Critical Thinking and Argument Introduction
Aristotle’s 3 types of basic appeals:
 Emotional appeals
 Ethical appeals
 Logical appeals
Fallacies: serious flaws that damage or discredit an argument
Types of fallacies:
 Ethical
o Ad hominem
 Attack on personal character
o Guilt by association
 Unfairly linking someone with a guilty group (Nazis)
o False authority/ Suspect authority / Vague authority
 Celebrity endorsement
 Emotional
o Bandwagon appeal
 Making people follow majority
o Flattery
 “people are smart”
o In-crowd appeal
 Make you one of the “popular” crowd
o Veiled threats
 “If you don’t…”
o False analogies
 Linking two unfair comparisons
 Logical
o Begging the question
 Mr. Kleyn is the best according to Mr. Kleyn
o Post hoc
 Just b/c it happened after it must have caused it
o Non sequitur
 It does not follow
o Either-or
 If this happens (or doesn’t) then this will (or won’t)
o Hasty generalization
 Jumping to the conclusion too quickly
 I failed my first paper, so I’m going to fail this course
o Oversimplification
 Over simplifying a situation
 “If we take out Sadaam, democracy will flourish…”