Crib Sheet: Mosley's explanation of the fallacies Fallacies: A fallacy is an error in reasoning, false reasoning. A fallacy is a failure and the mark of an argument that should not be credited. From W.R.A.C. Emotionally loaded terms (emotionalism) Emotionalism is different from appealing to emotions. Every persuasive speech should appeal to the reader's emotions, and we will soon learn that psychological appeals are a type of support for value claims. Emotionalism is the use of emotion instead of logic. Emotionally loaded terms are terms that are designed to 'beg the question' by implying a verdict without logical argument. Examples: For example, if a cable news channel decides that people who put explosives on themselves and blow up near enemies should no longer be called suicide bombers but homicide bombers, they're using emotionally loaded terms. The term itself is a verdict ('this is an act of murder; it has no justification; it is a crime') and is designed to get the listener's emotions going while the logic is still in neutral. The same would be true of saying innocent little children ; the children are small or innocent already, and saying it that way is swaying emotions to win the argument without arguing. Argumentum ad hominem Usually people just call this Ad hominem, and it's one of the few fallacies you'll hear about online. Literally, ad hominem translates as to the man. (If it helps you remember it, you can think of 'ad' as being like 'at' and 'hominem' as being like 'homo' or 'hominid' or 'hombre.') Essentially, an ad hominem is changing the subject of the argument from the original topic to the person him or herself. This is most often done with an insult. The point is that it is a diversionary tactic. It is possible to perform an ad hominem with a compliment, but people respond to insults more consistently than compliments, and people in arguments are usually readier to call names than pet each other anyway. Examples: Suppose our topic is, Should we put terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay on trial in the United States federal courts? Now, Bob is arguing Yes, and Pete is arguing No; use military tribunals. Bob argues that Rachman, the sheik who inspired Osama bin Laden, was put on trial in federal court, and so were three other terrorists from al Qaeda, and each was no problem. Pete, getting desperate, says, Sure. You ACLU types are all about freeing everyone, aren't you? You have no experience with what it's really like on the front lines. I've served in the military, but you were off hugging trees and worrying about rights! Well, Bob's going to respond to that, isn't he? Wouldn't you? After all, Bob's winning the argument. However, as soon as Bob responds, as soon as he tries to prove that he is too manly, as soon as he tries to seem tough, the ad hominem has
worked. They've stopped arguing about trying suspects in federal court and started arguing about how macho Pete is. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (faulty cause and effect) Most of the time, you can just call this a post hoc. The post hoc fallacy is mistaking sequence for cause. If one thing happens after another, you assume that the first one caused the second one. This is a mistake in our inductive reasoning. We know that it's natural to look for patterns and causes in sequences, but when we find them in things that can't be cause and effect, we're making a mistake. Examples: Did you know that, ever since Obama's been in office, the number of natural disasters has gone up? When we got rid of prayer in schools, the divorce rate shot up. As soon as you started coming to school here, the basketball team started losing. All of these are post hoc fallacies. The simplest forms of it are our superstitions. If you tell a lie, and lightning strikes, the lightning almost certainly did not strike because of your lie, and yet it's natural for you to look around as if God had decided to destroy a tree for you. (This may be pride on your part.) If you go to IHOP before a game and then there is a great victory, you're going to be tempted to go to IHOP before every game because it's good luck. Lucky socks, underwear of various types, unlucky habits... all show a basic post hoc error. As a fallacy, though, it is when someone attempts to reason and argue using the simple coincidence of time as if it were cause. False dichotomy (either/or reasoning) A false dichotomy or either/or is when a situation is complex, but the person arguing presents the reader/audience with only two choices. The infamous It's my way or the highway of angry parents is a false dichotomy. When a person gives an ultimatum, it's almost always a false dichotomy. However, it also occurs when there are generally complicated situations (e.g. nuclear energy, nuclear proliferation, genetically engineered crops, cloning) and everything is boiled down to two choices. This differs from the slippery slope in that it is not dependent on the future. It is not a question of this will happen, but rather pick one. Examples: President George W. Bush paraphrased Jesus Christ and said, of his presidency, You're either with me, or you're against me. In the case of Jesus, the statement was true. For Bush, it was not. (Can we be in favor of his goals and against his methods? Can we be in favor of some of his positions, but not others?) Someone saying, Genetically modified foods need to be banned in the U.S. now, or we should resign ourselves to having little or no control over our health is projecting into the future, but really that person is lumping all GM foods together and giving us an all or nothing choice. Hasty generalization In my example of inductive reasoning, I ask you to imagine dropping a
