LG#2 : Methods of Philosophizing - Informal Fallacies (1st Grading Period) Flashcards
It is a a defect [mistake or error] in an argument but the defect is anything other than merely having false premises.
Fallacy / Fallacies
What are the Two Types of Fallacies?
- Formal Fallacies
- Informal Fallacies
It is the mistake is in the content of an argument.
Informal Fallacies
Five Types of Informal Fallacies
- Fallacies of Relevance
- Fallacies of Weak Induction
- Fallacies of Presumption
- Fallacies of Ambiguity
- Fallacies of Grammatical Analogy
The premises are not logically relevant to the conclusion.
Fallacies of Relevance
This fallacy is committed whenever the person giving the argument in some way THREATENS the listener, and this threat is the reason supplied for why the listener should believe the conclusion (rather than some premises that are actually relevant).
Appeal to Force (Argumentum ad Baculum)
This fallacy is committed whenever someone tries to support a conclusion by evoking pity, rather than by supplying evidence that is actually relevant to the conclusion.
Appeal to Pity (Argumentum ad misericordiam)
This fallacy is committed whenever the cause of the listener’s acceptance of the conclusion is that they are made to feel like they are a PART OF something special (that they admire, value, envy, etc.), or else because they WANT to be a part of something special.
Appeal to the People (Argumentum ad Populum)
This occurs whenever the speaker DIRECTLY appeals to, or excites the emotions of the listener(s), and this excitement is what causes the listener(s) to accept the conclusion being endorsed by the speaker.
Appeal to the People (Direct)
This occurs whenever the speaker implies to the listener(s) that they will be left out or left behind if they do not agree with the speaker. Usually, this involves pointing out that “everyone else is doing it/believes it”.
Appeal to the People (Indirect; Bandwagon Argument)
This occurs whenever the speaker associates the conclusion they are putting forward with some desirable person or feature. This puts in the listener’s mind the idea that, if they believe the conclusion, they will be JUST LIKE this desirable person, or they will HAVE this desirable feature too!
Appeal to the People (Indirect; Appeal to Vanity)
This occurs whenever the speaker associates the conclusion with being in an elite class or a lucky member of a select few.
Appeal to the People (Indirect; Snoberry)
This fallacy is committed whenever, someone, rather than providing EVIDENCE for their view, merely resorts to attacking their listener instead.
Argument Against the Person (Argumentum ad Hominem)
This occurs when one person, rather than supplying REASONS for why their opponent is wrong, instead resorts to directly verbally abusing the other.
Argument Against the Person (Abusive)
This occurs when someone, rather than supplying REASONS for why their opponent is wrong, instead resorts to pointing out circumstances that make it MORE LIKELY that their opponent would be asserting the conclusion that they are asserting.
Argument Against the Person (Circumstantial)
This occurs whenever someone, rather than supplying REASONS for why someone is mistaken, instead merely tries to make that person seem like a hypocrite.
Argument Against the Person (“You Too”, Tu Quoque, Hypocrisy)
General rules often have exceptions. This fallacy is committed whenever someone misapplies a general rule to one of the cases that is an exception.
Accident
This fallacy is committed whenever someone, in order to attack an opponent, attacks some WEAKER, DISTORTED VERSION of their opponent’s
argument, rather than the actual argument, the opponent is giving.
Straw Man
This fallacy is committed whenever someone takes certain premises which support ONE particular conclusion, and—rather than draw THAT conclusion—they instead draw a DIFFERENT (but somewhat related) conclusion instead; and it is one that the premises do NOT support.
Missing the Point
This fallacy is committed whenever someone responds to their opponent by changing the subject to something completely
different.
Red Herring
The premises only WEAKLY support the conclusion.
Fallacies of Weak Induction
This fallacy is committed whenever someone proposes that some conclusion is true
because someone who is NOT an authority on the subject SAID it was true.
Appeal to Unqualified Authority (Argumentum ad Verecundiam)
This fallacy is committed whenever someone concludes that either:
(a) because they can’t see how something could be true, it must be false, or;
(b) because they can’t see how something could be false, it must be true.
