Fallacy - a defect [mistake or error] in an argument but the defect is anything other than merely having

false premises.
Two Types of Fallacies
1. Formal Fallacies- the mistake is in the form or structure of an argument.
2. Informal Fallacies- the mistake is in the content of an argument.

Five Types of Informal Fallacies:

1. Fallacies of Relevance - the premises are not logically relevant to the conclusion. There are
8 types of fallacies of relevance:

a. Appeal to Force (argumentum ad baculum) - is one where a threat REPLACES evidence.

b. Appeal to Pity (argumentum ad misericordiam) - committed whenever someone tries
to support a conclusion by evoking pity, rather than by supplying evidence that is
actually relevant to the conclusion.
c. Appeal to the People (argumentum ad populum) - they are made to feel like they are a
PART OF something special (that they admire, value, envy, etc.), or else because they
WANT to be a part of something special.

• Appeal to the People (Direct) - occurs whenever the speaker DIRECTLY

appeals to, or excites the emotions of the listener(s), and this excitement is
what causes the listener(s) to accept the conclusion being endorsed by the
speaker.
• Appeal to the People (Indirect; Bandwagon Argument) - This occurs
whenever the speaker implies to the listener(s) that they will be left out or
left behind if they do not agree with the speaker. Usually, this involves
pointing out that “everyone else is doing it/believes it”.
• Appeal to the People (Indirect; Appeal to Vanity) - occurs whenever the
speaker associates the conclusion they are putting forward with some
desirable person or feature.
• Appeal to the People (Indirect; Snoberry) - occurs whenever the speaker
associates the conclusion with being in an elite class or a lucky member of a
select few.

d. Argument Against the Person (argumentum ad hominem) - committed whenever,

someone, rather than providing EVIDENCE for their view, merely resorts to attacking
their listener instead.

• Argument Against the Person (Abusive): occurs when one person, rather than
supplying REASONS for why their opponent is wrong, instead resorts to directly
verbally abusing the other.
• Argument Against the Person (Circumstantial) - occurs when someone, rather
than supplying REASONS for why their opponent is wrong, instead resorts to
pointing out circumstances that make it MORE LIKELY that their opponent
would be asserting the conclusion that they are asserting.
 • Argument Against the Person (“You Too”, tu quoque) - occurs whenever
someone, rather than supplying REASONS for why someone is mistaken, instead
merely tries to make that person seem like a hypocrite.

e. Accident - General rules often have exceptions. This fallacy is committed whenever
someone misapplies a general rule to one of the cases that is an exception.
f. Straw Man - is committed whenever someone, in order to attack an opponent, attacks
some WEAKER, DISTORTED VERSION of their opponent’s argument, rather than the
actual argument, the opponent is giving. This often involves twisting an opponent's
words to be saying something much more absurd or ridiculous than they are actually
saying.
g. Missing the Point - committed whenever someone takes certain premises which
support ONE particular conclusion, and—rather than draw THAT conclusion—they
instead draw a DIFFERENT (but somewhat related) conclusion instead; and it is one that
the premises do NOT support.
h. Red Herring - committed whenever someone responds to their opponent by changing
the subject to something completely different.

2. Fallacies of Weak Induction - the premises only WEAKLY support the conclusion. There are 6
types of fallacies of weak induction:

a. Appeal to Unqualified Authority (argumentum ad verecundiam) - committed whenever

someone proposes that some conclusion is true because someone who is NOT an
authority on the subject SAID it was true.
b. Appeal to Ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam) - committed whenever someone
concludes that either (a) because they can’t see how something could be true, it must
be false, or (b) because they can’t see how something could be false, it must be true.
c. Hasty Generalization (converse accident) - committed whenever someone draws a
conclusion about a WHOLE group after examining only SOME of the members of that
group.
d. False Cause - committed whenever someone bases a conclusion upon the imagined
existence of a causal connection that probably does not exist.

• Coincidence (post hoc ergo propter hoc) occurs whenever someone observes
one event followed by another, and then concludes that the first event CAUSED
the second.
• Correlation (non causa pro causa) - occurs whenever someone mistakes
CORRELATION for CAUSATION. Correlation is the fact of two things commonly
existing or occurring together, or in conjunction with one another.
• Oversimplified Cause - occurs whenever some effect is the result of a fairly
complicated system or chain of causes, but the observer selects only a small
PART of that causal system and mistakes it for the ENTIRE cause.
• The Gambler’s Fallacy - occurs whenever someone assumes that two
independent events of random chance are connected because the events are
both a part of the same game.
 e. Slippery Slope - committed whenever someone concludes something based on an
assumption about a chain-reaction that they think will occur—but the chain-reaction is
actually (contrary to their assumption) very unlikely.
f. Weak Analogy - is committed whenever a conclusion is drawn about something because
it is similar to something else. So, this is exactly like the NON fallacious variety of
inductive argument called the “argument by analogy”— except that a conclusion
derived from an analogy is NOT supported if the analogy or similarity is not very strong.

3. Fallacies of Presumption - the premises do NOT provide INDEPENDENT evidence for the
conclusion.

a. Begging the Question - occurs when the very thing to be proven in the conclusion (or
some crucial bit of evidence which supports it) is already assumed to be true at the
outset of the argument.

• Missing Key Premise - Often, arguments that beg the question come in the form
of enthymemes, where the crucial premise is left out.
• Conclusion Restates the Premise - Begging the question also occurs whenever
the conclusion says basically the same thing as the premise(s). This gives the
illusion that something has been “proved” when in reality it is merely the case
that the same thing is being said twice in a row.
• Circular Reasoning - occurs whenever the argument is “reasons in a circle”. This
is when a chain of inferences, or several steps, reasons in such a way that the
last step ends up proving the initial assumption (i.e., the first step).

b. Complex Question - when a question is proposed as if a “yes” or “no” or some other

short or one-word answer would suffice, when a longer, clarifying answer is actually
needed. This is due to the fact that the question being asked is actually TWO questions
disguised as one.
c. False Dichotomy - occurs whenever someone presents two options as if they were the
ONLY two options (though they are not), and then, after eliminating ONE of them,
concludes that the second option must be true.
d. Suppressed Evidence- occurs when an argument purposely leaves out or ignores
relevant evidence because that evidence would cast doubt on the conclusion being
offered.

4. Fallacies of Ambiguity - the conclusion depends on some kind of linguistic ambiguity.

a. Equivocation - occurs whenever a single term is being used in two different ways within
an argument.
b. Amphiboly - occurs whenever an ambiguous statement, which could be interpreted in
different ways, is interpreted in the WRONG way in order to support some conclusion.

5. Fallacies of Grammatical Analogy - Mistaken inferences are drawn from the parts of
something to the whole, or from a whole to its parts.
 a. Composition- occurs when someone mistakenly assumes that, just because all of the
PARTS of something have some feature, that the whole must ALSO have that feature.
b. Division - occurs when someone mistakenly assumes that, just because a WHOLE has
some feature, that all of its parts must ALSO have that feature.

Composition: From Parts to the Whole: It IS often the case that things made out of parts have certain
traits that ALL of the parts have.
For instance, if every part of a bicycle is blue, then the entire bicycle is ALSO blue.
Or, if every molecule in a liquid is water (H2O), then the WHOLE body of liquid is ALSO water.

Division: From a Whole to its Parts: Similarly, it IS often the case that the parts of something all have
certain traits that the whole has. For instance, if a WHOLE table is 100% wooden,
then all of the PARTS of the table are ALSO wooden (at least down to the cellular level).