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Ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments that are fallacious. Often nowadays this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a personal attack as a diversion often using a totally irrelevant, but often highly charged attribute of the opponent's character or background. The most common form of this fallacy is "A" makes a claim of "fact," to which "B" asserts that "A" has a personal trait, quality or physical attribute that is repugnant thereby going entirely off-topic, and hence "B" concludes that "A" has their "fact" wrong - without ever addressing the point of the debate. Many contemporary politicians routinely use ad hominem attacks, which can be encapsulated to a derogatory nickname for a political opponent.
The relativist fallacy, also known as the subjectivist fallacy, is claiming that something is true for one person but not true for someone else, when in fact that thing is an objective fact. The fallacy rests on the law of noncontradiction. The fallacy applies only to objective facts, or what are alleged to be objective facts, rather than to facts about personal tastes or subjective experiences, and only to facts regarded in the same sense and at the same time.
A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when, in fact, there could be many.
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion. Historically, begging the question refers to a fault in a dialectical argument in which the speaker assumes some premise that has not been demonstrated to be true. In modern usage, it has come to refer to an argument in which the premises assume the conclusion without supporting it. This makes it an example of circular reasoning.
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian De Sophisticis Elenchis.
Deductive reasoning is the process of drawing valid inferences. An inference is valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, meaning that it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc is an informal fallacy which one commits when one reasons, "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is a fallacy in which an event is presumed to have been caused by a closely preceding event merely on the grounds of temporal succession. This type of reasoning is fallacious because mere temporal succession does not establish a causal connection. It is often shortened simply to post hoc fallacy. A logical fallacy of the questionable cause variety, it is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which two events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a logical fallacy in which one event seems to be the cause of a later event because it occurred earlier.
A faulty generalization is an informal fallacy wherein a conclusion is drawn about all or many instances of a phenomenon on the basis of one or a few instances of that phenomenon. It is similar to a proof by example in mathematics. It is an example of jumping to conclusions. For example, one may generalize about all people or all members of a group from what one knows about just one or a few people:
Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. It is also called argument to logic, the fallacy fallacy, the fallacist's fallacy, and the bad reasons fallacy.
Logical reasoning is a mental activity that aims to arrive at a conclusion in a rigorous way. It happens in the form of inferences or arguments by starting from a set of premises and reasoning to a conclusion supported by these premises. The premises and the conclusion are propositions, i.e. true or false claims about what is the case. Together, they form an argument. Logical reasoning is norm-governed in the sense that it aims to formulate correct arguments that any rational person would find convincing. The main discipline studying logical reasoning is logic.
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the form of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their content and context. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually appear to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit.
Attacking Faulty Reasoning is a textbook on logical fallacies by T. Edward Damer that has been used for many years in a number of college courses on logic, critical thinking, argumentation, and philosophy. It explains 60 of the most commonly committed fallacies. Each of the fallacies is concisely defined and illustrated with several relevant examples. For each fallacy, the text gives suggestions about how to address or to "attack" the fallacy when it is encountered. The organization of the fallacies comes from the author’s own fallacy theory, which defines a fallacy as a violation of one of the five criteria of a good argument:
In logic and philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy, logical fallacy or non sequitur is a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure that can neatly be expressed in a standard logic system, for example propositional logic. It is defined as a deductive argument that is invalid. The argument itself could have true premises, but still have a false conclusion. Thus, a formal fallacy is a fallacy where deduction goes wrong, and is no longer a logical process. This may not affect the truth of the conclusion, since validity and truth are separate in formal logic.
Bulverism is a type of ad hominem rhetorical fallacy that combines circular reasoning and the genetic fallacy with presumption or condescension. The Bulverist assumes a speaker's argument is invalid or false and then explains why the speaker came to make that mistake or to be so silly by attacking the speaker or the speaker's motive.
Ralph Henry Johnson is a Canadian American philosopher, born in Detroit, Michigan. Johnson has been credited as one of the founding members of the informal logic movement in North America, along with J. Anthony Blair who co-published one of the movement's most influential texts, Logical Self-Defense, with Johnson. Alongside its founder, Blair, Johnson co-directed the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric at the University of Windsor. As Johnson and Blair write in the preface to the newest edition of Logical Self-Defense on the influential nature of the text:
"We might note that the theoretical perspective introduced in Logical Self-Defense has proved quite influential among textbook authors. It is to be found in modified form in A Practical Study of Argument by Trudy Govier, in Attacking Faulty Reasoning by T. Edward Damer, in Logic in Everyday Life and Open Minds and Everyday Reasoning by Zachary Seech, in Thinking Logically by James B. Freeman, and in Good Reasoning Matters by Leo Groarke and Christopher W. Tindale."
