless God exists, so the argument begs the question.

Another type of argument that begs the question is one that simply rephrases the conclusion and uses it as a premise. Example: “If such actions were not illegal, then they would not be prohibited by the law.” In this case, the conclusion is synonymous with one of the premises.

The last type is one that generalizes the conclusion and uses the generalized rule as a premise. Example: “Spanking children is wrong because corporal punishment is wrong.”

9.5.2 Appeal to Authority

The fallacy of appeal to authority is committed by using an pseudo-authority to support a claim. Note that it is not committed by merely appealing to an authority, but by appealing to an unqualified authority. Always ask, “Should this person know more about this subject than the average person?”

9.5.3 Loaded Question

A loaded question suggests something with the question. “Whem will you stop cheating on exams?” is a loaded question, the question implies that the person is cheating. Notice that there is no way to directly answer the question without admitting to cheating on exams.

9.5.4 False Dilemma

This is sometimes called the either-or fallacy. This happens when a person asserts a disjunction, a sentence of the form "either A or B , when there is at least one more option that is true. Disjunctions are true whenever at least one of the disjuncts, the sentences joined by the ‘or,’ are true. A False dilemma asserts that one of the two sentences must be true when there is really a third alternative. Here are some examples:

“Either buy our personal financial guide or never have control of your finances.”

Child to parent: “Either let me go to the party or I’ll just die.”

False dilemmas are often expressed in pithy slogans on bumper stickers: “It’s my way or the highway” or “America, love it or leave it.”

Consider this example: “My opponent voted against the public schools spending bill. He must think educating our children is not important.” The claim is that either one votes for the bill or one believes that education is not important. This is a false dilemma since there may be many other reasons to vote against a particular bill.

It’s important to remember that a disjunction can be expressed as a conditional: “Either let me go to that party or I’ll die” is equivalent to “If you don’t let me go to that party, then I’ll die.” In general, P or Q is equivalent to if not-P then Q.

9.5.5 Slippery Slope

Slippery slopes rest a conclusion on a chain reaction that is not likely to occur. They generally have this form:

In order for this to be a fallacy, at least one of the conditional statements in the premises must not be likely to be true. Here’s an example: “If I fail this test, then I will fail the course. If I fail the course, then I’ll be expelled from school. If I’m expelled from school, then I’ll never be able to have a good job. If I can’t get a good job, then I can’t support a family…”

To test for a slippery slope, just ask, are there any weak links in this chain of conditionals? Is it really the case that one failed exam will result in an F for a course grade?

Effectiviology

Logical Fallacies: What They Are and How to Counter Them

• A logical fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that contains a flaw, either in its logical structure or in its premises.

An example of a logical fallacy is the false dilemma , which is a logical fallacy that occurs when a limited number of options are incorrectly presented as being mutually exclusive to one another or as being the only options that exist, in a situation where that isn’t the case. For instance, a false dilemma occurs in a situation where someone says that we must choose between options A or B, without mentioning that option C also exists.

Fallacies, in their various forms, play a significant role in how people think and in how they communicate with each other, so it’s important to understand them. As such, the following article serves as an introductory guide to logical fallacies, which will help you understand what logical fallacies are, what types of them exist, and what you can do in order to counter them successfully.

Examples of logical fallacies

One example of a logical fallacy is the ad hominem fallacy , which is a fallacy that occurs when someone attacks the source of an argument directly, without addressing the argument itself. For instance, if a person brings up a valid criticism of the company that they work in, someone using the ad hominem fallacy might reply by simply telling them that if they don’t like the way things are done, then that’s their problem and they should leave.

Another example of a logical fallacy is the loaded question fallacy , which occurs when someone asks a question in a way that presupposes an unverified assumption that the person being questioned is likely to disagree with. An example of a loaded question is the following:

“Can you get this task done for me, or are you too busy slacking off?”

This question is fallacious, because it has a flawed premise, and specifically because it suggests that if the person being questioned says that they can’t get the task done, then that must be because they’re too busy slacking off.

Finally, another example of a logical fallacy is the argument from incredulity , which occurs when someone concludes that since they can’t believe that a certain concept is true, then it must be false, and vice versa. For instance, this fallacy is demonstrated in the following saying:

“I just can’t believe that these statistics are true, so that means they must be false.”

In this case, the speaker’s reasoning is fallacious, because their premises are flawed, and specifically their assumption that if they can’t believe the statistics that they’re shown are true, then that must mean that the statistics are false.

Formal and informal logical fallacies

There are two main types of logical fallacies:

• Formal fallacies. A formal logical fallacy occurs when there is a flaw in the logical structure of an argument, which renders the argument invalid and consequently also unsound . For example, a formal fallacy can occur because the conclusion of the argument isn’t based on its premises.
• Informal fallacies. An informal logical fallacy occurs when there is a flaw in the premises of an argument, which renders the argument  unsound , even though it may still be valid . For example, an informal fallacy can occur because the premises of an argument are false , or because they’re unrelated to the discussion at hand.

