Logical Fallacies without examples

Bandwagon Approach

"Everybody is doing it." This argumentum ad populum asserts that, since the majority of people believes an argument or chooses a particular course of action, the argument must be true or the course of action must be the best one. For instance, "85% of consumers purchase IBM computers rather than Macintosh; all those people can't be wrong. IBM must make the best computers." Popular acceptance of any argument does not prove it to be valid, nor does popular use of any product necessarily prove it is the best one. After all, 85% of people possibly once thought planet earth was flat, but that majority's belief didn't mean the earth really was flat! Keep this in mind, and remember that all should avoid this logical fallacy. "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." --Mark Twain.

The Red Herring Fallacy

A deliberate attempt to change the subject or divert the argument from the real question at issue; for instance, "Senator Jones should not be held accountable for cheating on his income tax. After all, there are other senators who have done far worse things." Another example: "I should not pay a fine for reckless driving. There are many other people on the street who are dangerous criminals and rapists, and the police should be chasing them, not harassing a decent tax-paying citizen like me." Example 3: "The level of mercury in seafood may be unsafe, but what will fishers do to support their families?"

Slippery Slope Fallacy

A speaker argues that, once the first step is undertaken, a second or third step will inevitably follow, much like the way one step on a slippery incline will cause a person to fall and slide all the way to the bottom. However, this sort of thinking does not allow for any possibility of stopping the process. It simply assumes that, once the nose is in, the rest must follow--that the sheik can't stop the progression once it has begun--and thus the argument is a logical fallacy. For instance, if one were to argue, "If we allow the government to infringe upon our right to privacy on the Internet, it will then feel free to infringe upon our privacy on the telephone. After that, FBI agents will be reading our mail. Then they will be placing cameras in our houses. We must not let any governmental agency interfere with our Internet communications, or privacy will completely vanish in the United States." Such thinking is fallacious; no logical proof has been provided yet that infringement in one area will necessarily lead to infringement in another, no more than a person buying a single can of Coca-Cola in a grocery store would indicate the person will inevitably go on to buy every item available in the store, helpless to stop himself—unless that person is Mr. Thiel. He really is helpless to stop himself.

Circular Reasoning

A subtype of begging the question. Often the authors word the two statements sufficiently differently to obscure the fact that that the same proposition occurs as both a premise and a conclusion. For example: A confused student argues: "You can't give me a C. I'm an A student!" Another Example: "God exists. We know this because the Bible says so. And we know the Bible is correct because the Bible was written by God."

Appeal to Improper Authority

An appeal to a famous person or a source that may not be reliable. This fallacy attempts to capitalize upon feelings of respect or familiarity with a famous individual. It is not fallacious to refer to an admitted authority if the individual's expertise is within a strict field of knowledge. On the other hand, to cite Einstein to settle an argument about education is fallacious. To cite Darwin, an authority on biology, on religious matters is fallacious. To cite Cardinal Spellman on legal problems is fallacious. The worst offenders usually involve movie stars and psychic hot-lines.

Loaded Question Fallacy

Asking a question with a false, unproven, or disputed presupposition. "What did our government do there to bring this horror home to all those innocent Americans? And why don't we learn anything, from our free press, about the gross ineptitude of our state agencies?" (Mark Crispin Miller, "Brain Drain", Context, No. 9). Note that the preceding question makes assumptions of truth that have not been proven. Part II. Also, questions that are answerable only by yes or no, but that force the answerer into a possibly incriminating answer. For Example: "Have you stopped cheating on tests?" Either way a person answers, she admits to some level of cheating.

Argument from the Negative

Asserts that, since one position is impossible to prove, the opposite stance must be true. Disproving an opponent's argument does not necessarily mean your own argument must be true automatically, no more than disproving your opponent's assertion that 2+2=5 would automatically mean another argument that 2+2=7 must be the correct one. Example: "Since you cannot show me the proof that unicorns don't exist, they must exist."

