Fallacies Flashcards
(24 cards)
Argumentum ad baculum (fallacy of the stick)
The appeal to force in order to either silence or threaten the opponent.
Argumentum ad hominem - direct attack (abusive)
Character or other irrelevant personality qualities of the opponent are given as evidence against her position, often coupled with insults. An abusive and extreme way to distract the audience from the topic of the debate.
Argumentum ad hominem - indirect attack (circumstantial)
The position of the opponent is not criticised, rather (irrelevant) personal facts of the opponent are brought in, in order to undermine his credibility and distract attention of the audience from the topic of the debate. Alternatively, doubt is cast on the opponent’s motives for arguing the way he/she does.
Argumentum ad hominem - indirect attack (poisoning the well)
Committing a pre-emptive attack on the opponent, based on personal qualities irrelevant to the debate, before the opponent has been able to make his/her case.
Argumentum ad hominem - tu quoque
The attempt to counter an attack from the opponent by retorting the attack on the opponent themselves, thus distracting the audience from the original issue.
Argumentum ad misericordia (appeal to pity)
Appeal to emotions of pity rather than rationally in order to support a proposition.
Straw man
Deliberately oversimplifying or pushing to the extreme the opponent’s thesis (putting words in someone else’s mouth).
Ignoratio elenchi (fallacy of irrelevance)
Putting forward an argument which might in itself be valid, but of which the conclusion does not have any relation with the matter at hand.
Argumentum ad verecundiam (abuse of authority)
Appeal to authority rather than rational arguments for the support or dismissal of a proposition.
Plurium interrogationem (many questions fallacy)
A question Q is posed to the opponent, which implicitly assumes an affirmative or negative answer to one or more questions P1, …, Pn on which the validity of question Q depends.
Shifting the burden of proof
Instead of justifying ones thesis, forcing the other person to prove him/her wrong or justify his/her own thesis.
Petitio principia (begging the question/circular reasoning)
Assuming as a premise of the argument its conclusion. The more premises the argument has, and the more convoluted it is, the more difficult to spot the circularity.
False analogy
A fallacy which introduces a weak analogy between A and B in order to claim that since A has property P, then also B has property P.
Hasty generalisation
Supporting the truth of a proposition by means of a generalisation from a few cases which are either not representative of the variability of the whole population, or whose representativity has not been sufficiently argued for. In other words; when a conclusion is based on a sample which is too small to represent the whole population.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc
A fallacy committed whenever one infers the conclusion that A must be the cause of B exclusively from the observation that A and B are in temporal succession. Temporal succession of events A and B is a necessary condition for A to be a cause of B, but it is not a sufficient condition.
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc
A fallacy committed whenever one infers the conclusion that A must be the cause of B exclusively from the observation that A and B vary simultaneously. There may ben an additional variable which causes both variations, or it may just be chance.
Slippere slope
Arguing that there exists a causal chain of events C1, …, Cn leading from an event A to another event B which is usually considered bad is some way (morally or otherwise). Not always a fallacy, but in general, the more causal links there are, the harder it is to justify the argument.
Denying the antecedent
A conditional statement of the form ‘if P is the case, then Q must be the case’, does not mean that if P is false, Q is also false. A–>B. Not A, so not B.
Affirming the consequent
A fallacy committed whenever one concludes, from the observation that the truth of A logically implies the truth of B, B also logically implies A. A–>B. B, so A.
Fallacy of composition
To deduce, from the fact that all of the component parts of a whole possess the property P, that the whole possesses P.
Fallacy of division
The converse of the fallacy of composition.
Argumentum ad ignorantiam
Absence of evidence for a proposition does not constitute evidence for its contrary.
The gambler’s fallacy
Inferring that a certain outcome of a random trial is more likely, given that a specific history of outcomes of previous, statistically independent random trials has been observed.
False dilemma
Arguing for a proposition P by assuming without support that either P or Q must be the case and that Q must be rejected. The fallacy resides in the premise that either P or Q must be the case, neglecting other possible alternatives.