Therefore, there are two main differences between formal and informal logical fallacies. First, formal fallacies contain a flaw in their logical structure , while informal fallacies contain a flaw in their premises . Second, formal fallacies are invalid patterns of reasoning (and are consequently also unsound), while informal fallacies are unsound patterns of reasoning, but can still be valid.

For instance, the following is an example of a formal fallacy :

Premise 1: If it’s raining, then the sky will be cloudy. Premise 2: The sky is cloudy. Conclusion:  It’s raining.

Though both the premises in this example are true, the argument is invalid , since there is a flaw in its logical structure.

Specifically, premise 1 tells us that if it’s raining, then the sky will be cloudy, but that doesn’t mean that if the sky is cloudy (which we know it is, based on premise 2), then it’s necessarily raining. That is, it’s possible for the sky to be cloudy, without it raining, which is why we can’t reach the conclusion that is specified in the argument, and which is why this argument is invalid, despite the fact that its premises are true.

On the other hand, the following is an example of an informal fallacy :

Premise 1: The weatherman said that it’s going to rain next week. Premise 2: The weatherman is always right. Conclusion:  It’s going to rain next week.

Here, the logical structure of the argument is valid. Specifically, since premise 1 tells us that the weatherman said that it’s going to rain next week, and premise 2 tells us that the weatherman is always right, then based on what we know (i.e. on these premises), we can logically conclude that it’s going to rain next week.

However, there is a problem with this line of reasoning, since our assumption that the weatherman is always right (premise 2) is false . As such, even though the logical structure of the argument is valid, the use of a flawed premise means that the overall argument is unsound .

Overall, a sound argument is one that has a valid logical structure and true premises. A formal logical fallacy means that the argument is invalid, due to a flaw in its logical structure, which also means that it’s unsound. An informal logical fallacy means that the argument is unsound, due to a flaw in its premises, even though it has a valid logical structure.

Example of a formal logical fallacy

As we saw above, a formal fallacy occurs when there is an issue with the logical structure of an argument, which renders the argument invalid.

An example of a formal logical fallacy is the masked-man fallacy , which is committed when someone assumes that if two or more names or descriptions refer to the same thing, then they can be freely substituted with one another, in a situation where that’s not the case. For example:

Premise 1: The citizens of Metropolis know that Superman saved their city. Premise 2: Clark Kent is Superman. Conclusion: The citizens of Metropolis know that Clark Kent saved their city.

This argument is invalid, because even though Superman is in fact Clark Kent, the citizens of Metropolis don’t necessarily know Superman’s true identity, and therefore don’t necessarily know that Clark Kent saved their city. As such, even though both the premises of the argument are true, there is a flaw in the argument’s logical structure, which renders it invalid.

Example of an informal logical fallacy

As we saw above, an informal fallacy occurs when there is a flaw in the premises of an argument, which renders the argument unsound.

An example of an informal logical fallacy is the  strawman fallacy , which occurs when a person distorts their opponent’s argument, in order to make it easier to attack. For example:

Alex: I think we should increase the education budget. Bob: I disagree, because if we spend the entire budget on education, there won’t be any money left for other essential things.

Here, Bob’s argument is valid from a formal, logical perspective: if we spend the entire budget on education, there won’t be anything left to spend on other things.

However, Bob’s reasoning is nevertheless fallacious, because his argument contains a false, implicit premise, and namely the assumption that when Alex suggests that we should increase the education budget, he means that the entire budget should be allocated to education. As such, Bob’s argument is unsound, because it relies on flawed premises, and counters an irrelevant point that his opponent wasn’t trying to make.

Fallacious techniques that aren’t logical fallacies

The term ‘fallacious’ has two primary meanings:

• Containing a logical fallacy.
• Tending to deceive or mislead.

Accordingly, some misleading rhetorical techniques and patterns of reasoning can be described as “fallacious”, even if they don’t contain a logical fallacy.

For example, the Gish gallop is a fallacious debate technique, which involves attempting to overwhelm your opponent by bringing up as many arguments as possible, with no regard for the relevance, validity, or accuracy of those arguments. Though a Gish gallop may have some arguments that contain logical fallacies, it isn’t a single argument by itself, and therefore isn’t considered a logical fallacy. However, because its overall argumentation pattern revolves around the intent to deceive, this technique is said to be fallacious.

In this regard, note that logical fallacies, in general, tend to include a form of reasoning that is not only logically invalid or unsound in some way, but that is also misleading.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that fallacies and other fallacious techniques aren’t always used with the intention of misleading others. Rather, people often use fallacious arguments unintentionally, both when they’re talking to other people, as well as when they conduct their own internal reasoning process, because the fact that such arguments are misleading can lead those who use them to not notice that they’re flawed in the first place.

Logical fallacies are different from factual errors

It’s important to note that logical fallacies are errors in reasoning, rather than simple factual errors.

