Fallacies – Faults in Logic

1. Straw Man

The opponent takes the argument of their adversary and then offers a close imitation or straw man version of the original argument. They then “knock down” the straw man version of the argument because the straw man is a much easier target. The opponent looks like they have countered/overcome the original argument, but they have only overcome a much lesser version of it.

2. Slippery Slope

This form of argument uses a long stream of if then statements which leads to something awful. In itself, this is a perfectly valid form of argument. However the problem arises in the fact that somewhere in the argument, the if-then isn’t always the true with 100% deductive clarity. The chain of logic is broken so the conclusion is invalid.

3. Tradition

In this fallacy, a person asserts that something is right or good simply because it has always been that way. Slavery is the classic example of this fallacy: the South incorrectly argued in the time of the American civil war that slavery was a tradition and the basis of their way of life.

4. Money, Money, Money

In this fallacy, you argue that someone who is rich or who has made a lot of money is more likely to be correct. Another form of this argument is that if something makes financial sense, it is right.

5. (Verbally) Attack the Speaker

To prove someone wrong, you must attack the argument, not the person who is saying it. Someone’s character is irrelevant to the argument.

6. Appeal to Ignorance

This has two forms: “Item P is true because it has not been proven false” and “Item P is false, because it has not been proven true”. Item P could be true when I haven’t proven it false, it isn’t necessarily false.

7. Majority Rules

A fallacy that asserts that the more people who believe something, the more likely it is to be true.

8. Appeal to Authority

An argument where an authority is used as evidence that something is true when that item is outside their area of expertise. No one is an authority on everything.

9. Black and White

It is wrong to present a situation as only having two alternatives, when in fact, other alternatives exist or can exist. Also known as over simplification.

10. Red Herring

A fallacy when irrelevant material is introduced to the argument at hand. Also known as changing the subject or diverting the other person’s attention.

11. Two Wrongs Make a Right

Two wrongs make two wrongs in moral arguments. They don’t cancel.

12. Newness

A fallacy where a person asserts that something is better because it is new. Not every new thing is a model of progress and everything good.

Causation

Causation refers to a situation where X causes Y. Whenever you are trying to prove that something causes something else with regards to human beings, causation is VERY difficult to prove.

Fallacies concerned with Causation

C1. Ice Cream Fallacy

A fallacy of correlation that links events because they occur simultaneously; one asserts that because two events occur together, they are causally related. This argument leaves no room for other factors that may cause the events.

Eg. Ice Cream Sales increase in the summer and decrease in the winter. Crime rates also increase in the summer and decrease in the winter. Therefore, ice cream causes crime.

C2. Hasty Generalization

This is a fallacy that takes evidence from several, possibly unrepresentative samples of a larger population. It is then used to generalize a rule about everyone. Because the sample was not carefully chosen, it is not necessarily representative of the population.

C3. Precedence

This is a fallacy that asserts because something X happened before another thing Y, that X caused Y. Just because something happened before another thing doesn't necessarily mean that it caused it.

C4. Proof By Example

You can not prove that something causes something else because you know of one example where this is true. The one instance that you have could just be a freak occurrence and not be true for all people.