Ad Hominem Fallacy

Attacking or praising the people who make an argument rather than discussing the argument itself. This practice is fallacious because the personal character of an individual is logically irrelevant to the truth or falseness of the argument itself. The statement "2+2=4" is true regardless if is stated by a criminal, congressmen, or a pastor.

Stacking the Deck (cherry-picking evidence)

In this fallacy, the speaker ignores examples that disprove the point, and listing only those examples that support her case. This fallacy is closely related to hasty generalization, but the term usually implies deliberate deception rather than an accidental logical error. When a person who's less than honest is trying to sell his old car, he'll list all the good qualities and omit all the faults: the tires are new, the stereo is fantastic, and I just changed the oil. But he fails to mention the oil and radiator leaks and the nearly broken transmission.

Appeal to Biased Authority

In this sort of appeal, the authority is one who truly is knowledgeable on the topic, but unfortunately one who may have professional or personal motivations that render that judgment suspect: "To determine whether fraternities are beneficial to this campus, we interviewed all the frat presidents." Indeed, it is important to get "both viewpoints" on an argument, but basing a substantial part of your argument on a source that has personal, professional, or financial interests at stake may lead to biased arguments.

Hasty Generalization

Mistaken use of inductive reasoning when there are too few samples to prove a point. In understanding and characterizing general cases, a logician cannot normally examine every single example. However, the examples used in inductive reasoning should be typical of the problem or situation at hand. If a logician considers only exceptional or dramatic cases and generalizes a rule that fits these alone, the author commits the fallacy of hasty generalization. Example #1: "Even though it's only the first day, I can tell this is going to be a boring course." Example #2: "Steve, the Australian, has a poor sense of humor. Clearly, Australians lack wit and humor."

Faulty Analogy

Relying only on comparisons to prove a point rather than arguing deductively and inductively. "Education is like cake; a small amount tastes sweet, but eat too much and your teeth will rot out. Likewise, more than two years of education is bad for a student." The analogy is only acceptable to the degree to which a reader agrees that education is similar to cake. As you can see, faulty analogies are like flimsy wood, and just as no carpenter would build a house out of flimsy wood, no writer should ever construct an argument out of flimsy material.

Misleading Statistic

Suppose an individual argues that women must be incompetent drivers, and he points out that last Tuesday at the Department of Motor Vehicles, 50% of the women who took the driving test failed. That would seem to be compelling evidence from the way the statistic is set forth. However, if only two women took the test that day, the results would be far less clear-cut. Example 2: Saying that because of a local minimum wage increase the year before, the economy collapsed in 2009. This fails to take the world-wide derivatives trading/housing collapse into account.

Begging the Question

The fallacy is committed when a proposition which should require proof is assumed without proof," or when an assumption (rather than a fact) is used, "in some form of the proposition to be proved, as a premise from which to deduce it." The most common form of this fallacy is when the claim is initially loaded with the same conclusion one has yet to prove. For instance, suppose a debater states, "Useless courses like Art 101 should be dropped from the curriculum." The debater then immediately moves on, illustrating that spending money on a useless course is something nobody wants. The fact that the course is useless is assumed without proof. Example #2: "Ordnance Survey, bless it, is worried that the growing use of satellite navigation systems means that we're losing our map-reading skills. Which is a classic case of begging the question: who said our map-reading skills were any good in the first place?" (Charles Arthur, "Technophile." The Guardian, Dec. 13, 2007) The debater is implicitly "begging" the audience to go along with (to accept without evidence) this proposition. Another example: "Since killing is morally wrong, the death penalty is morally wrong." Another example: "Cats, because they are filthy animals, should never be allowed in college dorms." Two notes on Begging the Question: (1) Many people misuse the term, and use it to mean "raises the question of." For example, "Tanning salons beg the question of skin cancer." This is an incorrect use; unfortunately, it is very common, even among educated people. (2) Begging the question is so similar to circular reasoning that many people use the terms interchangeably. You'll need to know the difference in this class, but be prepared to encounter others who don't differentiate.