For example, though the statement “humans are birds” is flawed, that’s because it contains a simple factual error, rather than a logical fallacy. Conversely, the argument “humans have eyes, and birds also have eyes, therefore humans are birds” contains a logical fallacy, since there is a flaw in its logical structure, which renders it invalid.

How to counter logical fallacies

To counter the use of a logical fallacy, you should first identify the flaw in reasoning that it contains, and then point it out and explain why it’s a problem, or provide a strong opposing argument that counters it implicitly.

For example, consider a situation where someone uses the appeal to nature , which is an informal logical fallacy that involving claiming that something is either good because it’s considered ‘natural’, or bad because it’s considered ‘unnatural’.

Once you’ve identified the use of the fallacy, you can counter it by explaining why its premises are flawed. To achieve this, you can provide examples that demonstrate that things that are “natural” can be bad and that things that are “unnatural” can be good, or you can provide examples that demonstrate the issues with trying to define what “natural” and “unnatural” mean in the first place.

The steps in this approach, where you first identify the use of the fallacy and then either explain why it’s a problem or provide strong counterarguments, are generally the main ones to follow regardless of which fallacy is being used. However, there is some variability in terms of how you implement these steps when it comes to different fallacies and different circumstances, and an approach that will work well in one situation may fail in another.

For example, while a certain approach might work well when it comes to resolving a formal fallacy that you’ve used unintentionally in your own reasoning process, the same approach might be ineffective when it comes to countering an informal fallacy that was used intentionally by someone else for rhetorical purposes.

Finally, it’s also important to keep in mind that sometimes, when responding to the use of fallacious reasoning, dismantling the logic behind your opponent’s reasoning and highlighting its flaws might not work. This is because, in practice, human interactions and debates are highly complex, and involve more than just exchanging logically sound arguments with one another.

Accordingly, you should accept the fact that in some cases, the best way to respond to a logical fallacy in practice isn’t necessarily to properly address it from a logical perspective. For example, your best option might be to modify your original argument in order to counter the fallacious reasoning without explicitly addressing the fact that it’s fallacious, or your best option might be to refuse to engage with the fallacious argument entirely.

Account for unintentional use of fallacies

When you counter fallacies that other people use, it’s important to remember that not every use of a logical fallacy is intentional, and to act accordingly, since accounting for this fact can help you formulate a more effective response.

A useful concept to keep in mind in this regard is  Hanlon’s razor , which is a philosophical principle that suggests that when someone does something that leads to a negative outcome, you should avoid assuming that they acted out of an intentional desire to cause harm, as long as there is a different plausible explanation for their behavior. In this context, Hanlon’s razor means that, if you notice that someone is using a logical fallacy, you should avoid assuming that they’re doing so intentionally, as long as it’s reasonable to do so.

In addition, it’s important to remember that you too might be using logical fallacies unintentionally in your thinking and in your communication with others. To identify cases where you are doing this, try to examine your reasoning, and see if you can identify any flaws, either in the way that your arguments are structured, or in the premises that you rely on in order to make those arguments. Then, adjust your reasoning accordingly, in order to fix these flaws.

Make sure arguments are fallacious before countering

Before you counter an argument that you think is fallacious, you should make sure that it is indeed fallacious, to the best of your ability.

There are various ways to do this, including slowing down your own reasoning process so you can properly think through the argument, or asking the person who proposed the argument to clarify their position.

The approach of asking the other person to clarify their position is highly beneficial in general, because it helps demonstrate that you’re truly interested in what the other person has to say. Furthermore, in cases where the argument in question does turn out to be fallacious, this approach can often help expose the issues with it, and can also help the other person internalize these issues, in a way that you won’t always be able to achieve by pointing them out yourself.

Finally, note that a useful tool to remember in this regard is the principle of charity , which is a philosophical principle that denotes that, when interpreting someone’s statement, you should assume that the best possible interpretation of that statement is the one that the speaker meant to convey. In this context, the principle of charity means that you should not attribute falsehoods, logical fallacies, or irrationality to people’s argument, when there is a plausible, rational alternative available.

Remember fallacious arguments can have true conclusions

It’s important to keep in mind that even if an argument is fallacious, it can still have a true conclusion. Assuming that just because an argument is fallacious then its conclusion must necessarily be false is a logical fallacy in itself, which is known as the fallacy fallacy .

For instance, consider the following example of a formal logical fallacy (which we saw earlier, and which is known as affirming the consequent ):

Premise 1: If it’s raining, then the sky will be cloudy. Premise 2: The sky is cloudy. Conclusion: It’s raining.

This argument is logically invalid, since we can’t be sure that its conclusion is true based on the premises that we have (because it’s possible that the sky is cloudy but that it’s not raining at the same time). However, even though the argument itself is flawed, that doesn’t mean that its conclusion is necessarily false. Rather, it’s possible that the conclusion is true and that it is currently raining; we just can’t conclude this based on the premises

The same holds for informal fallacies. For example, consider the following argument:

Alex: It’s amazing how accurate this personality test I took is. Bob: No it isn’t, it’s pure nonsense.

