Fallacies of Defective Induction or

presumption

• Fallacies of weak induction occur not

when the premises are logically
irrelevant to the conclusion but when the
premises are not strong enough to
support the conclusion.
 
 Appeal to Ignorance
• It occurs when premises of an argument offer in
support of a conclusion the fact that nothing has
been proved either way regarding the conclusion.
• 1: Sometimes qualified researchers do find no
support for a conclusion after a reasonable amount of
study. It may then be reasonable to infer that the
conclusion cannot be supported.
• 2: In some legal systems no evidence presented one
way or the other means the defendant is not guilty.
 Examples
• Nobody has ever proved the existence of
ghosts. Therefore, we conclude that ghosts
are mere figments of the imagination.
• There is intelligent life in outer space, for no
one has been able to prove that there isn't.
• I know that every action we perform is
predetermined because no one has proved
that we have free will.
 Appeal to Inappropriate Authority
• Though evidence sometimes does provide
strong proofs in support of a conclusion, it
does so only when the authority in question is
trustworthy.
• Authorities that are biased, not experts in the
relevant fields, or not otherwise trustworthy
cannot lend credible support to a conclusion.
 
 Examples
• “I believe that Prozac is not a good
prescription for patients with mild depression
because Tom Cruise says so.”
• ( no fallacy committed) “I believe that Prozac
is not a good prescription for patients
with mild depression because the American
Association of Psychiatrists says so.”
 Hasty Generalization/ Converse Accident
• Occurs when an argument draws a conclusion
about a group when the sample is inadequate
to support the generalization, perhaps
because it is unrepresentative or too small.
• Hasty generalization is sometimes called
"converse accident"
 Examples
• A reporter in the local newspaper exaggerated
her story just to make it appear more exciting,
and a reporter on the evening news got his
facts mixed up. Therefore, you can't trust
anyone in the news media these days.
• Robin: I guess you can never trust a woman.
Batman: You've made a hasty generalization,
Robin. It's a bad habit to get into.
(Batman television series, 1966)
Sweeping Generalization/ Accident
• The fallacy of accident, dicto simpliciter): Applying a
general rule to special case; A general rule is applied
to a particular situation, but the features of that
particular situation mean the rule is inapplicable.
• Haste makes waste, therefore is no hurry with
this heart attack victim.
• Sweeping generalization includes a common is
understanding the nature of statistics:
• "Men are statistically more aggressive than
women. Therefore, I, a male, must be more
aggressive than you, a female."
 False Cause
• Occurs when the link between the premises
and conclusion depends on a questionable
causal connection.
• Some arguments wrongly assume that just
because one event precedes another the
former caused the latter.
 Examples
• Napoleon was a great emperor because he
was too short.
• You will not get this job because a black cat
just crossed you way.
 False Analogy
• In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B
are shown to be similar. Then it is argued that
since A has property P, so also B must have
property P. An analogy fails when the two
objects, A and B, are different in a way which
affects whether they both have property P.
 Examples
• Employees are like nails. Just as nails must be
hit in the head in order to make them work, so
must employees.
• Government is like business, so just as
business must be sensitive primarily to the
bottom line, so also must government. (But
the objectives of government and business are
completely different, so probably they will
have to meet different criteria.)
 Begging the question
• Begging the question (petitio principii ).
Assuming as a premise the conclusion which
you wish to reach. Instead of offering real
proof, we can just restate the conclusion we
are supposed to come to, and hope the
listener doesn't notice.
• "Government ownership of public utilities is
dangerous, because it is socialistic."
• "Qualitative methods are essentially worthless
because they don’t involve measurement or
statistics."
• "We know that God exists because the Bible
tells us so. And we know that the Bible is true
because it is the word of God."
 Question Begging Epithet
• This could be considered a specific sub-type of
begging the question (the fallacy of merely
assuming what one is trying to prove).

• With the question-begging epithet, the arguer

uses biased (often emotional) language to
persuade people rather than using logic. For
example, if a reporter said,
• “This criminal is charged with violently murdering the
innocent victim,”

• she would be using a question-begging epithet

because she has used biased language to make a case
that is not yet logically established. It would have been
more objective for her to say,

• “This suspect is charged with killing the other person.”

