Chris O. Cook’s ENG 101 — Fallacy Days / Fallacy Journal
From time to time, we will have “Fallacy Days.” On those days, we discuss examples of flawed logic you’ve noticed in your day-to-day lives. Preferably, the bulk of these examples will be drawn from arguments you witness or take part in yourself. You can also cull examples from arguments you see people make (or try to make) on TV, etc. These examples should be real people making real arguments, not stuff said by fictional characters. Try to get into the habit of always being on the lookout for bad reasoning, so you don’t have to suddenly think of something the night before a Fallacy Day. And even though I’m not collecting it until the end of the course, it’s a very good idea to be keeping your Fallacy Journal all along, so you don’t have to write it all at once.
1. non sequitur — the simplest fallacy; occurs when someone draws a conclusion that does not follow from the givens; in a way, all fallacies are just more specific varieties of non sequitur; often involved in stereotyping. EXAMPLE: “My roommate has all these opera CDs; he must be
rich.” (Although we tend to associate opera with rich people, it is of course possible for any individual to like any type of music.)
2. “circular argument” — when a claim and its reason are just two different ways of saying the same thing. EXAMPLES: “He’s only famous because he’s on TV.” (By definition, people who are on TV are famous, and famous people are on TV, so this is no different from saying “he’s famous because he’s famous” or “he’s on TV because he’s on TV.) “I believe this because of my values.”
(“Values” is just the word we use for “important beliefs,” so this is no different from saying “I believe this because I believe it.”)
3. “begging the question” — a conclusion drawn from an observation or assertion that might not actually be true. EXAMPLE: “You decided to go to that party school, so you must not care
about your education.” (Wait a minute, who says it’s a party school? You are drawing conclusions before you even provided any evidence that the observation was true to begin with.)
4. ad ignorantiam — using the fact that your opponent has no proof as evidence for your own claim. EXAMPLE: “No one has ever proven that UFOs aren’t real, so my belief that they are is
just as good as your belief that they aren’t.” (Just because a claim can’t be definitively disproved doesn’t mean it’s equal to its opposite; I can’t prove that there isn’t an octopus on the roof, but that’s not evidence that one is there. The burden of proof is on the proponent.)
5. ad baculum — arguing that something must be true because the reverse would be horrible.
EXAMPLE: “There must be a Hell, because if there isn’t, then the bad people who die without
getting caught just get away with it!” (Just because something would suck doesn’t mean it can’t be true; life’s not fair.)
6. tu quoque — inappropriate appeal to illusions of consistency. EXAMPLE: “You can’t argue
that cigarettes should be banned in restaurants, but also think that pot should be legalized!”
(While the two issues may be related in many ways, every issue must be analyzed on its own merits, because no two are exactly the same.) NOTE: this fallacy is tricky; sometimes appeals to consistency are appropriate, and sometimes they’re not.

7. “slippery slope” — arguing that a certain action will automatically lead to other actions.
EXAMPLE: “If we legalize pot, next we’ll legalize cocaine, and pretty soon, all drugs will be
legal!” (It’s entirely possible that we could legalize pot and then just stop there; other countries have.) EXCEPTION: Arguing that something would establish a legal or statutory precedent (“If I let you retake the test, I would have to let everyone retake the test”) is not a slippery slope argument—the claim is not that the second thing would automatically happen, but rather that it
would be unfair if it didn’t.
8. “false dilemma” — an argument that gives only two options, when others are possible.
EXAMPLE: “Did you play sports in high school, or were you a nerd?” (Not everyone was one or the other; some students excelled at neither sports nor academics, and some excelled at both.)
9. ad populum — arguing that something must be true because the majority of people believe it. EXAMPLES: “It must be a good movie; look how much money it made.” “If that law you want
to pass is such a good idea, why is everyone against it?” (People can be wrong, no matter how many of them there are; centuries ago, everyone believed in witches, but that didn’t mean they were real.)
10. ad verecundiam — arguing based on deference to respected or important figures.
EXAMPLE: “You should become a vegetarian because Gandhi was a vegetarian.” (Even if you agree that someone is a good person, that doesn’t mean you have to do everything he or she did or believe everything he or she believed; as a corollary, even if you agree that someone was a bad person, you don’t necessarily have to do the opposite of everything he or she did—since
Hitler was also a vegetarian, arguing this issue in this manner is impossible.) EXCEPTION: A
“respected figure” (general) is not the same thing as an “expert” (specific); it’s a good idea to believe a surgeon if one says that you need an operation, but the surgeon isn’t necessarily correct about who will win the Superbowl.
11. ad hominem (“mudslinging”) — bringing up unrelated personal things about your opponent, rather than arguing against the claim itself. EXAMPLE: “Why would you take Matt’s advice
about your 201 paper? He got a DUI last week!” (Even though it was wrong of Matt to drive drunk, he still knows a lot about Shakespeare.)
12. [emotional fallacies]
ad misericordiam — trying to cloud someone’s judgment with sadness.
ad metum — trying to cloud someone’s judgment with fear.
ad invidium — trying to cloud someone’s judgment with envy.
ad odium — trying to cloud someone’s judgment with hatred.
ad superbium — trying to cloud someone’s judgment with pride.
NOTE: Not every argument involving emotion is fallacious; many arguments naturally involve emotion. Emotion is only a problem if it makes you careless.
13. “self-fulfilling prophecy” — when a claim only comes true as a result of the fact that the person believed it in the first place. EXAMPLE: “I was right about how no-one would like me at
my new school; I’ve been there a month, and I haven’t made a single friend.” (Maybe believing that no-one would like you caused you to act differently.)