Here, Bob is using an appeal to the stone , which is a logical fallacy that occurs when a person dismisses their opponent’s argument as absurd, without actually addressing it, or without providing sufficient evidence in order to prove its absurdity. However, even though Bob’s argument is fallacious, that doesn’t mean that its conclusion is wrong; it’s possible that the personality test in question is indeed nonsense, we just can’t tell whether that’s the case based on this argument alone.

Overall, the important thing to understand is that an argument can be fallacious and still have a conclusion that is factually correct. To assume otherwise is fallacious, which is why you shouldn’t discount people’s conclusions simply because the argument that they used to reach those conclusions contains a logical fallacy.

The difference between logical fallacies and cognitive biases

While logical fallacies and cognitive biases appear to be similar to each other, they are two different phenomena. Specifically, while logical fallacies are flawed patterns of argumentation , and are therefore a philosophical concept, cognitive biases are systematic errors in cognition , and are therefore a psychological concept.

Cognitive biases often occur at a more basic level of thinking, particularly when they’re rooted in people’s intuition, and they can lead to the use of various logical fallacies.

For example, the appeal to novelty is a logical fallacy that occurs when something is assumed to be either good or better than something else, simply because it’s perceived as being new and novel.

In some cases, people might use this fallacy due to a cognitive bias that causes them to instinctively prefer things that they perceive as newer. However, people can experience this instinctive preference for newer things without it leading to the use of the appeal to novelty, in cases where they recognize this preference and account for it properly. Furthermore, people can use arguments that rely on the appeal to novelty even if they don’t experience this instinctive preference, and even if they don’t truly believe in what they’re saying.

Overall, the main difference between logical fallacies and cognitive biases is that logical fallacies are a philosophical concept, that has to do with argumentation , while cognitive biases are a psychological concept, that has to do with cognition . In some cases, there is an association between cognitive biases and certain logical fallacies, but there are many situations where one appears entirely without the other.

Summary and conclusions

• To counter the use of a logical fallacy, you should first identify the flaw in reasoning that it involves, and then point it out and explain why it’s a problem, or provide a strong opposing argument that counters it implicitly.
• Note that there is some variability in terms of how you should counter different fallacies under different circumstances, and an approach that will work well in one situation may fail in another.
• When responding to the use of a logical fallacy, it’s important to make sure that it’s indeed a fallacy, to remember that the use of the fallacy might be intentional, and to keep in mind that just because an argument is fallacious doesn’t mean that its conclusion is necessarily wrong.
• Certain rhetorical techniques and patterns of reasoning can be described as “fallacious” even if they don’t contain a logical fallacy, because they’re used with the intent to deceive or mislead listeners.

Other articles you may find interesting:

• False Premise: When Arguments Are Built on Bad Foundations
• False Dilemmas and False Dichotomies: What They Are and How to Respond to Them
• The Fallacy Fallacy: Why Fallacious Arguments Can Have True Conclusions

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A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they're often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don't be fooled! This website has been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head. Rollover the icons above and click for examples. If you see someone committing a fallacy, link them to it e.g. yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

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When Critical Thinking Is Not Worth It

Personal perspective: should we always share our critical thinking.

Updated September 5, 2024 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

In a recent post, I discussed social barriers to applying critical thinking . I received interesting feedback on this particular topic and I thought further discussion around this dialogue would be of interest. First and foremost, consider when we should apply critical thinking. As I’ve stated before, it might come as a surprise to readers that someone like me, who places great value on such thought, would suggest that critical thinking doesn’t need to be applied as often as many might think. The reality is that critical thinking is effortful and time-consuming. If we thought critically about every mundane decision we had to make each day, we’d be exhausted before mid-morning. We should only think critically about issues that we care about and that are important to us.

Why would someone even contemplate engaging in critical thinking when they could potentially face negative outcomes for it? It’s because the issue is important to them. But, is that a good enough reason? It depends. For example, I have thought critically about some rather controversial topics (arguably, these are the ones that require the most critical thinking given that what makes them controversial is that so many people care about them, yet have very different views) and I recognise that the conclusions yielded, in light of logic and evidence, may not always be palatable to people in certain contexts. Depending on the situation, I will choose to share my conclusions or choose against them. This, of course, is where we find the fork in the road at the crux of this conversation.

As I mentioned in the aforementioned post, there are arguably two different perspectives on whether or not one should share their critical thinking in environments that might discourage or even punish this thinking, if the conclusions drawn contradict what is deemed acceptable (be it socially, politically, or even legally). First, there is the idealistic, yes, we should always share critical thinking. Second is the practical, ‘know your audience’. Often, staying quiet seems like a practical and prudent move.

With that, such prudence might be seen to contradict what many might view as intellectual integrity; but, on the other hand, it can just as easily be argued that inhibiting such response is appropriate—an act of metacognition (thinking about thinking) about a specific metacognitive process (critical thinking). And so, the intellectually appropriate thing would be to make the best decision you can for the preservation of what or who you care about, such as through this 'meta-metacognition'. Perhaps the key is the question of what’s contextually more important, being right or avoiding punishment ? What is to be gained from speaking out? For me, the only situation I would share my critical thinking, in this context, is if my well-being or that of my family was at risk to the extent that such risk surpasses the impact of the punishment.

