FALLACY

October 2, 2018
FALLACY

 Defect in an argument that consists in

something other than merely false premises.
 Mistake in reasoning, or the creation of some
illusion that makes a bad argument appear
good (or both).
 Unsound, uncogent depending in the kind of
argument
2 KINDS
 Formal: one that may be identified through mere inspection of the form or structure of
an argument
 Found in deductive arguments that have identifiable forms (categorical, disnjunctive,
hypothetical syllogisms)

 Ex.

 All frogs are dirty animals.

 All rats are dirty animals.
 Therefore, all frogs are rats.

 All A are B
 All C are B
 All A are C.
 Informal fallacies: those that can be detected only through analysis of the content of
the argument.

 Ex.
 All factories are plants
 All plants are things that contain chlorophyll.
 Therefore, all factories are things that contain chlorophyll.

 All A are B.
 All B are C.
 All A are C.
 Valid form, yet clearly the argument is invalid. T premises, F
conclusion.
 Meaning of the words is the source of the trouble.

 True form:

 All A are B.
 All C are D.
 All A are D.
 The various informal fallacies comes in so many different ways that no
single umbrella covers them all.
 Some fallacies work by various emotions of fear, pity or camaraderie,
and attaching some conclusion to emotions.
 Certain pejoratives of its author.
 Appeal to various dispositions on the part of the reader or listener,
supersition, mental laziness.
 Makes a bad argument appear to be good.
5 GROUPS

 Fallacies of relevance
 Fallacies of weak induction
 Fallacies of presumption
 Fallacies of ambiguity
 Fallacies of grammatical analogy
 FALLACIES OF RELEVANCE
 Have premises that are logically irrelevant to the
conclusion.
 Yet the premises are relevant psychologically, so the
conclusion may seem to follow from the premises, even
though it does not follow logically.
 Good argument – genuine evidence; here, in this fallacy,
connection between the premises and the conclusion are
emotional.
 Therefore, determine genuine evidence over the various
forms of emotional appeal.
APPEAL TO FORCE (ARGUMENTATUM
AD BACULUM)
 When some harm when come, implicitly or
explicitly, against the arguer when she does not
accept the conclusion.
 Threat by the arguer, physical or psychological
well being of the other, single or group of persons.
 Ex. Classmates at at grade 2
 Or even, at a superior versus subjects.
APPEAL TO PITY (ARGUMENTUM AD
MISERICORDIAM)
 Your reasoning contains the Fallacy of Appeal to Emotions when
someone's appeal to you to accept their claim is accepted merely
because the appeal arouses your feelings of anger, fear, grief, love,
outrage, pity, pride, sexuality, sympathy, relief, and so forth. Example of
appeal to relief from grief:

 [The speaker knows he is talking to an aggrieved person whose house is worth much more than $100,000.] You had a great
job and didn't deserve to lose it. I wish I could help somehow. I do have one idea. Now your family needs financial security
even more. You need cash. I can help you. Here is a check for $100,000. Just sign this standard sales agreement, and we can
skip the realtors and all the headaches they would create at this critical time in your life.
APPEAL TO PEOPLE (ARGUMENTUM
AD POPULUM)
 Direct approach: arguer addresses a large crowd of people, excites the
emotions and enthusiam of the crowd to win acceptance for his
conclusion. Mob mentality.
 Examples. Campaigns, Adolf Hitler…

 Indirect approach: appeal at one or more individuals separately, focusing

on some aspect of their relationship to the crowd.
Examples. Bandwagon arguments, appeal to vanity, appeal to snobbery.
Techniques of advertising companies.
 Example:
 You should turn to channel 6. It's the most watched channel this year.
 This is fallacious because of its implicitly accepting the questionable premise that the most
watched channel this year is, for that reason alone, the best channel for you. If you stress the idea
of appealing to a new idea held by the gallery, masses, mob, peers, people, and so forth, then it is a
Bandwagon Fallacy.

 Appeal to vanity. Ex. Marlboro representing masculinity.

