AP Lang: Logical Fallacies

Appeal to Force

: This argument uses force, the threat of force, or some other unpleasant backlash to make the audience accept a conclusion.

Ad Hominem Fallacy

: Attacking or praising the people who make an argument rather than discussing the argument itself.

Bandwagon Approach

: “Everybody is doing it.” This argument asserts that, since the majority of people believes an argument or chooses a particular course of action, the argument must be true or the course of action must be the best one.

Appeal to Tradition

: This line of thought asserts that a premise must be true because people have always believed it or done it.

Appeal to Improper Authority

: An appeal to an improper authority, such as a famous person or a source that may not be reliable.

Appeal to Biased Authority

: In this sort of appeal, the authority is one who truly is knowledgeable on the topic, but unfortunately one who may have professional or personal motivations that render that judgment suspect.

Begging the Question

: The fallacy is committed when someone has made a conclusion based on a premise that lacks support.

Circular Reasoning

: Often the authors word the two statements sufficiently differently to obscure the fact that the same proposition occurs as both a premise and a conclusion.

Hasty Generalization

: Mistaken use of inductive reasoning when there are too few samples to prove a point.

Misleading Statistic

: Suppose an individual argues that women must be incompetent drivers, and he points out that last Tuesday at the Department of Motor Vehicles, 50% of the women who took the driving test failed.

False Causality Fallacy

: This fallacy establishes a cause/effect relationship that does not exist.

The Red Herring Fallacy

: A red herring is a deliberate attempt to change the subject or divert the argument from the real question at issue.

Straw Man Fallacy

: A writer creates an oversimplified, easy-to-refute argument, places it in the mouth of his opponent, and then tries to "win" the debate by knocking down that empty or trivial argument.

Slippery Slope Fallacy

: The speaker argues that, once the first step is undertaken, a second or third step will inevitably follow.

False Dilemma Fallacy

: This fallacy occurs when a writer builds an argument upon the assumption that there are only two choices or possible outcomes when actually there are several.

Faulty Analogy

: Relying only on comparisons to prove a point rather than arguing deductively and inductively.

Equivocation

: Using a word in a different way than the author used it in the original premise, or changing definitions halfway through a discussion.

Stacking the Deck/cherry-picking

: In this fallacy, the speaker "stacks the deck" in her favor by ignoring examples that disprove the point, and listing only those examples that support her case.

Argument from the Negative

: Arguing from the negative asserts that, since one position is untenable, the opposite stance must be true.

**Loaded Question Fallacy**

Phrasing a question or statement in such a way as to imply another unproven statement is true without evidence or discussion.