The Fallacy of Accident

The Fallacy of Accident is the applying of a general rule inappropriately to a particular case that is outside the scope of the general rule. Thus the claim that everyone has the right to free speech is taken as the right to make racist statements. Or someone may believe that penguins can fly because they are birds and birds can fly.

The Fallacy of Amphiboly

The Fallacy of Amphiboly refers to sentences or phrases which are grammatically ambiguous and can be interpreted in more than one way. Widely used by Groucho Marx, such as in the classic: “One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got into my pyjamas I'll never know.” Can be used to deliberately deceive, such as in “We oppose taxes which slow economic growth.” Do they oppose all taxes or only those that slow economic growth.

The Fallacy of Argument By Selective Observation

The Fallacy of Argument By Selective Observation is where we count the hits and forget the misses. For example when someone talks about what a bad state the world is in, as a result of them paying attention to all the bad news but ignoring the good news. Casinos encourage the selective observation tendency. There are bells and whistles to announce slot machine jackpots, but losing happens silently. This makes it much easier to think that the odds of winning are good. Some specific examples of this fallacy include the Fallacy of Suppressed Evidence, where some particular evidence is ignored, and the Fallacy of Confirmation Bias, where only evidence that supports an argument is sought.

The Fallacy “Ad Hominem”, Argument To The Man

The Fallacy “Ad Hominem”, Argument To The Man, is where it is the person who is making the argument that is attacked rather than the argument itself. Thus it might be stated we cannot believe an argument because the person making it is a cheat, or an ex-convict, or foreign, or just plain stupid. Such statements are usually irrelevant to the argument. Only if the person’s credibility is itself part of the argument - where for example they ask us to believe something because they are an expert - is it valid to then question whether they are truly an expert in the matter under consideration.

Appeal to Authority

Much of our knowledge comes from listening to authorities or experts and we can make an Appeal to Authority as a legitimate part of an argument. However, an Appeal to Authority is a Fallacy under circumstances such as: when the authority appealed to is not really an authority in this particular subject, or the particular aspect of the subject under consideration; when the authority cannot be trusted to tell the truth such as there being vested interests; when the authority might be under pressure or have other distractions; when there is significant disagreement between authorities; when the particular authority being quoted has a poor record of being right on this topic; or when the authority is misquoted.

An Appeal to Consequence

An Appeal to Consequence, is arguing that something is true or false based on whether or not we find the consequences acceptable. Thus you might believe someone to be innocent because they are a close friend and it is inconceivable that a close friend would do such a thing. When we engage in Wishful Thinking we are exhibiting this fallacy.

The Fallacy of Appeal to Emotions

The Fallacy of Appeal to Emotions is when someone appeals to you to accept their claim merely because of the feelings and emotions aroused, such as fear, love, outrage, guilt, pity, pride, sympathy, etc. This is commonly used in advertising and in politics. For example, when people who have suffered some tragedy are treated as though they are experts on related topics. Use of this fallacy as an influencing technique can be very effective in practice, as emotion often holds more sway than logic. Of course, use of emotions to persuade people to take action is not necessarily a bad thing, and is a part of how we motivate others for good. However as a basis for belief in what is true or false it is a fallacy.

The Fallacy of Appeal to Human Nature

The Fallacy of Appeal to Human Nature is the claim that some general behavioral trait is built in to us as a result of our evolutionary past. Where such is claimed however it is almost always some prejudicial statement for which there is no objective evidence. Opinions vary widely as to what are true general behavioral traits resulting from our evolutionary past, and at best such statements are applicable to some but not all people.

The Fallacy of Appeal to Human Nature

The Fallacy of Appeal to Human Nature is the claim that some general behavioral trait is built in to us as a result of our evolutionary past. Where such is claimed however it is almost always some prejudicial statement for which there is no objective evidence. Opinions vary widely as to what are true general behavioral traits resulting from our evolutionary past, and at best such statements are applicable to some but not all people.

The Fallacy of Appeal to Money

The Fallacy of Appeal to Money is supposing that because something costs a great deal of money, then it must be better, or to suppose that if something is cheap it must be inferior.

A Fallacy of Appeal to the People, Ad Populum

A Fallacy of Appeal to the People, Ad Populum, is to suggest that something is true because it is what most other people also believe. There have however been plenty of examples of popular opinions being wrong.

The Fallacy of Appeal to Ridicule or Mockery

The Fallacy of Appeal to Ridicule or Mockery is dismissing a claim as ridiculous without actually offering up any evidence for why.

The Fallacy of an Appeal to Silence

The Fallacy of an Appeal to Silence, is where because someone doesn’t say they disagree then we take it as agreement.