ball and seeing it bounce. I say that you need to do that many, many times before you can conclude that the ball will bounce. Suppose, though, you dropped it only twice and then concluded that the ball was elastic? That would be a hasty generalization. You wouldn't have enough data. Suppose that you dropped the ball a hundred times, saw that it was bouncy, and then said, All balls are bouncy? That would be a hasty generalization. A hasty generalization is either generalizing a rule/theory from inadequate data or applying a valid theory onto a generality without justification. Examples: I went to the post office for tax forms, and they didn't have any. Then I went to the public library, and they didn't have any, either. I don't think the government has made the tax forms this year. (Trust me: they always make the tax forms.) Bob is simply unmanageable. We tried talking to him, and we tried whipping him, and nothing seems to work. (Gosh. Is that all there is, you figure?) Argument by analogy (false analogy) WRAC calls this false analogy only because the same authors write a legal writing book where they praise argument by analogy. Everyone else, I think, just calls this fallacy argument by analogy. What's at stake here is arguing by similar qualities alone. It's transitive argument. Consider A and B. A has (1, 3, 5) and B has (1, 4, 5, 9). You can say that A and B share 1 and 5, but only that. The argument by analogy says that, because they share those two, they must share the rest. Sharron is in the TEA party (aspect 1), and she's active (aspect 2) and a racist (aspect 3). Now I see that Christina is active (2) in the TEA party (1), so she's a racist too (1) is a fallacy. The two things or people really share some qualities, but then the fallacious argument says they therefore share other qualities. Examples: The Great Pyramid at Chiops is constructed with a 1:3:5 ratio of sides, and we find exactly the same ratio in the Vatican in Rome and the Lincoln Memorial. The Vatican and the Lincoln Memorial were both designed by Free Masons, who say they go back to ancient Egypt! (It turns out that 1:3:5 is also found in a news stand, a Port-a- Potty, and a teepee. Suggesting a conspiracy is fantastic.) The dime has on its back three sticks bound around an axe. That is a fasce. This fasce was the symbol of the fascist party. The man who introduced this design was Woodrow Wilson, who was obviously part of the fascist government of the United States. (The fasce is found all over the place, because it's a symbol of ancient Rome, and Wilson died 11 years before the fascist party come into existence. He was just doing the America is the new Rome thing.) I've noticed that most of the basketball players are tall. You're tall. What position do you play on the team? ( You may share the quality of height with basketball players, but that doesn't mean you share anything else with them.)
Begging the question This one is hard to explain. Begging the question is positing the answer in your question. It is proceeding as if you have already proven the thing under debate. The school yard taunt, Does your mother know you cheat on tests? is a form of begging the question. (See how it implies You cheat on tests in the question itself?) There used to be an essay we'd use where an idiot would argue that the best way to treat childhood obesity was to shame fat children. When children felt ashamed of themselves for overeating, they'd no longer do it. This immediately begs the question of who says it would work? Who says that children feel no shame now? Who says that children need shame? Who says that shame is helpful? In Why the Gasoline Engine Is Not Going Away Any Time Soon in our 101 book now, the author talks about the electric car, and he says that closing all the factories that make gasoline cars will be devastating. Who said that the factories would close? Who said that the coming of an electric car would mean the death of the gasoline car? Who said that the workers wouldn't make the electric car? Examples: Examples are a little difficult to provide. Basically, begging the question is when a statement begs the reader to ask a basic question the author is presupposing an answer to. Non sequitur We have found a few fallacies that are inductive reasoning gone bad. A non sequitur is deductive reasoning gone bad. Non sequitur means it does not follow (see sequential and sequence in sequitur ). Suppose you have an argument with a thesis, support, and then a conclusion, but the conclusion does not match the support. That's a non sequitur. I joke and say that non sequitur is Latin for huh? Sometimes it's a very obvious thing, but sometimes it isn't. Sophisticated authors will blend emotionalism in with their arguments and hide the fact that their conclusion simply has nothing to do with the proof they've offered. Examples: An example might be something like this: Average temperatures world wide have increased for the last forty years. 2009 was the warmest year in recorded history. Carbon dioxide concentrations measured in high altitudes have increased by eight percent annually, although they increased at a lower rate last year than the prior four years. Global warming is obviously the reason for the storms we have had around the world this year. (The last statement may be true. It's just that the proof does not support it. The proof leads us to global warming is related to carbon dioxide and nothing else. A particular storm is illogical.) Another could be Jennifer is the only one of my room mates to have a key to my car, other than me. I trust her. Whoever stole my CD player did not break the glass or force the door, but I'm sure that my car was locked. I was away for two nights when it was stolen. I'm sure that Stephanie's boyfriend stole the spare key from Jennifer and then stole CD player.
