Logical Fallacies

What Are They?

Essentially these are things that are improperly constructed arguments. Additionally, and more importantly, they are often forms of argument that sound correct. Paying special attention to these in your own writing and in the writing and speech of others can reveal much about the sneaky strategies often deployed in the construction of rhetorical arguments.

The Double Edged Sword

Using these is a good way to convince stupid people. They are, however, wrong in this class. As such, what is the ethics of teaching this subject?

Problem from the beginning. One of the early Platonic dialogs ends when the two arguing realize they are both relying on fallacies to make their case.

Common Types

1. Erroneous Appeal to Authority
   • “I’m not a doctor but I play one on T.V. Use this aspirin.”
2. Ad Hominem (name calling; irrelevant character issue; guilt by association; false analogy)
   • “The pro-life movement’s Bible-thumpers want to take away our rights.”
   • “Bill Clinton wants television programs to show ratings in order to protect children from adult material, a surprisingly moral position for an adulterer.”
   • “Nelson Mandela’s support of Quaddafi means that any support we give to South Africa endangers American lives.”
   • “Traditional historians appeal to the public’s feeling of nationalism just as the Nazis did.”
3. Shifting the Issue
   • “Affirmative action proponents accuse me of opposing equal opportunity in the work force. I think my positions on military expenditures, education and public health speak for themselves.”
4. Irrelevant Emotional Appeal
   • “How can you say you oppose higher taxes when poverty-stricken school children cannot afford to buy lunches?”
5. Hasty Generalizations
   • “Despite the women’s movement in the ��70s, women still do not receive equal pay for equal worth. Obviously, all such attempts to change the status quo are doomed to failure.”
6. Card-Stacking
   • “We should more frequently use the death penalty because it deters crime, saves the taxpayers from supporting non rehabilitative criminals, validates our penal system, and shows our commitment to a law and order. Opposers of the death penalty are idealists on whom criminals prey for sympathy.”
7. Bandwagon
   • “Since Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley have all added a multicultural component to their graduations requirements, Notre Dame should get with the future.”
8. Begging the Question (“begging the question has traditionally described a type of logical fallacy (also called petitio principii) in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises”)
   • “We could improve the undergraduate experience with coed dorms since both men and women benefit from living with the opposite gender.”
   • “To cast abortion as a solely private moral question,�is to lose touch with common sense: How human beings treat one another is practically the definition of a public moral matter. Of course, there are many private aspects of human relations, but the question whether one human being should be allowed fatally to harm another is not one of them. Abortion is an inescapably public matter.”
9. Fallacy of the General Rule
   • “A recent college graduate doesn’t have the experience we require so let’s just pass on this applicant .”
10. False Either/Or Situation
    • “We may support this petition for a Gender Studies major, or we may turn our backs on progress, reject the petition and suffer the consequences.”
11. False Analogy
    • “It is ridiculous to have a Gay and Lesbian Program and a Department for the study of African-American culture. We don’t have a Straight Studies Program or a Department for Caucasian Culture.”
    • “Some drugs are more dangerous than others. It is easier to kill oneself with heroin than aspirin. But it is also easier to kill oneself by jumping off a high building than a low one. In the case of drugs, we regard their potentiality for self-injury as justification for their prohibition; in the case of buildings, we do not.”
    • “It should be against the law to fire a woman because she gets pregnant. They don’t fire a man for fathering a child.”

Examples To Try

1. “Charles Manson wrote this song, so it must be unlistenable”
2. “The belief in God is universal. After all, everyone believes in God.” #

Sources

1. http://www.nd.edu/~fwriting/fyc/instructors/documents/Logical Fallacies?.doc
2. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/begquest.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
4. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html