Girvee D.

Canedo XI-Arxhimedes
Mr. Vitalian Christophere L. Napone September 19, 2019

FALLACIES
What are fallacies?
Fallacies are defects that weaken arguments. By learning to look for them in your own and others’ writing, you
can strengthen your ability to evaluate the arguments you make, read, and hear. It is important to realize two
things about fallacies: first, fallacious arguments are very, very common and can be quite persuasive, at least to
the casual reader or listener. You can find dozens of examples of fallacious reasoning in newspapers,
advertisements, and other sources. Second, it is sometimes hard to evaluate whether an argument is fallacious.
An argument might be very weak, somewhat weak, somewhat strong, or very strong. An argument that has several
stages or parts might have some strong sections and some weak ones. The goal of this handout, then, is not to
teach you how to label arguments as fallacious or fallacy-free, but to help you look critically at your own
arguments and move them away from the “weak” and toward the “strong” end of the continuum.
Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/fallacies/
Two competing conceptions of fallacies are that they are false but popular beliefs and that they are deceptively
bad arguments. These we may distinguish as the belief and argument conceptions of fallacies. Academic writers
who have given the most attention to the subject of fallacies insist on, or at least prefer, the argument conception
of fallacies, but the belief conception is prevalent in popular and non-scholarly discourse. As we shall see, there
are yet other conceptions of what fallacies are, but the present inquiry focuses on the argument conception of
fallacies.
Being able to detect and avoid fallacies has been viewed as a supplement to criteria of good reasoning. The
knowledge of fallacies is needed to arm us against the most enticing missteps we might take with arguments—so
thought not only Aristotle but also the early nineteenth century logicians Richard Whately and John Stuart Mill.
But as the course of logical theory from the late nineteenth-century forward turned more and more to axiomatic
systems and formal languages, the study of reasoning and natural language argumentation received much less
attention, and hence developments in the study of fallacies almost came to a standstill. Until well past the middle
of the twentieth century, discussions of fallacies were for the most part relegated to introductory level textbooks.
It was only when philosophers realized the ill fit between formal logic, on the one hand, and natural language
reasoning and argumentation, on the other, that the interest in fallacies has returned. Since the 1970s the utility of
knowing about fallacies has been acknowledged (Johnson and Blair 1993), and the way in which fallacies are
incorporated into theories of argumentation has been taken as a sign of a theory’s level of adequacy (Biro and
Siegel 2007, van Eemeren 2010).
In modern fallacy studies it is common to distinguish formal and informal fallacies. Formal fallacies are those
readily seen to be instances of identifiable invalid logical forms such as undistributed middle and denying the
antecedent. Although many of the informal fallacies are also invalid arguments, it is generally thought to be more
profitable, from the points of view of both recognition and understanding, to bring their weaknesses to light
through analyses that do not involve appeal to formal languages. For this reason it has become the practice to
eschew the symbolic language of formal logic in the analysis of these fallacies; hence the term ‘informal fallacy’
has gained wide currency.
Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/

EQUIVOCATION
(also known as: doublespeak)
The fallacy of equivocation is an argument which exploits the ambiguity of a term or phrase which has occurred
at least twice in an argument, such that on the first occurrence it has one meaning and on the second another
meaning. A familiar example is:
The end of life is death.
Happiness is the end of life.
So, death is happiness.
‘The end of life’ first means ceasing to live, then it means purpose. That the same set of words is used twice
conceals the fact that the two distinct meanings undermine the continuity of the reasoning, resulting in a non-
sequitur.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/

COMPOSITION
(also known as: composition fallacy, exception fallacy, faulty induction)
Description: Inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the
whole. This is the opposite of the fallacy of division.

Logical Form:
A is part of B.
A has property X.
Therefore, B has property X.

Example #1:
Each brick in that building weighs less than a pound. Therefore, the building weighs less than a pound.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/88/Fallacy-of-Composition

DIVISION
(also known as: false division, faulty deduction, division fallacy)
Description: Inferring that something is true of one or more of the parts from the fact that it is true of the
whole. This is the opposite of the fallacy of composition.

Logical Form:
A is part of B.
B has property X.
Therefore, A has property X.

Example #1:
His house is about half the size of most houses in the neighborhood. Therefore, his doors must all be about 3
1/2 feet high.
Explanation: The size of one’s house almost certainly does not mean that the doors will be smaller, especially
by the same proportions. The size of the whole (the house) is not directly related to the size of every part of the
house.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/89/Fallacy-of-Division

IGNORANCE
ad ignorantiam
(also known as: appeal to ignorance)
Description: The assumption of a conclusion or fact based primarily on lack of evidence to the
contrary. Usually best described by, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Logical Forms:
X is true because you cannot prove that X is false.
X is false because you cannot prove that X is true.

Example #1:
Although we have proven that the moon is not made of spare ribs, we have not proven that its core cannot be
filled with them; therefore, the moon’s core is filled with spare ribs.
Explanation: There is an infinity of things we cannot prove -- the moon being filled with spare ribs is one of
them. Now you might expect that any “reasonable” person would know that the moon can’t be filled with spare
ribs, but you would be expecting too much. People make wild claims, and get away with them, simply on the
fact that the converse cannot otherwise be proven.
Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/56/Argument-from-Ignorance

APPEAL TO INAPPROPRIATE AUTHORITY

argumentum ad verecundiam
(also known as: argument from authority, ipse dixit)
Description: Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true,
without any other supporting evidence offered. Also see the appeal to false authority.

