Ch. 4: Fallacies Flashcards
Fallacy
A type of argument that seems to be correct, but contains a mistake in reasoning.
Fallacy of relevance
A fallacy in which the premises are irrelevant to the conclusion.
Appeal to the populace
An informal fallacy in which the support given for some conclusion is an appeal to popular belief. Also known as argument ad populum.
Appeal to pity
A fallacy in which the argument relies on generosity, altruism, or mercy, rather than on reason. Also known as argument ad misericordiam.
Red herring
A fallacy in which attention is deliberately deflected away from the issue under discussion.
Straw man
A fallacy in which an opponent’s position is depicted as being more extreme or unreasonable than is justified by what was actually asserted.
Argument against the person
A fallacy in which the argument relies upon an attack against the person taking a position. This fallacy is also known as “argument ad hominem.
Poisoning the well
A variety of abusive ad hominem argument in which continued rational exchange is undermined by attacking the good faith or intellectual honesty of the opponent.
Appeal to force
A fallacy in which the argument relies upon an open or veiled threat of force. Also known as “argument ad baculum.
Missing the point
A fallacy in which the premises support a different conclusion from the one that is proposed. Also known as “irrelevant conclusion” and “ignoratio elenchi.
Fallacy of defective induction
A fallacy in which the premises are too weak or ineffective to warrant the conclusion.
Argument from ignorance
A fallacy in which a proposition is held to be true just because it has not been proven false, or false because it has not been proven true. Also known as “argument ad ignorantiam.
Appeal to inappropriate authority
A fallacy in which a conclusion is accepted as true simply because an expert has said that it is true. This is a fallacy whether or not the expert’s area of expertise is relevant to the conclusion. Also known as “argument ad verecundiam.
False cause
A fallacy in which something that is not really the cause of something else is treated as its cause. Also known as non causa pro causa.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
A fallacy in which an event is presumed to have been caused by a closely preceding event. Literally, “After this; therefore, because of this.
Slippery slope
A fallacy in which change in a particular direction is asserted to lead inevitably to further changes (usually undesirable) in the same direction.
Hasty generalization
A fallacy of defective induction in which one moves carelessly from a single case, or a very few cases, to a large-scale generalization about all or most cases. Also known as “converse accident.
Fallacy of presumption
Any fallacy in which the conclusion depends on a tacit assumption that is dubious, unwarranted, or false.
Fallacy of accident
A fallacy in which a generalization is mistakenly applied to a particular case to which the generalization does not apply.
Complex question
An informal fallacy in which a question is asked in such a way as to presuppose the truth of some conclusion buried in that question.
Begging the question
An informal fallacy in which the conclusion of an argument is stated or assumed in any one of the premises. Also known as “circular argument” and petitio principii.
Fallacy of ambiguity
An informal fallacy caused by a shift or a confusion in the meanings of words or phrases within an argument. Also known as a “sophism.”
Fallacy of equivocation
A fallacy in which two or more meanings of a word or phrase are used, accidentally or deliberately, in different parts of an argument.
Fallacy of amphiboly
A fallacy in which a loose or awkward combination of words can be interpreted in more than one way; the argument contains a premise based upon one interpretation, while the conclusion relies on a different interpretation.
Fallacy of Accent
A fallacy of ambiguity that occurs when an argument contains a premise that relies on one possible emphasis of certain words, but the conclusion relies on a different emphasis that gives those same words a different meaning.
Fallacy of composition
A fallacy of ambiguity in which an argument erroneously assigns attributes to a whole (or to a collection) based on the fact that parts of that whole (or members of that collection) have those attributes.
Fallacy of division
A fallacy of ambiguity in which an argument erroneously assigns attributes to parts of a whole (or to members of a collection) based on the fact that the whole (or the collection) has those attributes.