(There is no proof of that. In fact, the proof is leading to the idea that Jennifer did it or that the thief was good or that the speaker didn't lock her doors. Her conclusion is a non sequitur.) Oversimplification This one speaks for itself, doesn't it? Well, oversimplifications show up in argument more often than not when there is a complex situation that a person reduces to a simple matter. If someone says the answer to unemployment is that people need to go out and get jobs, then that person is showing a complete lack of understanding of the problem, and the argument is a desperate oversimplification. Also, when people turn whole nations into just their leaders (the figure of speech involved is called synecdoche), it's over simplification. If someone says, We've got to go in there and stop Saddam, then that person is oversimplifying. Examples: Per above. I volunteered, Mike said, because someone needs to teach Tojo a lesson! (Tojo, military commander of Japan in WW II.) You know all that rape wouldn't happen, Archie said, if women didn't dress so revealing. (Clothing does not commit rape: men do, and the causes are extremely complex.) I don't like any of this genetics stuff, Sarah said, and those scientists need to stop interfering with life. ('Genetics' is a vast subject, and genetic engineering is a vast subject, and genetic intervention is a vast subject, and gene therapy is a vast subject, and it's very unlikely that a person is against or for all of it.) I don't like poetry, Greg told me. (Really? Poetry? All poetry? Poetry because it's poetry?) Additional fallacies include: Straw man A straw man is a representation of your opponent's position that is unfairly stupid, shallow, or illogical. It is an image of your opponent's argument that is easy to defeat. In a good argument, one rebuts or reconciles the opponent's arguments, but with a straw man, one rebuts not the opponent, but a foolish version of the opponent. Examples: President George W. Bush was asked, in 2008, If you knew then what you know now about there not being any weapons of mass destruction, would you still have invaded Iraq, and he answered, I know that some people disagree, but I don't care what they say: I'm for freedom, and I'll choose freedom every time. Instead of answering the actual argument, he answered a different argument that was a good deal dumber than the one before him. In Why the Gasoline Engine Isn't Going Away Any Time Soon, the author talks about the electric car, and he says, If we get rid of the internal combustion engine, we will have to live near mass transit. Huh? He is saying that people will not want to eliminate all internal combustion engines, but no one had argued that position. His other
side had only argued that we gain electric cars. Argument ad populis I mention this one because we see it often these days. Ad populis is an argument to prejudice. If someone argues to our worst prejudices, or even our best ones, and uses what everybody knows, that's a fallacy. What everybody knows is often wrong, and, even if it isn't, it needs to be logical. Examples: I support Bernaeke for Federal Reserve. You know how good Jews are with money. (No, I don't. Neither do you.) The news media has told you all about my speeches by now. Yet another case of the gotcha press. We all know where their sympathies lie. (No, we really don't. Even if we did, would they be unprofessional for it?) My opponent is a Republican, so of course she's a favorite of big business and the wealthy. Only I speak for the little guy. (Of course? No, it isn't part of the course. This needs proof.) Argument by tradition Simply put, this is the argument that we have always done things this way, and so we should keep doing them. N.b. Tradition is a valid argument for feasibility, but it is not an argument of value. Let me explain that. Suppose we have always picked our leader by having them sing the national anthem on television and having people call in to vote folks off one by one. Let's say that we've done that for fifteen years. Now, another person argues that we instead of the politicians speak about their policies and not sing anymore. The other person says, But this is the way we do it. Well, the tradition shows you that it is a system that functions, but it does not show that the system is good or bad. The fallacy occurs when people use tradition to argue value.