Argument from analogy is a special type of inductive argument, where perceived similarities are used as a basis to infer some further similarity that has not been observed yet. Analogical reasoning is one of the most common methods by which human beings try to understand the world and make decisions. When a person has a bad experience with a product and decides not to buy anything further from the producer, this is often a case of analogical reasoning since the two products share a maker and are therefore both perceived as "bad". It is also the basis of much of science; for instance, experiments on laboratory rats are based on the fact that some physiological similarities between rats and humans implies some further similarity.
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises due to the structure of arguments alone, independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. It examines arguments expressed in natural language while formal logic uses formal language. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics.
An argument from anecdote is an informal logical fallacy, where anecdotal evidence is presented as an argument; without any other contributory evidence or reasoning. This type of argument is considered as an informal logical fallacy as it is unpersuasive – since the anecdote could be made up, misconstrued or be a statistical outlier which is insignificant when further evidence is considered. This fallacy can often be found in conjunction with the hasty generalisation fallacy – where the hasty generalisation is made from unsubstantiated anecdotes.
References
- ↑ "special pleading". English Oxford Living Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on May 23, 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
Argument in which the speaker deliberately ignores aspects that are unfavourable to their point of view.
- ↑ Damer, T. Edward (2008). Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments (6 ed.). Cengage Learning. pp. 122–124. ISBN 978-0-495-09506-4.
- ↑ Engel, S. Morris (1994), Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language: The Language Trap, Courier Dover Publications, p. 102, ISBN 978-0-486-28274-9
- 1 2 Wheeler, Dr. L. Kip. "Logical Fallacies Handlist". Carson-Newman University (Study Guide). Room 309 in the English Department suite of Henderson 311. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
Special Pleading, in which the writer creates a universal principle, then insists that principle does not for some reason apply to the issue at hand.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link) - 1 2 Dowden, Bradley. "Special Pleading". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. California State University, Sacramento. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
[A] form of inconsistency in which the reasoner doesn't apply [their] principles consistently…[T]he fallacy of applying a general principle to various situations but not applying it to a special situation that interests the arguer even though the general principle properly applies to that special situation, too.
- ↑ LaMorte, Wayne W. "Fallacious Reasoning and Propaganda Techniques". Persuasive Messages. Boston University School of Public Health. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
Special Pleading: committed by applying a double standard exemplified in choice of words.
- ↑ Slick, Matt (18 May 2008). "Logical fallacies or fallacies in argumentation". Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
Special Pleading (double standard) - Applying a standard to another that is different from a standard applied to oneself.
- ↑ This division is found in introductory texts such as Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument, W. Ward Fearnside, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959. OCLC 710677
- ↑ "Special Pleading". Bruce Thompson's Fallacy Page. Palomar College: Critical Thinking (PHIL 200) [study guide]. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
The argument defends a position by claiming that the opponent lacks the necessary perspective (experiences or credentials) to appreciate the position (or the arguments in support of it). This lack allegedly makes the opponent unqualified to critique the position... [t]his extreme version of Special Pleading is a tactic often used to argue that no action can be judged morally wrong, since no one has the perspective to be able to judge another person's moral code... [e.g.] 'My opponent can't know what's best for our fair community. He wasn't born and raised here, like I was.'
- ↑ "Special Pleading". Bruce Thompson's Fallacy Page. Palomar College: Critical Thinking (PHIL 200) [study guide]. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
'You aren't like me, so you do not even have a right to think about or hold opinions on my plight'... [t]he fallacy of Special Pleading presupposes that some differences are so great that the human capacity of empathy cannot cross them.
- ↑ Fischer, D. H. (1970), Historians' Fallacies: Toward A Logic of Historical Thought, Harper torchbooks (first ed.), New York: HarperCollins, pp. 110–113, ISBN 978-0-06-131545-9, OCLC 185446787