14. post hoc ergo propter hoc (“correlation doesn’t prove causality”) — arguing or believing that if two phenomena manifest themselves simultaneously and proportionately, then one must be causing the other. EXAMPLES: “Listening to heavy metal must make you more violent; all those kids who pulled school shootings listened to it.” “Living together before marriage is a bad idea—
most couples who get divorced lived together first.” (The kids could have been pissed off about something else to begin with, and that was what caused them both to listen to metal and shoot up the school. Most couples who don’t live together first refrain from doing so for religious reasons, and those same beliefs might also be keeping couples like that from divorcing even when they’re unhappy.)
15. “Texas sharpshooter fallacy” — arguing that something couldn’t have happened based on the fact that it was extremely unlikely; arguing that something random/coincidental is actually non-random/significant. EXAMPLES: “You guys are the best friends I’ve ever had! Isn’t it a miracle that we all came to this college?” “Wow, that Nostradamus prophecy must be about
9/11!” “Hey! That potato chip looks like Jesus!” “Humans must have been created by a higher
being—the odds against life evolving from amoebas into humans are astronomical.” (The problem in all cases is that you’re only able to have a conversation about the thing because it
did happen: If you hadn’t come to this college, you’d have gone to another one, and you’d be saying the same thing to the friends you would have made there. It was entirely possible that simple life forms could have evolved into something besides humans, since humans didn’t necessarily have to exist—but something had to happen, and since humans are what happened, humans are the things having conversations about it.) OFTEN RELATED TO: “retrospective determinism” — the belief that because something did happen, it was supposed to or bound to happen.
16. “Nirvana Fallacy” — arguing that a proposed action is a bad idea just because it is not perfect. EXAMPLE: “Why do we bother having mandatory seat belt laws? People will still die in
car accidents no matter what we do.” (But significantly fewer will die if we have the law.)
17. “No True Scotsman” — acting like exceptions to what you just said don’t count for some reason. EXAMPLE: “No Christian could ever do something as horrible as 9/11” — “What about
Hitler? He was a Christian!” — “Well, he obviously wasn’t a true Christian.” IT IS A FORM OF:
“moving the goalpost” — changing the terms of your original argument after someone disproves it and acting like that was what you meant the whole time.
18. “stacking the deck” (partial truth v. whole truth) — a statement that is factually true and misleading at the same time. EXAMPLE: “James is the best basketball player that’s ever gone to
our school!” (This statement would lead people to assume that James is exceptionally good at basketball, but if everyone who has ever gone to that school is absolutely horrible at basketball, then James could still be worse at it than most people.) Often takes the form of a “vacuous truth.”

19. “straw man” — someone who deliberately hand-picks examples that are convenient to their argument and ignores many others that are not is said to be “building a straw man.” EXAMPLE:
If someone is writing a thesis paper about how rock music is sexist, and picks three or four extremely sexist bands and only writes about them. To argue that position fairly, one would need to either discuss a representative sample (a high percentage of all the rock bands ever) or a
random sample (pick a number of bands at random and see whether the claim is still supported). Another variety of straw-man fallacy is when someone accidentally or deliberately misrepresents what an opponent thinks, and then offers a response to their own inaccurate presentation of their opponent’s views instead of to their opponent’s actual views. This is why you should always pay attention to whether a writer presents their opponent’s exact words or only paraphrases them.
20. “red herring” — a piece of information thrown into an argument to distract people from the real matter at hand; ad hominem fallacies are a type of red herring, as are the emotional fallacies. EXAMPLE: “I can’t believe you like that movie! The director could have filmed it in
New York, but he said New York was too ugly!” (Whether the director hates New York has nothing to do with whether it’s a good movie.)
21. “Spotlight Fallacy” — Concluding that something is true of all things within a certain category, when there is some reason why you are only noticing the ones of which it happens to be true. EXAMPLE: “Of course all gay dudes are flamboyant—whenever I see a gay dude, he is
flamboyant.” (You have actually seen lots of gay dudes who weren’t flamboyant; you just didn’t know they were gay.)
22. “gambler’s fallacy” — the belief that a given occurrence is “due” to happen. EXAMPLE:
“Scott has beaten me at video soccer five times in a row! If we just keep playing, I’ve got to win
soon.” (No you don’t. If Scott is a lot better than you at the game, then he will beat you every time.)
23. “shooting the messenger” — the belief that, if someone talks about or brings people’s attention to a certain thing, then they must like that thing. EXAMPLE: Believing that a movie with drug use in it is advocating drug use. (Just because drugs are in the movie, that doesn’t mean that the director or writers think drug use is a good idea.)
24. “affirming the consequent” — assuming that someone must believe X, just because they believe something that they would believe if they did believe X. EXAMPLE: “You said you don’t think my friend is pretty because she’s fat— that must mean you only like those gross anorexic
girls!” (It is true that if he only liked anorexic girls, he would necessarily not like heavy girls, but just because he doesn’t like heavy girls, that doesn’t necessarily mean he likes anorexic girls).
25. “argument from fallacy” — concluding, based on the fact that you found a fallacy in your opponent’s argument, that their claim must be false and yours true. It might still be the case that they’re right, but just that the specific argument they used was a bad one.
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