Logical Form:
According to person 1, who is an expert on the issue of Y, Y is true.
Therefore, Y is true.

Example #1:
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and perhaps the foremost expert in the field, says that evolution is
true. Therefore, it's true.
Explanation: Richard Dawkins certainly knows about evolution, and he can confidently tell us that it is true, but
that doesn't make it true. What makes it true is the preponderance of evidence for the theory.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/21/Appeal-to-Authority

APPEAL TO PERSON
In Logic, Appeal to the Person is an informal fallacy of relevance. This fallacy occurs when someone attacks
the person giving an argument, rather than the argument under consideration.

Example, “You shouldn’t vote for Donald Trump because he’s been married three times.”

Source: http://www.mesacc.edu/~barsp59601/text/lex/defs/a/appealtotheperson.html

COMPLEX QUESTION
plurium interrogationum
(also known as: many questions fallacy, fallacy of presupposition, loaded question, trick question, false
question)
Description: A question that has a presupposition built in, which implies something but protects the one asking
the question from accusations of false claims. It is a form of misleading discourse, and it is a fallacy when the
audience does not detect the assumed information implicit in the question and accepts it as a fact.

Example #1:
How many times per day do you beat your wife?
Explanation: Even if the response is an emphatic, “none!” the damage has been done. If you are hearing this
question, you are more likely to accept the possibility that the person who was asked this question is a wife-
beater, which is fallacious reasoning on your part.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/69/Complex-Question-Fallacy

FALSE CAUSE
A false cause fallacy occurs when one cites to sequential events as evidence that the first caused the second.
The argument generally looks like this:
Event A happened.
Event B happened after A.
Therefore, A caused B.
The false cause fallacy is sometimes summarized and presented under the slogans “correlation is not causation”
and “sequence is not causation”.

Example of false cause fallacy:

Every day, I eat cereal for breakfast. One time, I had a muffin instead, and there was a major earthquake in my
city. I've eaten cereal ever since.
In this case, the speaker seems to have the superstitious belief that the earthquake was his or her fault, because it
coincided with the odd occurance of having eaten a muffin for breakfast, despite there being no logical
connection between these events

Source: http://www.philosophy-index.com/logic/fallacies/false-cause.php
.
BEGGING THE QUESTION
petitio principii
(also known as: assuming the initial point, assuming the answer, chicken and the egg argument, circulus in
probando, circular reasoning [form of], vicious circle)
Description: Any form of argument where the conclusion is assumed in one of the premises. Many people use
the phrase “begging the question” incorrectly when they use it to mean, “prompts one to ask the
question”. That is NOT the correct usage. Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning.

Logical Form:
Claim X assumes X is true.
Therefore, claim X is true.

Example #1:
Paranormal activity is real because I have experienced what can only be described as paranormal activity.
Explanation: The claim, “paranormal activity is real” is supported by the premise, “I have experienced what can
only be described as paranormal activity.” The premise presupposes, or assumes, that the claim, “paranormal
activity is real” is already true.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/53/Begging-the-Question

ACCIDENT
a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid
(also known as: destroying the exception, dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, dicto simpliciter, converse
accident, reverse accident, fallacy of the general rule, sweeping generalization)
Description: When an attempt is made to apply a general rule to all situations when clearly there are exceptions
to the rule. Simplistic rules or laws rarely take into consideration legitimate exceptions, and to ignore these
exceptions is to bypass reason to preserve the illusion of a perfect law. People like simplicity and would often
rather keep simplicity at the cost of rationality.

Logical Form:
X is a common and accepted rule.
Therefore, there are no exceptions to X.

Example #1:
I believe one should never deliberately hurt another person, that’s why I can never be a surgeon.
Explanation: Classifying surgery under “hurting” someone, is to ignore the obvious benefits that go with
surgery. These kinds of extreme views are rarely built on reason.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/2/Accident-Fallacy

HASTY GENERALIZATION
(also known as: argument from small numbers, statistics of small numbers, insufficient statistics, argument by
generalization, faulty generalization, hasty induction, inductive generalization, insufficient sample, lonely fact
fallacy, over generality, overgeneralization, unrepresentative sample)
Description: Drawing a conclusion based on a small sample size, rather than looking at statistics that are much
more in line with the typical or average situation.

Logical Form:
Sample S is taken from population P.
Sample S is a very small part of population P.
Conclusion C is drawn from sample S and applied to population P.

Example #1:
My father smoked four packs of cigarettes a day since age fourteen and lived until age sixty-nine. Therefore,
smoking really can’t be that bad for you.
Explanation: It is extremely unreasonable (and dangerous) to draw a universal conclusion about the health risks
of smoking by the case study of one man.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/100/Hasty-Generalization

TU QUOQUE
Ad Hominem (Tu quoque)
argumentum ad hominem tu quoque
(also known as: “you too” fallacy, hypocrisy, personal inconsistency)
Description: Claiming the argument is flawed by pointing out that the one making the argument is not acting
consistently with the claims of the argument.

Logical Form:
Person 1 is claiming that Y is true, but person 1 is acting as if Y is not true.
Therefore, Y must not be true.

Example #1:
Helga: You should not be eating that... it has been scientifically proven that eating fat burgers are no good for
your health.
Hugh: You eat fat burgers all the time so that can’t be true.
Explanation: It doesn’t matter (to the truth claim of the argument at least) if Helga follows her own advice or
not. While it might appear that the reason she does not follow her own advice is that she doesn’t believe it’s
true, it could also be that those fat burgers are just too irresistible.

Source: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/11/Ad-Hominem-Tu-quoque