 Appeal
to snobbery. Ex. Expensive, liquiors, by
appointment to her majesty the queen.
 Ex. Eat green vegetables, to become like popeye.
ARGUMENT AGAINST THE PERSON
(ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM)
 Your reasoning contains this fallacy if you make an irrelevant attack on
the arguer and suggest that this attack undermines the argument itself.
"Ad Hominem" means "to the person" as in being "directed at the
person."

 Ad hominem abusive: the 2nd person responds to the 1st person’s

argument by verbally abusing the first person.
 Ex. Pres. duterte
 Ad hominem circumstantial: the respondent attempts to discredit the
opponent’s argument by alluding to certain circumstances that affect the
opponent.

 Tu quoque (you too), makes the 1st person appear to be hypocritical or

arguing in bad faith.
ACCIDENT
 We often arrive at a generalization but don't or can't list all the
exceptions. When we then reason with the generalization as if it has no
exceptions, our reasoning contains the Fallacy of Accident. This fallacy is sometimes called the "Fallacy of Sweeping

Generalization."

 Example:

 People should keep their promises, right? I loaned Dwayne my knife, and he said he'd return it. Now he is refusing to give it

back, but I need it right now to slash up my neighbors who disrespected me.

 People should keep their promises, but there are exceptions to this generalization as in this case of the psychopath who wants

Dwayne to keep his promise to return the knife.

STRAW MAN
 Your reasoning contains the Straw Man Fallacy whenever you attribute an easily
refuted position to your opponent, one that the opponent wouldn't endorse, and
then proceed to attack the easily refuted position (the straw man) believing you
have thereby undermined the opponent's actual position. If the
misrepresentation is on purpose, then the Straw Man Fallacy is caused by lying.
 Example (a debate before the city council):
 Opponent: Because of the killing and suffering of Indians that followed Columbus's discovery of America, the City of Berkeley should
declare that Columbus Day will no longer be observed in our city.

 Speaker: This is ridiculous, fellow members of the city council. It's not true that everybody who ever came to America from another
country somehow oppressed the Indians. I say we should continue to observe Columbus Day, and vote down this resolution that will make
the City of Berkeley the laughing stock of the nation.

 The speaker has twisted what his opponent said; the opponent never said, nor even indirectly suggested, that everybody who ever came to
America from another country somehow oppressed the Indians.
MISSING THE POINT (IGNORATIO
ELENCHI)

 Ignorance of the proof

 The conclusion that is drawn is irrelevant to the premises; it misses the

point.
 Example:
 In court, Thompson testifies that the defendant is a honorable person, who wouldn't harm a flea. The defense attorney uses

the fallacy by rising to say that Thompson's testimony shows once again that his client was not near the murder scene.

 The testimony of Thompson may be relevant to a request for leniency, but it is irrelevant to any claim about the defendant

not being near the murder scene. Other examples of this fallacy are Ad Hominem, Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Emotions,

and Argument from Ignorance.

RED HERRING

 A red herring is a smelly fish that would distract even a bloodhound. It is also a

digression that leads the reasoner off the track of considering only relevant information.

 Example:

 Will the new tax in Senate Bill 47 unfairly hurt business? I notice that the main provision

of the bill is that the tax is higher for large employers (fifty or more employees) as

opposed to small employers (six to forty-nine employees). To decide on the fairness of

the bill, we must first determine whether employees who work for large employers have

better working conditions than employees who work for small employers. I am ready to

volunteer for a new committee to study this question. How do you suppose the

committee should go about collecting the data we need?

 Bringing up the issue of working conditions and the committee is the red herring

diverting us from the main issue of whether Senate Bill 47 unfairly hurts business.
FALLACIES BY WEAK INDUCTION
 The connection between the premises and conclusion is not strong
enough to support the conclusion
APPEAL TO UNQUALIFIED AUTHORITY
(ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM)
 You appeal to authority if you back up your reasoning by saying that it
is supported by what some authority says on the subject. Most reasoning
of this kind is not fallacious, and much of our knowledge properly
comes from listening to authorities. However, appealing to authority as a
reason to believe something is fallacious whenever the authority appealed to is not really an authority in
this particular subject, when the authority cannot be trusted to tell the truth, when authorities disagree on this subject (except

for the occasional lone wolf), when the reasoner misquotes the authority, and so forth. Although spotting a fallacious appeal

to authority often requires some background knowledge about the subject or the authority, in brief it can be said that it is

fallacious to accept the words of a supposed authority when we should be suspicious of the authority's words.