To reiterate, context is key here; what I do depends on the situation. Sometimes, having a conclusion is all that is needed. If I have thought critically about a topic to determine what is best for me or my family, why would I have to advertise my decision publicly? I don’t. Sure, I may choose to if I’m in discussion with friends, but I’m not required to do so (of course, this might change in situations where we are ‘forced’ to share our thinking, such as in cases where important decisions are being made for us or when we are specifically asked to infer a conclusion—for example, at work). Moreover, I’m less likely to share if I think it’s going to start a fight or annoyance. Why risk the hassle if there’s nothing real to gain? In both cases, self-regulation is useful. Most of the time, we can simultaneously benefit from engaging in critical thinking and keeping it to ourselves.

Consistent with this perspective, an important aspect of critical thinking is being practical. A practical person would not risk punishment unless they have a genuine chance of positively affecting the issue that they care about. An unfortunate by-product of this, in context, is that many critical thinkers remain quiet on controversial topics presented in the media (particularly if their thinking contradicts the status quo of the moral majority and their value signaling ). Even though you may not be imprisoned for your conclusions (that is, in nations where people enjoy free speech), you might risk other negative outcomes. Sure, we are aware of various sides of the argument; but quite often, we only hear the bias and emotion -based perspectives. Passion is distinct from care in consideration of applying such thinking.

We often hear the emotional callouts of those ‘for’ and ‘against’ particular ideas and movements; but less often do we hear the critical thinking. That’s not to say that the thinking isn’t there; rather, it’s less likely to get the focus because of social mechanisms that thrive when emotion is at play—like ‘they who shout loudest’ or the ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease.’ It could well be the case, in terms of controversial topics, that critical thinkers might actually represent a substantially large, though silent population.

I’m cognisant that some people fear that critical thinking is dying. I don’t think this is necessarily the case; rather, it might be that those not engaging in such thinking are getting louder – not because there are growing numbers of people who lack critical thinking , but because we have so many platforms available for people to spread their messages. I’m not saying that this is harmless and that such people can simply be ignored (for example, uninformed populations can vote other uninformed individuals into positions of power and law-making), but at the same time, we should not overestimate the impact of every erroneous statement made publicly. Give people credit – just because one person posts something silly online, doesn’t mean that the majority agrees with them. With that, some errors are more influential than others. Avoid stressing over the ones that don’t affect you. Be concerned about the ones that do and evaluate whether it is in your interest to share your thinking in those situations. Engage critical thinking but be practical; and don’t get baited into discourses with people who haven’t thought critically, are not open-minded to other perspectives, and not willing to change their mind.

Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the Technological University of the Shannon in Athlone, Ireland.

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• What is Critical Thinking?

The ability to think critically calls for a higher-order thinking than simply the ability to recall information.

Definitions of critical thinking, its elements, and its associated activities fill the educational literature of the past forty years. Critical thinking has been described as an ability to question; to acknowledge and test previously held assumptions; to recognize ambiguity; to examine, interpret, evaluate, reason, and reflect; to make informed judgments and decisions; and to clarify, articulate, and justify positions (Hullfish & Smith, 1961; Ennis, 1962; Ruggiero, 1975; Scriven, 1976; Hallet, 1984; Kitchener, 1986; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Mines et al., 1990; Halpern, 1996; Paul & Elder, 2001; Petress, 2004; Holyoak & Morrison, 2005; among others).

After a careful review of the mountainous body of literature defining critical thinking and its elements, UofL has chosen to adopt the language of Michael Scriven and Richard Paul (2003) as a comprehensive, concise operating definition:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Paul and Scriven go on to suggest that critical thinking is based on: "universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue, assumptions, concepts, empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions, implication and consequences, objections from alternative viewpoints, and frame of reference. Critical thinking - in being responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes - is incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking, anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and philosophical thinking."

This conceptualization of critical thinking has been refined and developed further by Richard Paul and Linder Elder into the Paul-Elder framework of critical thinking. Currently, this approach is one of the most widely published and cited frameworks in the critical thinking literature. According to the Paul-Elder framework, critical thinking is the:

• Analysis of thinking by focusing on the parts or structures of thinking ("the Elements of Thought")
• Evaluation of thinking by focusing on the quality ("the Universal Intellectual Standards")
• Improvement of thinking by using what you have learned ("the Intellectual Traits")

Selection of a Critical Thinking Framework

The University of Louisville chose the Paul-Elder model of Critical Thinking as the approach to guide our efforts in developing and enhancing our critical thinking curriculum. The Paul-Elder framework was selected based on criteria adapted from the characteristics of a good model of critical thinking developed at Surry Community College. The Paul-Elder critical thinking framework is comprehensive, uses discipline-neutral terminology, is applicable to all disciplines, defines specific cognitive skills including metacognition, and offers high quality resources.