 Complex Question
• Complex question (loaded question, trick question, leading
question, fallacy of interrogation, fallacy of presupposition):
Interrogative form of begging the question (above). Ask a
question that leads others to believe that a previous question
has been answered in a certain way.
• "Answer yes or no: Did you ever give up your evil ways?"
• If you say yes, that tells us you had evil ways; if you say no, that
tells us you still have them. What if you never had them?
• “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”
 Special Pleading

• This is most often used in the form of arguments that

try to ‘explain’ special reasons or invoke a presumed
special case in an attempt to rescue a particular claim
despite any logic or evidence against it, to dismiss a
question, argument, explanation, or lack of evidence
as somehow and uniquely not applying to the claim
to be salvaged from the jaws of death.
• Special pleading means applying to other people a
set of standards that one is not willing to apply to
oneself, without offering sufficient grounds, called
the relevant difference, to support such exemption.
Special pleading follows the form:
• If Person X is in set P then Q happens to person X
• Person A is in set P
• Person A cites R circumstance, unrelated to P or Q
• Therefore Person A is not subject to Q
• pleading.
• For example: a political or military leader who
urges his subjects (or those under his
command) to observe "iron rations" without
similarly depriving himself leaves himself open
to a charge of special
 Fallacy of Black and White/
false dilemma
• A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy,
the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice,
black-and-white /thinking, or the fallacy of
exhaustive hypotheses) is a type of logical
fallacy that involves a situation in which only
two alternatives are considered, when in fact
there are additional options. For example,
• America: Love it or leave it.
• The universe could not have been created
from nothing, so it must have been created by
an intelligent life force
• "It wasn't medicine that cured Ms. X, so it
must have been a miracle."
 Gambler’s Fallacy
• The Gambler's Fallacy is committed when a person assumes
that a departure from what occurs on average or in the long
term will be corrected in the short term. The form of the fallacy
is as follows:
– X has happened.
– X departs from what is expected to occur on average or over the long
term.
– Therefore, X will come to an end soon.
• There are two common ways this fallacy is committed. In both
cases a person is assuming that some result must be "due"
simply because what has previously happened departs from
what would be expected on average or over the long term.
• The first involves events whose probabilities of occuring are
independent of one another. For example, one toss of a fair
(two sides, non-loaded) coin does not affect the next toss of
the coin. So, each time the coin is tossed there is (ideally) a
50% chance of it landing heads and a 50% chance of it landing
tails. Suppose that a person tosses a coin 6 times and gets a
head each time. If he concludes that the next toss will be tails
because tails "is due", then he will have committed the
Gambler's Fallacy. This is because the results of previous tosses
have no bearing on the outcome of the 7th toss. It has a 50%
chance of being heads and a 50% chance of being tails, just like
any other toss.
• The second involves cases whose probabilities of occuring are
not independent of one another. For example, suppose that a
boxer has won 50% of his fights over the past two years.
Suppose that after several fights he has won 50% of his
matches this year, that he his lost his last six fights and he has
six left. If a person believed that he would win his next six
fights because he has used up his losses and is "due" for a
victory, then he would have committed the Gambler's Fallacy.
After all, the person would be ignoring the fact that the results
of one match can influence the results of the next one. For
example, the boxer might have been injured in one match
which would lower his chances of winning his last six fights.
 Slippery Slope
• A fallacy in which a course of action is
objected to on the grounds that once taken it
will lead to additional actions until some
undesirable consequence results.
• Event X has occurred (or will or might occur).
• Therefore event Y will inevitably happen.
• This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is
no reason to believe that one event must inevitably
follow from another without an argument for such a
claim. This is especially clear in cases in which there
is a significant number of steps or gradations
between one event and another.
 Examples of Slippery Slope

• “Pakistan shouldn't get involved militarily in

other countries. Once the government sends
in a few troops, it will then send in thousands
to die."
• "You can never give anyone a break. If you do,
they'll walk all over you."