Appeal to Force (the "Might-Makes-Right" Fallacy)

This argument uses force, the threat of force, or some other unpleasant backlash to make the audience accept a conclusion. It commonly appears as a last resort when evidence or rational arguments fail to convince. Logically, this consideration has nothing to do with the merits of the points under consideration. Example: "Superintendent, it would be a good idea for your school to cut the budget by $16,000. I need not remind you that past school boards have fired superintendents who cannot keep down costs." While intimidation might force the superintendent to conform, it does not convince him that the choice to cut the budget was the most beneficial for the school or community. Lobbyists use this method when they remind legislators that they represent so many thousand votes in the legislators' constituencies.

False Causality Fallacy

This fallacy establishes a cause/effect relationship that does not exist. There are various Latin names for various analyses of the fallacy. (Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc): Literally, "After this, therefore because of this." This type of false cause occurs when the writer mistakenly assumes that, because the first event preceded the second event, it must mean the first event must have caused the later one. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't. It is the honest writer's job to establish that connection rather than merely assert it. The most common examples are arguments that viewing a particular movie or show, or listening to a particular type of music "caused" the listener to perform an antisocial act--to snort coke, shoot classmates, or take up a life of crime. These may be potential suspects for the cause, but the mere fact that an individual did these acts and subsequently behaved in a certain way does not yet conclusively rule out other causes. Perhaps the listener had an abusive home-life or school-life, suffered from a chemical imbalance leading to depression and paranoia, or made a bad choice in his companions. Other potential causes must be examined before asserting that one event or circumstance alone caused an event. Frequently, sloppy thinkers confuse correlation with causation.

Straw Man Fallacy

This fallacy is a type of red herring in which a writer creates an oversimplified, easy-to-refute argument, places it in the mouth of his opponent, and then tries to "win" the debate by knocking down that empty or trivial argument. For instance, one speaker might be engaged in a debate concerning welfare. The opponent argues, "Tennessee should increase funding to unemployed single mothers during the first year after childbirth because they need sufficient money to provide medical care for their newborn children." The second speaker retorts, "My opponent believes that some parasites who don't work should get a free ride from the tax money of hard-working honest citizens. I'll show you why he's wrong. . ." In this example, the second speaker is engaging in a straw man strategy, distorting the opposition's statement into an oversimplified form so he can more easily "win." However, the second speaker is only defeating a dummy-argument rather than honestly engaging in the real nuances of the debate.

False Dilemma Fallacy (Either/Or Fallacy)

This fallacy occurs when a writer builds an argument upon the assumption that there are only two choices or possible outcomes when actually there are several. Outcomes are seldom so simple. This fallacy most frequently appears in connection to sweeping generalizations: "Either we must ban X or the American way of life will collapse." "We go to war with Canada, or else Canada will eventually grow in population and overwhelm the United States." "Either you drink Burpsy Cola, or you will have no friends and no social life." You must avoid either/or fallacies, or everyone will think you are foolish. (See what I did there)?

Appeal to Tradition

This line of thought asserts that a premise must be true because people have always believed it or done it. "Of course our constitution is infallible; it's over two hundred years old." Might an alternative policy work even better than the old one? Are there drawbacks to that long-standing policy? Are circumstances changing from the way they were thirty years ago?

Equivocation

Using a word in a different way than the author used it in the original premise, or changing definitions halfway through a discussion. When we use the same word or phrase in different senses within one line of argument, we commit the fallacy of equivocation. Example #1: "I don't see how you can say you're an ethical person. It's so hard to get you to do anything; your work ethic is so bad." Example #2: "I want to have myself a merry little Christmas, but I refuse to do as the song suggests and make the yuletide gay. I don't think sexual preference should have anything to do with enjoying the holiday." Example #2 obviously interprets the word "gay" differently than the songwriter intended.