The following pages will explain the major types of fallacies, give you examples, and help you avoid them in your arguments. Write Read Educators.
Check out this blog post by Dr. Forgot your password? Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password. Instead, it shifts the need for proof away from the person making a claim. They must have been so clever that they destroyed all the evidence.
A false dilemma or false dichotomy presents limited options — typically by focusing on two extremes — when in fact more possibilities exist. The phrase "America: Love it or leave it" is an example of a false dilemma.
The false dilemma fallacy is a manipulative tool designed to polarize the audience, promoting one side and demonizing another. It's common in political discourse as a way of strong-arming the public into supporting controversial legislation or policies.
A slippery slope argument assumes that a certain course of action will necessarily lead to a chain of future events. The slippery slope fallacy takes a benign premise or starting point and suggests that it will lead to unlikely or ridiculous outcomes with no supporting evidence.
You may have used this fallacy on your parents as a teenager: "But you have to let me go to the party! If I don't go to the party, I'll be a loser with no friends. Next thing you know, I'll end up alone and jobless, living in your basement when I'm 30! So if you miss basketball practice today, you won't be a starter in Friday's game. Then you won't be the first freshman to start on the varsity basketball team at our school.
People who goof off drop out of school and end up penniless. Circular arguments occur when a person's argument repeats what they already assumed before without arriving at a new conclusion. For example, if someone says, "According to my brain, my brain is reliable," that's a circular argument. Circular arguments often use a claim as both a premise and a conclusion.
This fallacy only appears to be an argument when in fact it's just restating one's assumptions. A hasty generalization is a claim based on a few examples rather than substantial proof. Arguments based on hasty generalizations often don't hold up due to a lack of supporting evidence: The claim might be true in one case, but that doesn't mean it's always true.
Hasty generalizations are common in arguments because there's a wide range of what's acceptable for "sufficient" evidence. The rules for evidence can change based on the claim you're making and the environment where you are making it — whether it's rooted in philosophy, the sciences, a political debate, or discussing house rules for using the kitchen.
A red herring is an argument that uses confusion or distraction to shift attention away from a topic and toward a false conclusion. Red herrings usually contain an unimportant fact, idea, or event that has little relevance to the real issue.
Red herrings are a common diversionary tactic when someone wants to shift the focus of an argument to something easier or safer to address. But red herrings can also be unintentional. Now she's shopping for new patio furniture and not asking me about the garage.
An appeal to hypocrisy — also known as the tu quoque fallacy — focuses on the hypocrisy of an opponent. The tu quoque fallacy deflects criticism away from oneself by accusing the other person of the same problem or something comparable.
The tu quoque fallacy is an attempt to divert blame. The fallacy usually occurs when the arguer uses apparent hypocrisy to neutralize criticism and distract from the issue. It was dumb then and it's dumb now. That's why I forbid you to smoke, chew, vape, use nicotine gum, or do whatever you kids do with tobacco these days. Causal fallacies are informal fallacies that occur when an argument incorrectly concludes that a cause is related to an effect.
Think of the causal fallacy as a parent category for other fallacies about unproven causes. One example is the false cause fallacy, which is when you draw a conclusion about what the cause was without enough evidence to do so. Also, everyone has different reasons for getting tattoos. Some do it to commemorate someone or something, some do it for the beauty of the art, some do it while intoxicated on vacation, and so on.
But if a group of young teenagers is getting a tattoo on a whim to copy a celebrity, perhaps that's something you want your kid to think about more carefully. So your kid arguing that "all my friends are doing it, so it's cool" doesn't take that into account. They'd need to think about getting a tattoo for their own reasons, and justify it to you that way. Here's another example: you're FaceTiming with your family, and it's an election year. Most of your family belongs to one political party, but you belong to another.