Appeal to Ignorance (Argumentum ad ignorantiam)
This fallacy is committed whenever someone draws a conclusion about a WHOLE group after examining only SOME of the members of that group.
Hasty Generalization (Converse Accident)
This fallacy is committed whenever someone bases a conclusion upon the imagined existence of a causal connection that probably does not exist.
False Cause
Four Varieties of the False Cause Fallacy
- Coincidence (Post hoc ergo propter hoc)
- Correlation (Non causa pro causa)
- Oversimplified Cause
- The Gambler’s Fallacy
This occurs whenever someone observes one event followed by another, and then concludes that the first event CAUSED the second.
Coincidence (Post hoc ergo propter hoc)
This occurs whenever someone mistakes CORRELATION for CAUSATION.
___ is the fact of two things commonly existing or occurring together, or in conjunction with one another.
But, it is a mistake to think that, just because two things are often found coupled, that one is CAUSING the other.
Correlation (Non causa pro causa)
This occurs whenever some effect is the result of a fairly complicated system or chain of causes, but the observer selects only a small PART of that causal system and mistakes it for the ENTIRE cause.
Oversimplified Cause
This occurs whenever someone assumes that two independent events of random chance are connected because the events are both a part of the same game.
The Gambler’s Fallacy
This fallacy is committed whenever someone concludes something based on an assumption about a chain-reaction that they think will occur—but the chain-reaction is actually (contrary to their assumption) very unlikely.
Slippery Slope
This fallacy is committed whenever a conclusion is drawn about something because it is similar to something else.
So, this is exactly like the NON fallacious variety of inductive argument called the “argument by analogy”— except that a conclusion derived from an analogy is NOT supported if the analogy or similarity is not very strong.
Weak Analogy
The premises do NOT provide INDEPENDENT evidence for the conclusion.
Fallacies of Presumption
This occurs when the very thing to be proven in the conclusion (or some crucial bit of evidence which supports it) is already assumed to be true at the outset of the argument.
Begging the Question
In Begging the question, arguments that beg the question come in the form of enthymemes, where the crucial premise is left out.
Missing Key Premise
Begging the question also occurs whenever the conclusion says basically the same thing as the premise(s).
This gives the illusion that something has been “proved” when in reality it is merely the case that the same thing is being said twice in a row.
Conclusion Restates the Premise
In begging the question, this occurs whenever the argument is “reasons in a circle”.
This is when a chain of inferences, or several steps, reasons in such a way that the last step ends up proving the initial assumption (i.e., the first step).
Circular Reasoning
This is when a question is proposed as if a “yes” or “no” or some other short or one-word answer would suffice, when a longer, clarifying answer is actually needed.
This is due to the fact that the question being asked is actually TWO questions disguised as one.
Complex Question
This occurs whenever someone presents two options as if they were the ONLY two options (though they are not), and then, after eliminating ONE of them, concludes that the second option must be true.
False Dichotomy
This occurs when an argument purposely leaves out or ignores relevant evidence because that evidence would cast doubt on the conclusion being offered.
Suppressed Evidence
The conclusion depends on some kind of linguistic ambiguity. Terms are ambiguous when it is unclear how to interpret them.
This can lead us to draw erroneous conclusions from given premises.
Fallacies of Ambiguity
This occurs whenever a single term is being used in two different ways within an argument.
Equivocation
This occurs whenever an ambiguous statement, which could be interpreted in different ways, is interpreted in the WRONG way in order to support some conclusion.
Amphiboly
Mistaken inferences are drawn from the parts of something to the whole, or from a whole to its parts.
Fallacies of Grammatical Analogy
This occurs when someone mistakenly assumes that, just because all of the PARTS of something have some feature,
that the whole must ALSO have that feature.
Composition
This occurs when someone mistakenly assumes that, just because a WHOLE has some feature, that all of its parts must ALSO have that feature.
Division
