LS

Apologetics: Logical Fallacies

  1. Material fallacies

    1. Mistakes made in the first act of the mind 

      1. Argumentum ad hominem

        1. Argument against the man

        2. Fallacy of a personal attack

        3. Error of attack the character or motives of a person rather than the proposition itself 

          1. Ex- “you’re just a kid. What do you know?”

      2. Argumentum ad ignorantiam 

        1. Argument from ignorance

        2. Fallacy of assuming something is true simply because it hasn’t been proven false → vice versa

          1. Ex- “you can’t prove god doesn’t exist, so he must exist.” 

      3. Argumentum ad misericordiam 

        1. Argument or appeal to pity

        2. Emotional manipulation

        3. No amount of special pleading can make the impossible possible, the false true, etc 

          1. Ex→”Think of all the poor Ethiopian children! How could we be so cruel as not to help them?”

      4. Argumentum ad nauseam 

        1. Argument to the point of disgust

        2. Fallacy of Prove something by saying it over and over again → propaganda 

      5. Argumentum ad numeram & argumentum ad populum

        1. Appeal to number/ appeal to the public

        2. bandwagon fallacy

        3. Ad numeram → trying to prove something b y showing how many people think it’s true

          1. Ex→ “everybody does it”

        4. Ad populum→trying to prove something by showing that the public agrees with you 

      6. Argumentum ad verecundiam

        1. Appeal to false authority 

        2. Fallacy of trying to demonstrate the truth of a proposition by citing someone who agrees, even though that person may have no expertise in the given area

          1. Ex → “Noted life coach and psychiatrist Dr Phil recommends that you buy the EZ-Rest Hot Tub.”

      7. Circulus in demonstrando

        1. Circular argument (Begging the question)

        2. Fallacy of when someone uses what he is trying to prove as part of the proof of that thing

          1. Ex → “The Bible is the inerrant word of God because the Bible says so and it was written by God.”

      8. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc

        1. With this, therefore because of this.

        2. Fallacy of thinking that because two things occur simultaneously, one must be a cause of the other

          1. Ex → "The economy performed well during President Clinton’s term. Therefore, his economic policies must have caused this success."

      9. Dicto simpliciter

        1. Spoken simply

        2. Fallacy of making a sweeping statement and expecting it to be true of every specific case — i.e., stereotyping

        3. Ex → "You must have voted for Harris —after all, you’re a woman, and all women are Democrats."

      10. Bifurcation

        1. Fallacy of assuming that two categories are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, that is, something is either a member of one or the other, but not both or some third category.

        2. Ex → “You are either a person of reason or a person of faith, you can’t be both.”

      11. Fallacy of composition 

        1. Taking what is particular and projecting that into the whole 

          1. Ex → “all the actors in that movie are great, so the movie will be great”

      12. Post hoc ergo propter hoc

        1. After this, therefore because of this 

        2. Fallacy of causal induction

        3. Assuming that a caused b simply because a happened before b

          1. Ex → “after my opponent took office, the economy plummeted. A vote for me is a vote for restoring the economic engine of this country.”

      13. Red herring

        1. Introducing irrelevant facts or arguments to distract from the question at hand 

          1. Ex→”how could my client have ordered the murder? I have proved that he was not even in the country at the Time” 

      14. Straw man

        1. Fallacy of refuting the caricatured or extreme version of someone’s argument, rather than the actual argument one has made 

        2. Often putting words into someone’s mouth 

          1. Ex → “Senator Jones says that we should not attack submarine programs. I disagree entirely. I can’t understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that”

      15. Tu quoque

        1. You too

        2. Fallacy of defending an error in one’s reasoning by pointing out that one’s opponent has made the same error. An error is still an error, regardless of how many people make it

          1. Can become form of ad hominem

          2. Ex → father: "I don't want you to smoke cigarettes, it will bring you all kinds of problems later on in life.” Son: “don’t tell me not to when you do it” 

      16. Plurium interrogationum

        1. complex/loaded question

        2. A question that implicitly assumes something to be true by its construction

        3. Fallacy only if the thing presumed to be true has not been established 

          1. Ex → do you still beat your wife? (hasn’t proven that he beats his wife, form of imputing ones reputation; can’t just be “no” b/c it insinuates that you used to) (tries to force you to defend and explain something) 

  2. Types of reasoning

    1. Inductive

      1. Specific to general

      2. Particular to universal

        1. Ex → 21 senior students who are wearing green polos at BT; all seniors wear green polos

      3. Highly probable but not absolutely certain 

    2. Deductive

      1. General to specific

      2. Universal to particular

        1. EX→ Bt seniors students are required to wear green polos; leah is a bt senior student; therefore leah wears a green polo