Fallacies

Ignoratio elenchi

Fallacy of irrelevance. Putting forward a proposition which might be true, but has no relation with the conclusion

Argumentum ad baculum

appeal to force in order to silence or threaten the opponent

Argumentum ad hominem - direct attack

Character/ irrelevant personal qualities of the opponent are presented as if they are evidence against her position, often coupled with insults. Distracts the audience from the topic of the debate.

Argumentum ad hominem: poisoning the well

Committing a pre-emptive attack on the opponent, based on personal qualities, before the opponent has been able to speak

Argumentum ad hominem : tu quoque

Attempt to counter an attack from the opponent by retorting the attack on the opponent herself, distracting the audience from the issue

Argumentum ad misericordiam

Appeal to sympathy or pity rather than rationality in order to support a proposition

Straw man

Oversimplifying or pushing to the extreme the opponent's thesis

Argumentum ad verecundiam

Appeal to authority rather then rational arguments

Plurium interrogationum

a question Q is posed to the opponent, which implicitely assumes an affirmative or negative answer to one or more questions P1, ..., Pn on which the validity of question Q depends

Shifting the burden of proof

Rather than justifying one's own thesis, forcing the other person to disprove/justify her own instead

Petitio principii

Assuming as a premise of the argument its conclusion. The more premises the argument has the harder it is to spot the circularity.

False analogy

Introduces a weak analogy btw A and B in order to claim that since A has property P

Hasty generalization

Generalizing a few cases which are either not representative of the variability of the whole population, or whose representativity has not been sufficiently argued for to support an argument

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Assuming A must be the cause of B because it happened before.

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc

Assuming A must be the cause of B because they happened at the same time. Correlation doesn't mean causation.

Slippery slope

Arguing that there exists a causal chain of events leading from and event A to another event B which is usually considered bad

Affirmation of the consequent

When one concludes, from the observation that the truth of A logically implies the truth of B (so: A is a sufficient condition for B) and that B occurs, that A must also occur.

Fallacy of composition

to deduce from the fact that all the component parts of a whole possess the property P, that the whole possesses P

Fallacy of division

The opposite of the fallacy of composition

Ad ignorantiam

A lack of evidence refuting something isn't in itself proof for its contrary

The gambler's fallacy

Inferring that a certain outcome of a random trial is more likely given that a specific history of outcomes of previous, statistically independent random trials has been observed

False dilemma

Arguing for a proposition P by assuming without support that either P or Q must be the case, and that Q must be rejected. The fallacy resides in the neglection of other possible alternatives

Denying the antecedent

"If P is the case, then Q must happen" establishes P as a sufficient condition for Q to occur. Assuming that the conditional statement holds, claiming that P is false is however not sufficient to conclude that Q is also false

Argumentum ad hominem - circumstantial

Position of the opponent is not criticized, rather (irrelevant) personal facts are brought in in order to undermine her credibility and distract attention of the audience Doubt is cast on the opponent's motive