The Fallacy of Appeal to Vanity

The Fallacy of Appeal to Vanity is a claim that by believing the same as some famous person or elite group, then we are in some way similar to that famous person or we are part of that elite group.

The Fallacy of Assuming the Antecedent

The Fallacy of Assuming the Antecedent is where expressions are used which implicitly assume the correctness of the conclusion without actually offering any supporting evidence. Thus, for example, ‘As everyone knows …’, or ‘Obviously …’.

The Fallacy of Avoiding the Issue

The Fallacy of Avoiding the Issue is where an argument goes off at a tangent rather than staying focused on the supposed issue. Also referred to as missing the point, straying off the subject, digressing, and not sticking to the issue. When this is done deliberately to distract attention away from the argument then it is often said that someone has introduced a Red Herring.

A Fallacy of Changing the Goalpost

A Fallacy of Changing the Goalpost, or raising the bar, occurs when evidence is provided to support a claim, but it is then insisted that further evidence is required for a further more extreme claim. This is usually done in a way to distract attention from the face that the initial claim has been demonstrated to be valid.

Circular reasoning or Begging the Question

Circular reasoning occurs when an argument simply brings you back to where you started. For example a dictionary definition that refers you to another term, with the definition of the other term referring you to the original term. A particular form of circular reasoning is Begging the Question, in which a conclusion is derived from premises that presuppose the conclusion. For example, the argument “women shouldn’t fight bulls because a bullfighter is and should be a man,” is nothing more than saying women shouldn’t fight bulls because women shouldn’t fight bulls. Or ‘X was mad.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘He must have been; no sane person would have done that.’

Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc translates to “with this therefore because of this” and is the name of the fallacy whereby correlation is taken to imply causation. For example blaming foreigners, or gypsies, or people with funny accents for all sorts of things simply because they are there.

Fallacies of Composition and Division

Fallacies of Composition and Division: What is true of the whole or a group is not necessarily true of the parts or individuals taken separately; and what is true of the separate parts, even of all of them taken separately, is not necessarily true of the whole. It is common in arguments to find people accidentally or purposefully using part of an argument to refer to individuals but their conclusion concerns the group, or vice versa. Thus a politician might argue that because a few people are abusing some particular system that the whole system should be scrapped, or argue that the economy is improving and therefore everyone is better off.

The Fallacy of Confusing an Explanation with an Excuse

The Fallacy of Confusing an Explanation with an Excuse. Just because we can explain something this does not mean we should excuse it. For example, trying to explain why someone committed a crime is taken by some people to be an attempt to excuse the crime. To them, because the crime is inexcusable there should be no attempt to explain it. Another example is finding a supposed explanation for someone’s bad behavior – their parents divorced when they were young – and offering it up as a reason for why they shouldn’t be punished. There are many people whose parents divorced when they were young who did not then go on to exhibit the bad behavior.

Fallacy of the Continuum

Fallacy of the Continuum is the belief that small incremental differences can be ignored because they are inconsequential on a larger scale.

The Fallacy of Distortion

The Fallacy of Distortion is where someone’s view is twisted to something other than what they intended in order to make it easier to attack. An example is the Straw Man Fallacy, also known as the Fallacy of Extension, whereby an exaggerated or caricatured version of the intended argument is attacked. For example, the fallacious response to someone questioning something that is written might be that you can't question everything that is written.

The Domino Fallacy

The Domino Fallacy is where it is assumed that one small event will lead to another and that in its turn to another, and thus the small event will inevitably lead to some greater event.

The Fallacy of the Dope Pushers Defense

The Fallacy of the Dope Pushers Defense is the argument that if I don't do it, someone else will. It is an approach that leads to the lowest possible standards becoming the norm. We can and should consider those using such an argument for their own selfish ends as being morally corrupt and untrustworthy, not just with regards a particular topic but as regards any other dealings we might have with them as well. We should have as little to do with them as we can.

The Fallacy of Double Standards

The Fallacy of Double Standards occurs when we ought to judge two things by the same standard, but don’t. This is very common, and foreigners and strangers will often be judged to a different standard than friends. Indeed we often judge ourselves to different standards than we judge others. We readily find excuses for our own behavior or that of persons close to home, whilst we would consider analogous behavior in others as inexcusable.

A Fallacy of Emphasis or Accent

A Fallacy of Emphasis or Accent, is the deliberate use of ambiguity arising from shifting the emphasis on certain words within an argument. Thus the statement “A thinks B” as a spoken statement could be a simple statement of belief about A thinking B, or if a strong emphasis is put on the word “thinks” it could be intended to mean that A is mistaken in thinking B.