Why the selection of a single critical thinking framework?

The use of a single critical thinking framework is an important aspect of institution-wide critical thinking initiatives (Paul and Nosich, 1993; Paul, 2004). According to this view, critical thinking instruction should not be relegated to one or two disciplines or departments with discipline specific language and conceptualizations. Rather, critical thinking instruction should be explicitly infused in all courses so that critical thinking skills can be developed and reinforced in student learning across the curriculum. The use of a common approach with a common language allows for a central organizer and for the development of critical thinking skill sets in all courses.

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Heinzig and mcmillan gift $6.75 million to department of philosophy to advance ethics and critical thinking at osu.

Friday, September 6, 2024

Media Contact: Elizabeth Gosney | CAS Marketing and Communications Manager | 405-744-7497 | [email protected]

Growing up in Prague, Oklahoma, Dennis Heinzig yearned for more than what he found in his small town of around 2,300. For him, the answers to life’s questions wouldn’t be found there.

So, Heinzig ventured out into a world that was much different than he expected — one that did not fit the perspective he started with, nor for which he was prepared. And then he found philosophy, where his quest for a broader understanding of truth and wisdom really began.

“What philosophy did for me was take the blinders off conceptually,” Heinzig said. “It allowed me to begin to think more objectively about life’s important questions. By going beyond what I was taught one must think or believe, I began to discern what is true and ethical and then live accordingly.”

Heinzig and his wife, Iona McMillan, have gained an invaluable amount from philosophy, and the couple wants as many Oklahoma State University students as possible to experience its benefits. In pursuit of that goal, Heinzig and McMillan made the largest donation ever to the OSU Department of Philosophy . Their $6.75 million gift will establish an endowed chair and fund ethics and critical thinking and an endowed general fund for philosophy. It will also continue to fund the Heinzig & McMillan Endowed Scholarship for Ethics and Critical Thinking.

“We are deeply grateful for Dennis and Iona’s visionary commitment to advancing critical thinking and ethics at OSU,” said Dr. Scott Gelfand, former philosophy department head. “This transformative gift will empower our faculty and students to engage in rigorous inquiry, ethical reflection and meaningful action, contributing to the cultivation of ethical leaders and responsible citizens.”

Ethics and critical thinking play a prominent role in OSU’s strategic plan and mission to become the nation’s preeminent land-grant university.

“At OSU, our ideal graduate demonstrates professional preparedness, engaged citizenship, ethical leadership and personal responsibility,” OSU President Kayse Shrum said. “Each of those qualities has roots in philosophy, and when demonstrated, will serve our landgrant mission by equipping graduates to positively impact their communities.

“Dennis and Iona’s generosity with this historic gift will help us ensure our graduates are prepared to make a difference in the world.”

The couple has been involved with multiple charities over the years, but it was McMillan’s idea to make an impact at OSU, where Heinzig earned his master’s degree in philosophy in 1987. During his time in Stillwater, Heinzig met philosophy professor Ed Lawry, who Heinzig remembers as always supportive and approachable. Lawry taught his students to apply philosophy to real-life issues, which guided Heinzig throughout his 30-year business career.

“As an employer, I found it much harder to train someone to approach business decisions with ethics and critical thinking than it was to teach them knowledge-based job skills,” Heinzig said. “To think carefully and be a good person — those two qualities are required to navigate life’s challenges for the good of oneself and all others.”

In the spirit of Lawry, Heinzig and McMillan hope their gift will help students and faculty in all fields appreciate the importance and relevance of philosophy. The couple wants to inspire people to face every issue with objectivity and fairness — whether in academics, their career or personal life. To that end, the department is offering a new minor, the Art and Science of Critical Thinking.

“We hope our contributions will equip people with critical thinking skills and a deeper ethical understanding that will in time make a meaningful difference in our world,” McMillan said. “Our intention is to disseminate the benefits of philosophy as broadly as possible, equipping new leaders with the tools and understanding required to grapple with a rapidly changing world.”

Philosophy and philanthropy share the same root word — phileo, or brotherly love. In Greek, philosophy means the love of wisdom, while philanthropy means the love of humanity. Heinzig and McMillan believe the two are intrinsically intertwined, and that, with conflicts raging across the globe, OSU can play a part in making the world a better place.

“OSU is a very special community and has the right mission and environment to show how philosophy is just as impactful and relevant as agriculture, technology or energy to our lives and the future of humanity,” Heinzig said. “If we approach our global challenges with deep ethical understanding and critical thinking skills, there is no problem humanity cannot solve.” 

Story by: Grant Ramierez | CONNECT magazine

More From Forbes

5 decision-making lessons from the 2024 paris olympics 100m finals.

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An aerial view as Noah Lyles crosses the finish line, winning the gold medal in the Men's 100m Final ... [+] at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Leaders can derive many decision-making lessons from the 100-meter final at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The race, which ended in a photo-finish, was a masterclass in the value of pre-determined criteria and the dangers of reaching hasty conclusions.

