| Definitions of Fallacies |
| Compiled on 20 August 1995 |
Table of Contents
...related to debaters and audiences
- subjectivism: asserting a proposition as true simply because one wishes it to be true.
- appeal to authority: (argumentum ad verecundiam) citing an authority, who is incompetent or non-objective, in an attempt to gain support an argument, or citing an authority when the issue is not technical.
- quoting out of context: manipulating a quote either from an authority or from one's interlocutor in such a way that the original meaning of the statement is altered.
- ad personam: appealing to the misrepresented self-interest of those one is trying to convince.
- appeal to the people: (argumentum ad populum) relying on the emotional passion of the crowd in making an argument.
- appeal to numbers: (argumentum ad numerum) asserting (implicitly or explicitly) that the acceptance of an idea by a large number of people is reason to believe it.
- cultural fallacy: taking one's own culture as the standard of good by which all cultures should be judged.
- appeal to force: (argumentum ad baculum) using any type of threat, physical or non-physical, explicitly or implicitly, in order to gain agreement.
- appeal to tradition: (argumentum ad antiquitatem) asserting that something is true or good because it is old(er), or appealing to the very principles that are being questioned.
- appeal to modernity: (argumentum ad novitatem) asserting that something is true or good because it is new(er).
- appeal to money: (argumentum ad crumenam) contending that greater wealth indicates greater good or truth, or asserting that money is the standard by which to judge the true or the good.
- appeal to poverty: (argumentum ad lazarum) asserting that greater poverty indicates greater good, virtue, or truth.
...related to arguments
- appeal to ignorance: (argumentum ad ignorantiam) asserting that a proposition as true merely because it has not been proven false.
- shifting the burden of proof: demanding that the person denying an assertion prove his/her case, whereas the burden of proof is upon the person who argues the positive.
- argumentum ad nauseam: believing that the more times an argument is heard the more likely it is to be true, or simply repeating an assertion instead of arguing for or proving it.
- argumentum ad logicam: dismissing a proposition to be undeniably false because the argument presented for the proposition was fallacious.
- ad lapidem: dismissing an statement as absurd without proving it to be false.
- sanctioning the devil: asserting that debate with certain individuals would be sanctioning or conferring undue benefit upon the them or their ideas as a method of avoiding debate.
...related to personalities
- ad hominem: rejecting or dismissing another personŐs statement by attacking the person rather than by disproving the statement.
- creating misgivings: stirring up suspicions about a long-forgotten (and possibly completely unsubstantiated) charge against one's interlocutor.
- tu quoque: trying to dismiss or downplay an accusation by demonstrating that the accuser himself is guilty of misconduct.
- poisoning the well: (damning the origin) arguing against an idea by showing that one's interlocutor has a non-rational motive for holding the idea.
- forestalling disagreement: attempting to make an opponent or audience unwilling to debate an issue.
- argument from intimidation: asserting that believing or arguing for a certain idea indicates immorality, in an attempt to intimidate a person into renouncing the idea without discussion.
- self-righteousness: confusing good intentions with actual good or truth.
- special pleading: refusing to apply the same principles to oneself that one applies to others.
- presenting the "good" reason: selecting, as the explanation for oneŐs actions or ideas, a credible fact when other explanations could be had.
...related to emotion
- appeal to emotion: attempting to gain support for an idea through an emotional response provoked in the audience
- appeal to pity: (argumentum ad misericordiam) appealing to a sense of pity by drawing attention to pathetic conditions in an attempt to get an audience to accept an idea.
- emotive language: (colored words): abusing the power of words in order to evoke a desired response from the audience.
- glittering generality: using general terms to around pleasurable sentiments in such a way that all meaning is lost.
...related to other issues
- oversimplification: reducing a complex situation to a simple, inaccurate statement.
- many questions: (plurium interrogation) posing a complex question and demanding a simple answer.
- faulty analogy: assuming either that properties shared between two situations or existents will continue to be found indefinitely or that shared properties will be found in very disparate situations or existents.
- vague similarities: asserting that two situations or existents are similar without specifying the properties they share.