 Example:

 The moon is covered with dust because the president of our neighborhood association said so.
APPEAL TO IGNORANCE
(ARGUMENTUM AD IGNORANTIAM)
 The Fallacy of Appeal to Ignorance comes in two forms: (1) Not
knowing that a certain statement is true is taken to be a proof that it is
false. (2) Not knowing that a statement is false is taken to be a proof that
it is true. The fallacy occurs in cases where absence of evidence is not
good enough evidence of absence. The fallacy uses an unjustified
attempt to shift the burden of proof. The fallacy is also called
"Argument from Ignorance."
 Example:
 Nobody has ever proved to me there's a God, so I know there is no God.
HASTY GENERALIZATION
 A Hasty Generalization is a Fallacy of Jumping to Conclusions in
which the conclusion is a generalization. See also Biased Statistics.

 Example:

 I've met two people in Nicaragua so far, and they were both nice to me. So, all people I will
meet in Nicaragua will be nice to me.

 In any Hasty Generalization the key error is to overestimate the strength of an argument that is
based on too small a sample for the implied confidence level or error margin. In this argument
about Nicaragua, using the word "all" in the conclusion implies zero error margin. With zero
error margin you'd need to sample every single person in Nicaragua, not just two people.
FALSE CAUSE

 Improperly concluding that one thing is a cause of

another. The Fallacy of Non Causa Pro Causa is
another name for this fallacy. Its four principal
kinds are the Post Hoc Fallacy, the Fallacy of Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc, the
Regression Fallacy, and the Fallacy of Reversing Causation.

 Example:

 My psychic adviser says to expect bad things when Mars is aligned with Jupiter.
Tomorrow Mars will be aligned with Jupiter. So, if a dog were to bite me tomorrow, it
would be because of the alignment of Mars with Jupiter.
SLIPPERY SLOPE
 Suppose someone claims that a first step (in a chain of causes and
effects, or a chain of reasoning) will probably lead to a second step that
in turn will probably lead to another step and so on until a final step
ends in trouble. If the likelihood of the trouble occurring is exaggerated,
the Slippery Slope Fallacy is present.
 Mom: Those look like bags under your eyes. Are you getting enough sleep?
 Jeff: I had a test and stayed up late studying.

 Mom: You didn't take any drugs, did you?

 Jeff: Just caffeine in my coffee, like I always do.

 Mom: Jeff! You know what happens when people take drugs! Pretty soon the caffeine won't be strong enough. Then you will

take something stronger, maybe someone's diet pill. Then, something even stronger. Eventually, you will be doing cocaine.

Then you will be a crack addict! So, don't drink that coffee.

 The form of a Slippery Slope Fallacy looks like this:

 A often leads to B.

 B often leads to C.

 C often leads to D.
WEAK ANALOGY

 The problem is that the items in the analogy are too

dissimilar. When reasoning by analogy, the fallacy
occurs when the analogy is irrelevant or very weak
or when there is a more relevant disanalogy. See
also Faulty Comparison.
 Example:

 The book Investing for Dummies really helped me understand my finances better. The

book Chess for Dummies was written by the same author, was published by the same

press, and costs about the same amount. So, this chess book would probably help me

understand my finances, too.

QUIZ. TRUE OR FALSE.
 Child to parent: “your argument that I should stop stealing candy from
the corner store is no good. You told me yourself just a week ago that
you too stole candy when you were a kid.”

 Ad hominem abusive. True or false.

 Mother to child. “you want to grow up and be just like wonder woman,
don’t you? Then eat your liver and carrots.”

 Appeal to snobbery. True or false.

 On three separate occasions and places, I drank tuba. And they are all
delicious. In the future, when I drink tuba, they would all be delicious
too.

 Hasty generalization? True or false.