Overconfidence And Limited Information Drive Faulty Judgments

In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sprint, Team USA’s Noah Lyles clinched gold in 9.79 seconds, an identical time to Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson. To the untrained eye, it looked like a dead-heat. Social media erupted with confusion. Who won? Wasn’t Thompson’s foot ahead of Lyles’ at the finish line? Even Lyles was unsure; he congratulated Mr. Thompson just a few minutes before the judges called the race in his favor.

Many viewers were confused because they did not understand the Olympic rule that the position of the runner’s torso, not their head, neck, arms, legs, hands, or feet, determines the winner. Lyles’ torso crossed the finish line first. He won.

This situation revealed a leadership truth: making decisions with incomplete information and second-guessing the decisions of those who know more can lead to erroneous conclusions, even for active participants.

Humans Don’t Always Think Straight

As psychologists Noah Tversky and Daniel Kahneman revealed , humans tend to make quick judgments based on easily accessible information. Fans’ errors about the 100-meter result exemplify the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a cognitive bias in which people with limited knowledge or expertise may overestimate their abilities and judgments and consequently make faulty judgments.

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Business news is replete with examples of organizations that quickly withdrew products that didn’t deliver what the market wanted or invested in the wrong things at the wrong time, seemingly because of faulty judgments. In 1985, Coca-Cola’s New Coke lasted fewer than 100 days on the market before the company returned the original flavor, rebranded as Coca-Cola Classic. Microsoft introduced Zune to compete with the iPod. Despite its innovations, Zune did not capture enough market share to survive. Cognitive bias also seems to have influenced Theranos investors’ decisions.

Psychology Can Enhance Leaders’ Judgments

So, how can business leaders avoid these cognitive blunders? Luckily, psychology offers insights and actions to help.

1. Define The Success Criteria Before Starting The Race

Clearly articulate what constitutes success before making critical decisions. What knowledge, skills, and other characteristics do you need on the team to deliver your vision, and does the candidate possess them, or do you just like them more than other candidates? How will you measure the success of your product or service; will it be market share, profit margin, customer satisfaction, employee experience, or something else? Make sure everyone involved in the decision understands the key factors that should influence their decisions.

2. Design A Culture That Supports Critical Thinking

Develop a team culture that prizes critical analysis over urgent reactions. Don’t over-rely on the most familiar information. Challenge employees by asking, "What might we be missing here?" Create a respectful culture where employees feel seen, heard, and valued and can express their opinions without fear of retribution.

3. Be Realistic About Your Company’s Decision-Making Norms

Do the decision-making norms in your organizations support effective outcomes? Do the employees closest to the decision-impact get the chance to express their lessons of experience? Do leaders over-rely on consultants versus employees when making critical decisions? Do managers take ownership of decisions or say, “This came from the top of the house. I disagree, but we have to do it?”

4. Mix Familiar With Unfamiliar

Olympic officials don’t rely on one person or one high-speed camera to make their final judgments; neither should you. Sometimes, the most discerning perspective can come from the fresh eyes of someone outside your inner circle. And don't hesitate to bring in outside experts to analyze complex situations from multiple angles. Research indicates that experts generally make better decisions than novices.

5. Marinate Your Decisions

When making critical decisions, resist the urge to call them too quickly. Take the time to gather all relevant data before declaring a winning idea. The first-mover advantage is real, but as with Theranos' example, sometimes you need time for the unintended consequences to become evident.

Noah Lyles' Olympic victory wasn't just about speed but about winning according to precisely defined rules. Leaders can win in complex business contexts too, by intentionally taking time to process all the relevant information. Doing so can reduce cognitive errors and reveal the nuances others miss that could provide a competitive advantage.

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Debate was an ‘eye opener’ in suburban Philadelphia and Harris got a closer look

Christine Desumma, of Bristol, Pa., pauses while speaking during an interview, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, in Bristol, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Melissa Apsche, of Bensalem, Pa., pauses while speaking during an interview, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, in Bristol, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

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BRISTOL, Pa. (AP) — The presidential debate this week was the final affront to Rosie Torres’ lifelong Republicanism. She said her allegiance to Donald Trump, already strained by his stand on abortion, snapped in the former president’s “eye opener” encounter with Kamala Harris.

It’s time to put “country before party,” Torres, 60, said Wednesday in Bristol, a riverfront town in suburban Philadelphia. Trump left her frustrated after his appearance recently at Arlington National Cemetery when a member of his staff pushed a cemetery official , she said.

“I still was willing to vote for Donald Trump,” Torres said. “But you know, I think that what he did at the cemetery for the veterans — that was very disrespectful. I feel like our country is being disrespected.”

In Bucks County, a critical area in a vital swing state, the debate is producing a lot of hard thinking about what to do in November. Millions of Americans elsewhere have made up their minds but in purple Pennsylvania, plenty of voting choices are still in play.

