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7th Part

The document defines and provides examples of 17 common fallacies divided into 3 categories: 1) Fallacies of relevance include arguments from ignorance, inappropriate authority, attacking the person, appealing to emotion, pity, or force, and drawing an irrelevant conclusion. 2) Fallacies of presumption rely on ambiguous meanings and include complex questions, false causes, begging the question, accidents, and hasty generalizations. 3) Fallacies of ambiguity involve equivocation, ambiguous phrasing, emphasis shifts, improper reasoning about parts and wholes, and parts and totals. Exercises provide examples to identify these fallacies.

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141 views4 pages

7th Part

The document defines and provides examples of 17 common fallacies divided into 3 categories: 1) Fallacies of relevance include arguments from ignorance, inappropriate authority, attacking the person, appealing to emotion, pity, or force, and drawing an irrelevant conclusion. 2) Fallacies of presumption rely on ambiguous meanings and include complex questions, false causes, begging the question, accidents, and hasty generalizations. 3) Fallacies of ambiguity involve equivocation, ambiguous phrasing, emphasis shifts, improper reasoning about parts and wholes, and parts and totals. Exercises provide examples to identify these fallacies.

Uploaded by

Josephine sabroso
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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35

FALLACIES

Fallacy is a type of argument that may seem to be correct, but that


proves, on examination, not to be so. We distinguish 17 fallacies here –the most
common and most deceptive mistakes in reasoning –divided into three large
groups, called fallacies of relevance; b) fallacies of presumption; c) fallacies of
ambiguity.

Fallacies of Relevance
When an argument relies on premisses that are not relevant to its
conclusion, and that therefore cannot possibly establish its truth, the fallacy
committed is one of relevance.

1. Ad Ignoratiam (argument from ignorance) is the mistake that is committed


when it is argued that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has
not been proved false, or that it is false because it has not been proved
true.
Famous in the history of science is the argument ad ignorantiam
given in criticism of Galileo, when he showed leading astronomers of his
time that mountains and valleys on the moon that could be seen through
his telescope. Some scholars of that age, absolutely convinced that the
moon was a perfect sphere, as theology and Aristotelian science had long
taught, argued against Galileo that, although we see what appear to be
mountains and valleys, the moon is in fact a perfect sphere, because all its
apparent irregularities are filled in by an invisible crystalline substance –a
hypothesis that saves that perfection of the heavenly bodies and that
Galileo could not prove false.

2. Ad Verecundiam (appeal to Inappropriate authority) arises when the


appeal is made to parties having no legitimate claim to authority in the
matter at hand.
For instance, in an argument about morality, an appeal to the
opinions of Darwin, a towering authority in biology would be fallacious, as
would be an appeal to the opinions of a great artist such as Picasso to
settle an economic dispute.

3. Ad Hominem (argument “against the person”) is a fallacious attack in


which the thrust is directed, not a conclusion, but at the person of the
opponent.
Arguments ad hominem take two forms. When the attack is directly
against persons, seeking to defame or discredit them, it is called an
“abusive ad hominem.” When the attack is indirectly against person,
suggesting that they hold their views chiefly because of their special
circumstances or interests, it is called a “circumstantial ad hominem.”
36

4. Ad Populum (appeal to emotion): When careful reasoning is replaced with


devices calculated to elicit enthusiasm and emotional support for the
conclusion advanced.

5. Ad Misericordiam (appeal to pity): When careful reasoning is replaced by


devices calculated to elicit sympathy on the part of the hearer for the
objects of the speaker’s concern.

6. Ad Baculum (appeal to force): When careful reasoning is replaced with


direct or insinuated threats to bring about the acceptance of some
conclusion

7. Ignoration Elenchi (irrelevant conclusion): When the premisses miss the


point, purporting to support one conclusion while in fact supporting or
establishing another.

Exercises:
Identify the fallacies of relevance in the following passages, and explain
how each specific passage involves that fallacy.

1. The following advertisement for a great metropolitan newspaper appears


very widely in the State of Pennsylvania:
In Philadelphia nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.

