FALLACIES

Iqra Aftab
 Fallacy

■ Fallacy is derived from the Latin word “fallo”, which means “I

deceive”
■ Fallacies are basically invalid arguments
■ An appearance of validity and truth is essential to a fallacy
■ A failure in reasoning or faulty reasoning renders an argument
invalid.
 Types of Fallacies

■ Aristotle the first systematic logician, identified 13 types of

fallacies
■ 17 types of fallacies are divided into four large groups:
– i. Fallacies of relevance
– ii. Fallacies of defective induction
– iii. Fallacies of presumption
– iv. Fallacies of ambiguity
FALLACIES OF
RELEVANCE
 Fallacies of Relevance

■ When an argument relies on premises which is not relevant to

its conclusion and that therefore cannot possibly establish its
truth, the fallacy committed is of relevance.
■ Premises does not logically support the conclusion
 Types of Fallacies of Relevance
Appeal to Emotions (Argument Ad Populum)
■ Using emotive words instead of logically supporting premises
■ To hit emotions of audience
■ This fallacy replaces the laborious task of presenting evidence and
rational argument with expressive language and other devices calculated
to excite enthusiasm, excitement, anger, or hate.
■ Love of country is an honorable emotion. The manipulation of one's
audience by appealing inappropriately to that love is intellectually
disreputable.
■ The products advertised are associated, explicitly with things that we
yearn for or that excite us favorably.
 Appeal to Pity (Argument Ad Misericordian)
■ This is the special case of the appeal to emotion, in which the altruism
and mercy of the audience are the special emotions appealed to (for the
sake of sympathy).
■ An appeal to pity tries to win acceptance by pointing out the unfortunate
consequences that will otherwise fall upon the speaker and others, for
whom we would then feel sorry.
■ For example, in 1880s, Virginian prosecutors presented overwhelming
proof that a boy was guilty of murdering his parents with an ax. The
defense presented a "not-guilty" plea for on the grounds that the boy was
now an orphan, with no one to look after his interests if the courts were
not lenient. This appeal to emotion obviously seems misplaced, and it is
irrelevant to the question of whether or not he did the crime.
 Appeal to Force (Argument Ad Bacalum)

■ It follows “Might-Makes-Right".
■ 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.
■ Using force to get your argument and conclusion accepted.
 Argument against the person (Argument
Ad Hominem)
■ The phrase Ad Hominem translates into "against the person".
■ Personalizing the attacks to a particular person
■ The argument of person is not accepted due to disliking that person
personally
■ It’s a fallacious attack in which the thirst is directed, not at a conclusion,
but at the person who asserts or defends it.
■ Often, the attack is based on a person's social, political, or religious views
■ This fallacy has two major forms, because there are two major ways in
which the attack can be personalized
 Argument against the person
(Argument Ad Hominem) Cont’d
1. Abusive - This is where the person is directly attacked. (i.e. This is
why a woman shouldn’t do a man's job.)
■ One person makes an argument, and the other person replies with a
criticism but not one made about the argument, but about the
person himself e.g. Clinton's infidelity to his wife invalidates his
Mideast peace policy.
2. In second form of Ad Hominem, the person himself is not attacked
but the argument presented by him/her is discredited due to some
reasons such as past action or some negative association.
 Irrelevant Conclusion (ignoratio
elenchi)
■ Trying to establish the truth of a proposition by offering an
argument that actually provides support for an entirely
different conclusion.
■ Example:
All children should have ample attention from their parents.
Parents who work full-time cannot give ample attention to their
children. Therefore, mothers should not work full-time.
■ Here the premises might support some conclusion about
working parents generally, but do not secure the truth of a
conclusion focused on women alone and not on men.
FALLACIES OF
DEFECTIVE
INDUCTION
 Types of Fallacies of Defective
Induction
Conclusion is drawn on the basis of weak premises.