In interviews in Bristol and Langhorne, another longtime Republican came away from the debate intrigued but not sold on Harris, a young first-time voter is going for Trump, and a Democrat is still trying to shake the image in his head of people eating pets after Trump’s “moronic” talking point on that subject Tuesday night.

A closer look at what voters in a key part of the country are thinking after what could be the only presidential debate:

She’s still shopping

There’s Mary Nolan, 70, of Bensalem, a registered Republican for 50 years who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020. She has more thinking to do after a debate in which Harris both impressed and frustrated her.

“I wasn’t happy with Biden-Trump,” she said of the options before President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign. “I didn’t feel we had any good choices. And I’m still not sure we do. We might. But I still want to see more about Kamala Harris.”

She said she and her husband, who’s registered as a Democrat, split their party registrations so they could have a say as a family in primary elections. Immigration, the economy (she said she had just paid $6 for a pound of butter) and the infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law were her top issues.

“I like that Kamala Harris does say I am going to be the president for everyone,” Nolan said. “I don’t think our politicians say that often.”

She figures she’ll make her voting decision by the end of October, just days before the election. Meantime, she’s aggressive about collecting information.

“I take different opinions from all over. I don’t do any blogs. It’s simply news. Different interest groups like AARP.”

Her political ideology? “I think the world is changing fast, and I’m still in my values from 1960,” Nolan said.

What values?

“Family, home, morals. You know, our kids don’t have the upbringing that you did or I did because the streets are different now. I think if someone would say, you know, this is what I’m going to do to improve life in the United States, I definitely would vote for them.”

She said she thought Harris had a good debate, but dodged some things.

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“I did not like that she avoided questions. She talked around them when they asked her direct questions about abortion. There was one about abortion. There was another about immigration. And there were a couple that said, hey, you’ve been here three and a half years, but you haven’t done those things that you’re saying are so important. Why not? She ran off into her talking points and never gave a direct answer.”

But Harris gave her a good impression. Trump did not.

“I think yesterday, definitely Kamala Harris presented herself very well. She’s dignified. ... She would be a good representative of our country.”

Trump? “I think his policies are good. I just want a more stable, dignified president.” She wants “someone that doesn’t yell and scream and call people names.”

This Democrat saw history unfold

Terry Culleton, 68, of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, is a retired high school English literature teacher and was reading “Autocracy, Inc.” by Anne Applebaum at a cafe Wednesday morning. His support for labor, then for civil rights and human rights, made him a Democrat.

He thought Harris held her own against Trump and articulated her plans well.

But what really stuck with him was Trump’s false comments about immigrants in Ohio eating pets.

“So moronic a thing to say and to repeat that I just can’t get it out of my head that somebody would go on national TV and state that,” he said.

He said he got a sense of history unfolding watching the debate last night.

“I think it’s democracy versus something close to totalitarianism. I think it’s a matter of supporting democratic governments as opposed to supporting the kind of governments that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is trying to export, which Trump has no problem with, as far as I can tell.”

Inflation led her to Trump

Kelli Surline of Langhorne was at a café with her fiancé and young daughter who wore an Eagles kelly green T-shirt. She described herself as politically unengaged until the pinch of higher prices got to her. She didn’t watch the debate, in part, because she’s made up her mind.

“I’m 28 years old and I’ve never seen the country this bad ever,” she said. “So I made the choice to get my voter’s registration, and I’m definitely voting for Trump.”

She talked about how difficult it has been to get ahead.

“We wanted to get a place together,” Surline said, motioning to Geoffrey Trush, 40, her fiancé. “We’re not able to do that.” Instead, she’s living with her mom. Unaffordable prices make it “a struggle every week.”

He was once a Democrat

Ron Soto, 86, of Levittown, Pennsylvania, is a longtime Trump supporter and retired tractor-trailer driver and Army veteran who left the Democratic Party in the 1990s for the GOP after coming to realize he disagreed with Bill and Hillary Clinton’s positions.

He said he tuned into the debate Tuesday, his hound dog, Sam, by his side, after watching the Phillies game.

Illegal immigration is a major issue for him and Harris didn’t win him over.

“The biggest issue is I don’t like her, and I don’t like Joe Biden.”

Saying he served in the Army from 1955 to 1963, Soto asked: “What the hell did I stick my neck out for? Why? So you can give it away? The Democrats can open the gates, the floodgates, and tell the whole world. You’re welcome. Come on in.” He added: “These people have ruined this country.”

She had her fill of politics

Christine Desumma, 50, a former Trump voter and the owner of a salon on Bristol’s quaint shop-lined street, expressed frustration with both parties and said she won’t be voting at all in November. She said her taxes were lower when Trump was in office and recalled the sting of COVID-19 shutdowns.

She got fed up, particularly with social media and Facebook. Online debates, she said, were driving a wedge within her own family, and she’s washing her hands of it.

“I just made the decision that I’m not going to vote and I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Now I choose to not watch, not pay attention.” She’s found another pursuit.

“I’m studying yoga,” she said. “I got myself back.”