2. As an academic, Professor Benedict J. Kerkvliet has given himeld away


as biased and unscientific…. It is pathetic to see Professor Kerkvliet, a
non Filipino, deploring potilical and social conditions in a foreign country
like the Philippines when his own country calls for social and moral
regeneration.

3. In the melancholy book The Future of an Illusion, Dr. Freud, himself one of
the last great theorists of the European capitalist class, has stated with
simple clarity the impossibility of religious belief for the educated man of
today.

4. There is no such thing as a leaderless group. Though the style and


function of leadership will differ with each group and situation, a leader or
leaders will always emerge in a task-oriented group or the task is simply
never accomplished.

5. The President continues to have confidence in the Attorney General and I


have confidence in the Attorney General and you ought to have
confidence in the Attorney General, because we work for the President
and because that’s the way things are. And if anyone has a different view
of that, or any different motive, ambition, or intention, he can tell me about
it because we’re going to have to discuss your status.
37

Fallacies of Presumption. In these, the mistaken arguments are formulated in


such a way to rely on shifts in the meaning of words or phrases, from their use in
the premisses to their use in the conclusion. We have explained the types of
reasoning mistakes in five fallacies of ambiguity:

1. Complex question: When a question is asked in such a way as to


presuppose the truth of some assumption buried in that question.

2. False Cause: When one treats as the cause of a thing what is not really
the cause of that thing, or more generally, when one blunders in reasoning
that is based upon causal relations.

3. Begging the question (petitio principii): When one assumes in the


premisses of an argument the truth of what one seeks to establish in the
conclusion of that argument.

4. Accident: When one applies a generalization to an individual case that it


does not properly govern.

5. Converse Accident: When one moves carelessly or too quickly from a


single case to an indefensibly broad generalization.

Exercises
Identify any fallacies of presumption in the following passages, and
explain how the argument in question involves that fallacy.

1. While General Grant was winning battles in the West, President Lincoln
received many complaints about Grant’s being a drunkard. When a
delegation told him one day that Grant was hopelessly addicted to
whiskey, the President is said to have replied, “I wish General Grant would
send a barrel of whiskey to each of my other generals!”
2. We must accept the traditions of the men of old time who affirm
themselves to be the offspring of the gods –that is what they say –and
they must surely have known their own ancestors. How can we doubt the
word of the children of the gods?
3. There is no such thing as knowledge which cannot be carried into
practice, for such knowledge is really no knowledge at all.
38

Fallacies of Ambiguity. In these, the mistaken arguments are formulated in


such a way as to rely on shifts in the meaning of words or phrases, from their use
in their use in the conclusion. We have explained the types of reasoning
mistakes in five fallacies of ambiguity:

1. Equivocation: When the same word or phrase is used with two or more
meanings, deliberately or accidentally, in the formulation of an argument.

2. Amphiboly: When one of the statements in an argument has more than


one plausible meaning, because of the loose or awkward way in which the
words in that statement have been combined.

3. Accent: When a shift of meaning arises within an argument as a


consequence of changes in the emphasis given to its words or parts.

4. Composition: This fallacy is committed (a) when one reasons mistakenly


from the attributes of a part to the attributes of the whole, and (b) when
one reasons mistakenly from the attributes of an individual member of
some collection to the attributes of the totality of that collection.

5. Division: This fallacy is committed (a) when one reasons mistakenly


from the attributes of a whole to the attributes of one of its parts, and (b)
when one reasons mistakenly from the attributes of a totality of some
collection of entities to the attributes of the individual entities within that
collection.

Exercises
Identify the fallacies of ambiguity in the following passages, and explain
how each specific passage involves that fallacy or fallacies.

1. “You are a bad journalist because you are a bad woman.”


2. … the universe is spherical in form … because all the constituents parts of
the universe, that is the sun, moon, and the planets, appear in this form.
3. …each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the general
happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
4. No man will take counsel, but every man will take money; therefore money
is better than counsel.

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