Your mom starts trying to convince you to vote like they do — "The whole family votes this way! And we've been voting this way forever! While it's understandable that your mom would want your political beliefs to align with hers, she's making a fallacious argument here. Just because they've always voted that way doesn't make it right. She should point out the benefits of her candidate, how they could help you out, why their policies are fair, and so on — and then let you decide for yourself.
People make generalizations all the time that, right there, was a generalization! And sometimes this is ok. If you're just stating something that's generally true, like "I like to cook" or "Puppies are cute", there's typically no harm in that.
The problem arises, though, when someone uses a generalization a bit too zealously in an argument without sufficient evidence. These types of "hasty" generalizations can fall into stereotyping, racism, falsehood, exaggeration, and more.
Often someone makes such a generalization when they're basing their opinion or argument off of the behavior or characteristics of just a few members of a group. This often means they're not taking the behavior of the whole group into consideration. So why are these generalizations bad? Which, of course, very few likely are. If you want to avoid making hasty generalizations, you can use certain qualifiers when you make a generalization — like "Sometimes", "Often", "We often see", or "It may be the case that Those types of words and phrases let your listener know that you're not arguing that this thing is true across the board for everyone.
It's just a general trend you've noticed. Hasty generalizations are quite common, as people use generalizations all the time in regular conversation.
And again, many generalizations don't hurt anyone. But let's look at some examples of bad generalizations. If you say "People in the southern part of the US are so conservative and close-minded.
I really can't stand how all they care about is football and BBQ", you're using a hasty generalization a couple, actually. While it's true that some people in the south have these characteristics, it's not true for everyone living in that region. And by making those assertions, you're perpetuating stereotypes that are likely overblown and miss a lot of nuance about southern American's characters and beliefs.
Here's another example: let's say you're having a fight with your significant other and you say, "You always pick fights with me! Unless it's literally true that they are always the one to start the fight, you're probably getting carried away in the heat of the moment. One way to save yourself from making a hasty generalization in this case would be to say something like "You pick fights with me a lot" or "You often pick fights with me.
Tu quoque in Latin means "You, too". And when you attempt to distract from your own guilt by calling out someone else's similar guilt, you're committing this fallacy. The name makes sense — it's like you're saying "Well I may have done this, but you did it, too! Just because someone else did something similar to or the same as what you did, it doesn't make you any less guilty. You've still committed whatever crime or done whatever bad thing you've done.
This is also called an "appeal to hypocrisy" fallacy, because the person making the argument let's call them Person A often calls out the fact that someone else Person B did something similar to what they did. Person A argues that they may have messed up, but Person B did the same thing so should be punished.
Person A is being a hypocrite because they're trying to escape the blame they'd like to assign to Person B. It's tempting to use this type of argument, because people are always looking to shift the blame from themselves to others.
It's especially enticing when that other person is not blameless and therefore seems to deserve some share of the guilt. But this isn't an effective argument strategy because, while distracting, a tu quoque argument doesn't actually prove you innocent. It just draws attention falsely away from the issue at hand, which is your misdeed.
One thing to remember about tu quoque fallacies is that the information the person making the argument cites is typically irrelevant to the case at hand. Just because Person B is guilty also, doesn't mean Person A is any less guilty.
So that accusation that Person A makes is irrelevant to their case. Let's go back to our teenager. Perhaps they've been caught skipping school, and their parents want to ground them for a week.
The teenager might argue, "Yeah I skipped third and fourth periods, but Marta did, too! While it's not great that Marta skipped class as well, it doesn't really make that teen any less guilty of skipping school. They just knew someone who did the same thing, and are trying to justify what they did by bringing up Marta's transgression as well.
But it doesn't mean that they skipped any less school. Here's another example: perhaps your friend caught you cheating on a test, and threatened to turn you into the teacher. But you saw them cheat in another class last year, so you say "I may have cheated today, but you cheated on that math test last year, too!