The Fallacy of Equivocation

The Fallacy of Equivocation is the use a word or phrase to mean one thing in an earlier part of an argument, and then later in the argument use it to mean something different.

The Fallacy of the Excluded Middle

The Fallacy of the Excluded Middle is one of assuming there are only two alternatives when in fact there are more. For example, assuming Atheism is the only alternative to Fundamentalism, or being a traitor is the only alternative to being a loud patriot, or that reckless spending is the only alternative to austerity. This fallacy is also sometimes called a False Dichotomy or False Dilemma.

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The Fallacy of False Analogy

The Fallacy of False Analogy is where we identify something in common between two things and then assume other things will also be common, without any particular evidence to justify it.

The Fallacy of False Balance

The Fallacy of False Balance is the view that because there are different viewpoints on an issue that therefore all viewpoints are equally valid. For example, some people will argue that because all experts do not agree about all the details of evolution that therefore evolution is no better a theory than any other. However just because experts don’t agree about the detailed mechanisms of evolution this does not change the fact that the vast majority of experts do believe in the general principles of evolution.

The Fallacy of False Continuum

The Fallacy of False Continuum is the idea that because there is no definitive demarcation line between two extremes, that the distinction between the extremes is not real or meaningful. Thus someone might argue that there is a fuzzy line between cults and religion, therefore they are really the same thing. However there is no clear point when red becomes purple, but we still use the terms.

Fallacy of False Precision

A Fallacy of False Precision is when information is treated as being more accurate than it really is. For example if a measurement estimate for item A is x and that for item B is x+1, then item B may be assumed to have a measurement value greater than item A. However if the accuracy of the measurements is only +/- 5, then there is a significant possibility that this is not true. Or an instruments measurement might be given to an accuracy of millimeters, whilst the actually measurement may only be accurate to within meters: e.g. A GPS device.

The Fallacy Argumentum ad Logicam, the Fallacist’s Fallacy

The Fallacy Argumentum ad Logicam, also known as the Fallacist’s Fallacy, occurs when because we find a fallacy in an argument we assume that the conclusion is therefore false. This however is clearly not the case. The conclusion has simply not been proven by that particular argument.

The Gambler’s Fallacy

The Gambler’s Fallacy is the belief that future chance events are influenced by the outcomes of previous events. Thus following a run of heads when a coin is flipped ii is believed to be more likely there will be a tail next time in order to ‘even out the odds’. Of course it is not unreasonable to judge that future events are more or less likely as a result of past events. However only because we are seeking out some causal explanation. If events are truly random then there is no law of nature that overrides this. Given many coin tosses long runs of heads are to be expected. However there may also be contributory causal explanations such as a biased coin or the coin tossing being deliberately manipulated.

The Fallacy of Group Identity

A Fallacy of Group Identity is the appeal to a belief on the basis of it being what gives the group its identity. A common use of this fallacy is in nationalism where people are expected to believe things that put their nation in a good light and disbelieve those that don’t.

The Fallacy of Guilt by Association

The Fallacy of Guilt by Association is where we reject an argument because it was held or supported by someone widely accepted as having been wrong about other things. The fallacy of course is that whilst someone may have been wrong about other things it doesn’t mean every view they held was wrong.

A Hasty Generalization

A Hasty Generalization is the fallacy of taking a few instances, often personal experiences, as the basis for a general rule. In any hasty generalization the strength of an argument that is based on small sample sized is overestimated. A specific example is the Fallacy of Anecdotal Evidence where people give far greater weight to anecdotes than they do to statistical evidence.

The Hindsight Fallacy

The Hindsight Fallacy, or Historian’s Fallacy, is judging past circumstances based upon information only known afterwards. Thus we might attribute past decisions to deliberate conspiracy because the consequences of those decisions are so obvious. However they are often only obvious in hindsight.

The Fallacy of Hypostatization

The Fallacy of Hypostatization is the error of inappropriately treating an abstract term as if it were a concrete one. For example when we talk about ‘nature’ deciding who lives and who dies in the wild: nature can’t make decisions.

The Loaded Question Fallacy

The Loaded Question Fallacy is where the question contains an unjustified assumption. For example: ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’

The Fallacy of Moderation, or Fallacy of the Middle Ground

The Fallacy of Moderation, or Fallacy of the Middle Ground, is when it is assumed that the middle position between two extremes must be right. Whilst it may well be, there is no logical reason why it must be, and people sometimes deliberately take more extreme than reasonable positions simply to seek a middle ground that is in their favor.

