Logical Fallacies Argumentum Ad Hominem Attacking the persons

Logical Fallacies

Argumentum Ad Hominem • Attacking the person’s character or personal traits rather than the argument at hand • Rejecting a claim based on the person defending it

Anecdotal • Using a personal example or isolated experience instead of concrete evidence • May also occur when refuting statistics with personal stories and isolated incidents

Appeal to Authority • Not meant to dismiss the claims of experts • Stating claims as true simply because an authority on the subject is in agreement

Appeal to Emotion • Manipulating emotion (fear, pity, pride, and more) to win an argument • Argument lacks logic and factual evidence

Appeal to Nature • Argument based on the concept that something is good because it is “natural” or bad because it is “unnatural” • Nature decides what is right/good

Bandwagon • Appealing to popularity of belief/choice or the fact that many people agree with claim x • Also called “appeal to the masses” • Offers the threat of rejection (relies on peer pressure)

Begging the Question • Claim includes the assumption the conclusion is true • Also called “circular reasoning”

Black or White • Presenting only two alternatives where more exist • Also called “either-or fallacy” or “false dilemma” • Over-simplifies an argument and narrows options

Burden of Proof • Saying the burden of proof lies on someone else to disprove the claim • Essentially “guilty until proven innocent”

The Fallacy • Inferring that a conclusion cannot be true because the argument constructed contains one or more fallacies • Also called argumentum ad logicam (argument to logic)

Invalid Conclusion • In a syllogism a fallacy whereby the major premise and minor premise do not add up to the conclusion • Or where fallacies exist within the premise(s)

Personal Incredulity • The premise that because something is difficult to understand, or you are unaware of how it works, it is not true

Slippery Slope • Presuming one event will inevitably follow another without rational proof as to why • Post Hoc is a related fallacy where it is assumed that A causes B, simply because A happens before B.

Strawman • Misrepresenting someone's argument to make it easier to attack • Similar to the cliché metaphor of “putting words in someone’s mouth”

The Texas Sharpshooter • Also called “clustering illusion” • Ignoring differences in data and focusing solely on similarities • Inserts meaning into randomness

Tu Quoque • Also called the “appeal to hypocrisy” • Tries to discredit an opponents argument by stating they have not consistently behaved in accordance with their conclusions