- diversion: attempting to support one proposition by arguing for a different one entirely.
- strawman: attempting to refute one's opponentŐs proposition by attacking misrepresentation of the his/her position.
- wicked alternative: attempting to support one proposition by denouncing another, when the second is not the opposite of the first.
- false dilemma: representing a situation as having only undesirable alternatives when the facts do not support such a judgment.
- all-or-nothing mistake: presenting a naked dichotomy when such an evaluation is unwarranted.
- slippery slope: arguing that if one event were to occur, other harmful events would result without showing how the events are linked.
- impossible conditions: contending that mankind should be changed or even perfected before any remedy for a problem should be considered.
- nothing but objections: continually objecting to any plan proposed to assure that nothing is done.
...related to minutia
- wishful thinking: constructing false expectations though ignoring unpleasant facts.
- lip service: verbal agreement unsupported in action or true conviction.
- prejudicial fallacies: representing whatever position coincides with whatever prejudices the speaker perceives in the audience.
- red herring: diverting the attention of the audience from the discussion of the real issues to irrelevancies.
- pomp and circumstance: permitting the setting in which the argument takes place to affect the attention paid to the argument.
- humor and ridicule: using inappropriate humor to deflect attention away from the discussion.
- relativism: asserting that there are no real attributes to entities and thus treating conceptualization as grounded in the subjective bias of the individual.
- sweeping generalization: (dicto simpliciter) applying a principle to a specific situation while ignoring the context under which the principle was formed.
- reification: treating an conceptualization as if it represented a concrete.
- word magic: using words that imply the existence of entities who existence is unverifiable.
- personification: attributing human traits to other creatures or reading purpose into inanimate configurations.
- apriorism: attempting to deduce facts from abstractions and principles rather than induce from facts.
- equivocation: using two or more meanings of a key word in the same argument.
- idiosyncratic language: charging words with personal meaning which alter their meaning.
- unnecessary vagueness: using a word in such a way that there are no referents of the term or such that the definition is incomprehensible.
- ambiguous terms: equivocating between different meanings of a word or phrase.
- amphibole: using ambiguous syntax.
- shifting of accent: altering the meaning, but not the literal truth, of a reported statement by falsely emphasizing certain words.
- suppressed quantification: omitting quantification that would make an argument appear dubious if included.
- misuse of etymology: asserting that words should remain close to their etymological roots, and using such to come to a certain conclusion.
- overprecision: rejecting a concept as unusable because it has borderline cases or because the definition is not perfect.
- stolen concept: using a concept while denying another concept upon which the former logically depends.
- begging the question/circular argument: attempting to support a proposition with an argument that presupposes the proposition.
- complex question: trying to get one's interlocutor to accept a proposition by posing a question that presupposes it.
- audiatur et altera pars: arguing from unstated premises.
- non sequitur: offering a proposition that does not follow logically from the premises.
- affirming the consequent: asserting that because if A then B, therefore if B then A.
- denying the antecedent: asserting that because if A then B, therefore if not A then not B.
- hasty generalization: generalizing from too few particulars that are probably not representative of an entire group.
- faulty generalization: asserting a universal statement unsupported by evidence.
- faulty causal generalization: (non causa pro causa) taking one event to be the cause of another when there is not enough evidence, or when there is no causal relationship.
- assuming the cause: (post hoc ergo propter hoc) assuming that the fact that one event follows another indicates that the two are causally related.
- cum hoc ergo propter hoc: asserting that the fact that two events occur together means that they are causally related.
- fallacy of composition: asserting that what hold true for each member of a class holds true for the class as a whole.
- fallacy of decomposition: asserting that what holds true for a class as a whole holds true for each member of the class.
- fallacy of statistics: (gambler's mistake): misapplying the statistics of a group to a single situation.
W. Ward Fearnside and William B. Holther. Fallacy: the Counterfeit of Argument. 1959.
Nicholas Capaldi. The Art of Deception. 1971.
Douglas N. Walton. Informal Logic. 1989.
David Kelley. The Art of Reasoning. 1990.