The Fallacy of Poisoning the Well

The Fallacy of Poisoning the Well refers to deliberately using terms to create an atmosphere that is prejudicial against a particular argument or against the person who is making an argument.

The Fallacy of Positive Ad Hominem

The Fallacy of Positive Ad Hominem is where we accept an argument because we are positively disposed towards the person making the argument, rather than on the strength of the argument itself. We tend to more readily accept arguments made by people we like.

Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc

Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc translates to “after this, therefore because of this”. Often referred to as the Post Hoc Fallacy, it relates to the frequent line of argument that ‘A occurred then B occurred, therefore A caused B’. People often fall into this fallacy when it is a regular occurrence, or when it suits what they want to believe. However there are other reasons why B may always follow or appear to follow A. Both events may themselves be the result of some other cause. Or it may be selective attention and we fail to notice that B often occurs even though A doesn’t, or A sometimes occurs when B doesn’t.

The Prosecutor’s Fallacy

The Prosecutor’s Fallacy is the mistake of over-emphasizing the strength of a piece of evidence due to a lack of attention to the context. For example a test for a rare disease might be 99.9% accurate leading people who test positive for the disease believing it is highly likely that they have the disease. However a 99.9% accuracy means that the disease will misdiagnose 1 time out of every 1,000. If, say, on average, only 1 in a million people have the disease, then for every 1 million people tested, 1,000 will test positive even though only 1 of them will have the disease. Thus being tested positive still means there is only a 1 in 1,000 chance of having the disease. This is also known under Cognitive Biases as the Base Rate Bias.

The Fallacy of Rationalization

The Fallacy of Rationalization is very common, whereby someone takes a possible explanation as though it is the only explanation; usually because it is of benefit to them..

The Sharpshooter Fallacy

The Sharpshooter Fallacy gets its name from the case of someone shooting a rifle at the side of the barn and then going over and drawing a target and bulls eye concentrically around the bullet hole. Someone who makes many predictions is likely to get some of them right. If when they get one right they loudly use it as proof that they can predict the future, and quietly ignore all the times they got it wrong, then they are guilty of this fallacy.

The Fallacy of Single Cause

The Fallacy of Single Cause is where it is assumed there must be a particular cause to a given outcome rather than accepting there may be a combination of multiple causes, no one on its own which would have brought about the outcome. Thus for example someone might argue that children are overweight because of junk food restaurants close to schools.

The Slippery Slope Fallacy

The form of a Slippery Slope Fallacy looks like this: A leads to B; B leads to C; C leads to D … Z leads to Hell. You don’t want to go to Hell. So, don’t take that first step A. In practice even relatively high percentages of each step leading to the next will lead to a relatively low percentage of A leading to Z and thus Hell.

The Spotlight Fallacy

The Spotlight Fallacy is the implicit assumption that all members of a group exhibit the same characteristics as a few prominent members.

The Fallacy of Style Over Substance

The Fallacy of Style Over Substance occurs when the style with which an argument is presented is taken as adding to the substance or strength of the argument. Thus an argument presented by a person dressed smartly might be taken as having more substance than one presented by someone dressed scruffily.

The Fallacy of Traditional Wisdom and the Fallacy of Appeal to Novelty

If you say or imply that a practice must be OK simply because it has been seemingly wise practice in the past, you commit the Fallacy of Traditional Wisdom. This is not, of course, to say you shouldn’t accept or use past practices, however they must be judged on the merits of the current circumstances and options, which may be different to what they were in the past. Similarly a practice is not OK simply because it is new or modern, the Fallacy of Appeal to Novelty.

The Fallacy of Tu Quoque

The Fallacy of Tu Quoque is committed when we reject an argument because the arguer does not, or did not at some point in the past, practice what they preach. Whether they did or not is usually irrelevant to the validity or reasonableness of the argument itself.

The Fallacy of the Unexplained

The Fallacy of the Unexplained is the presumption that because something is unexplained then it is inexplicable. However just because we do not currently have an adequate explanation for a phenomenon does not mean that it therefore defies the laws of nature or requires a paranormal explanation. Thus just because we don't understand all the details of how life came about this doesn't mean it must have been created by intelligent design.

The Victim Fallacy

The Victim Fallacy is someone believing they are being discriminated because they are the member of a group that is sometimes prejudiced against. There are people who, if not performing well, will shift the blame from their own poor performance to a claim that they are being victimized because they happen to belong to a particular group. Of course, prejudice is also sometimes real.

Ignoratio elenchi

Ignoratio elenchi is the use of arguments that fail to address the issue at hand. They are intended to distract from the matter in hand.