■ The argument from ignorance

■ The appeal to inappropriate authority
■ False cause
■ Hasty generalizations
 The Argument from Ignorance:
Argument Ad Ignorantiam
■ When it is argued that a proposition/argument is true simply because it
has not been proved false, or that it is false just because it has not been
proved true.
■ We sometimes reject some argument or proposition due to the lack of
evidence even it is true.
■ Some important information could be sometimes missed due to excess
reliance on the evidence
■ Validity or reputations of speaker/writer may influence your judgement
of the proposition
 Argument from Ignorance

Argument from
Ignorance
■ The US has not proved that
Iraq has weapons of mass
destruction; therefore Iraq has
not such weapons.
Consider the Reverse
■ Iraq has not disapproved that it
has weapons of mass
destruction: therefore, it has
such weapons.
 The Appeal to Inappropriate
Authority: Argument Ad Verecundiam
■ Sometimes, an inappropriate person/authority is associated to a particular
domain as an expert.
■ When the appeal is made to parties having no legitimate claim to
authority in the matter at hand.
■ For example
– Lots of people bought this album, so it must be good
■ Inappropriate appeals to authority are very popular in advertising; they
depend upon the substitution of a famous name for a serious argument.
 False Cause

■ The fallacy of false cause infers the presence of a causal connection

simply because events appear to occur in correlation or temporal
succession.
■ Two events are inappropriately related
■ This fallacy establishes a cause/effect relationship that does not exist.
■ Example: The moon was full on Thursday evening. On Friday morning I
overslept. Therefore, the full moon caused me to oversleep.
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.
 (Hasty generalizations) Converse
Accident
■ The fallacy of converse accident begins with a specific case
that is unusual or atypical in some way, and then errs by
deriving from this case the truth of a general rule.
■ A general principle/conclusion is drawn based on a
single/specific case.
■ Dennis Rodman wears earrings and is an excellent rebounder.
Therefore, people who wear earrings are excellent rebounders.
■ It's easy for this conclusion to be false even though the premise
is true, the argument is unreliable.
FALLACIES OF
PRESUMPTION
 Fallacies of Presumption

■ Conclusion is drawn on the basis of wrong

pre-assumption/assumption.
■ Fallacies of presumption are not errors of reasoning in the
sense of logical errors, but are nevertheless commonly classed
as fallacies.
■ Fallacies of presumption begin with a false (or at least
unwarranted) assumption, and so fail to establish their
conclusion.
 Fallacy of Accident

■ Opposite to hasty generalization (General to specific)

■ The truth of a general rule leaves plenty of room for exceptional
cases, and applying it to any of them is fallacious.
■ The fallacy of accident begins with the statement of some principle
that is true as a general rule, but then goes wrong by applying this
principle to a specific case that is unusual or atypical in some way.
■ Example: Judging an individual Indian based on general conclusion
about Indians
 Begging the Question

■ Begging the question is the fallacy of using the conclusion of

an argument as one of the premises offered in its own support.
■ For example: If writers assume as evidence for their argument
the very conclusion they are attempting to prove, they engage
in the fallacy of begging the question.
■ The most common form of this fallacy is when the claim is
initially loaded with the same conclusion one has yet to be
proved.
 Example

For instance, suppose a particular student group states, "Useless courses like
English 101 should be dropped from the college's curriculum." The members
of the group then immediately move on, illustrating that spending money on
a useless course is something nobody wants. Yes, we all agree that spending
money on useless courses is a bad thing. However, those students never did
prove that English 101 was itself a useless course--they merely "begged the
question" and moved on to the next component of the argument, skipping
the most important part. Begging the question is often hidden in the form of
a complex question.
 Complex Question
■ The fallacy of complex question presupposes the truth of its own
conclusion by including it implicitly in the statement of the issue to be
considered.
■ A question is so phrased that it assumes a person has already agreed to a
specific claim, which then provides the basis for further argument.
■ Example: Have you tried to stop watching too much television?
- If so, then you admit that you do watch too much television.
- If not, then you must still be watching too much television.
- Therefore, you watch too much television.
 Complex Question

In a somewhat more subtle fashion, this involves the same

difficulty as the previous fallacy. We would not willingly agree to
the first premises unless we already accepted the truth of the
conclusion that the argument is supposed to prove.