Again, their cheating a year ago doesn't make you any less guilty right now. While it might feel good to say, "You did that, too, so how could you think I should be punished for it! Instead of resorting to this type of argument, make sure you take responsibility for your actions and keep your points relevant to the issue at hand. Don't think you can get away with something just by calling out someone else's hypocrisy. It's likely not going to help your case. When you ask a question that intends to reinforce your position and undermine someone else's, you could be asking a loaded question.
These questions are helpful to you but harmful to the person you're asking, and may skew the opinion of anyone listening in your favor, perhaps unfairly. Instead of asking a straightforward question that attempts to get more or new information, a loaded question often includes an accusation or a confirmation of an accusation — an oft-quoted example is "Are you still beating your wife?
In this question, you're referencing an accusation — that the person beat their wife — without directly accusing them of doing it currently. But by including it in the question, you're turning listeners' minds to the fact that this person did, at one point, beat their wife. So either way, they'll appear guilty. Perhaps you're at a rally in support of clean energy, and a rep from Exxon is there. If you're not old enough to remember, Exxon had a horrific oil spill in Alaska in that devastated miles of coastline and released over 10 million gallons of oil into the ocean.
You might call out that rep and loudly ask them if their company is still polluting the world's pristine oceans and killing millions of sea creatures. Whatever your feelings about Exxon or environmental justice, it's not fair to set the company up like that for those listening. Your question is heavily loaded, and doesn't give them a shot at convincing others of their current position, whatever it might be.
You're making your argument by essentially biasing the crowd against them from the start. Here's another example: what if a company hires formerly incarcerated people, and you find out that one of them was a bank robber.
If you asked their employer "You're really gonna let a thief handle your products? It's not necessary to refer to them as a thief or allude to their past as a bank robber. By doing so, you're only creating prejudicial feelings against them that may not be relevant or meaningful at this point in time. So just remember — when you're asking questions to try to prove your point, keep them relevant, unbiased, and focused on the issue at hand.
You might wonder where the term "red herring" comes from. It's a bit of an odd name for a fallacy, don't you think? Well, there has been some debate about this in the past but most sources agree that a red herring signifies a distraction or something meant to mislead someone. Fun fact before we continue: there's not actually a species of herring called a red herring. A "red herring" refers to a herring that's been brined and smoked until it becomes extremely pungent and turns a bright red color.
So these red herrings were used as training aids for animals because of their strong smell to attempt to lead them in a certain direction. Anyway, back to our fallacy: if you make an argument with the intention of distracting from the real issue at hand, it might be a red herring. Also, if you drop some seemingly related bit of info into a conversation or debate that leads your listener down the wrong path, that's also a red herring. Ultimately, a red herring argument distracts or leads your listener away from the crux of the issue so that they get off course or off topic.
Remember, a red herring basically a diversionary tactic in an argument. It's meant to lead the listener away from the main point of the conversation. Suppose you're arguing with someone who is in favor of a dam that's being constructed in a beautiful river. You bring up the environmental impact that said dam will have, and how devastating it'll be to the surrounding natural habitat. Your opponent might say something like "Yes it will destroy the habitat for many fish and other river animals, but if we don't build the dam it'll take jobs away from so many people who would've worked on it.
Now, this person has just used a red herring fallacy to try to distract from the environmental impact of such a dam. Instead of arguing for the benefits of the dam itself, and arguing against the environmental impact, they're dropping in a red herring — the potential impact on the workers who would've been hired to build the dam.
While that itself is a whole separate issue, it doesn't deal with or respond to the issue at hand, which is what happens to the natural environment when the dam goes in. We've just discussed a whole bunch of logical fallacies, and you might be thinking — how can I make any arguments at all without saying something fallacious?
It's not always easy, as some of these fallacies are very tempting and easy to fall into. But as long as you stick to the point, don't try to deceive your listener, cite relevant evidence from relevant sources, and avoid any derogatory or misleading language, you should be ok. If you read this far, tweet to the author to show them you care. Tweet a thanks. Learn to code for free. Get started.
Forum Donate. Abbey Rennemeyer. What is a Logical Fallacy?
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