Accent
[Amb] This fallacy consists of shifting the meaning of a statement by changing
the accent. E.g. "We should not speak ill of our friends" seems reasonable when
read without any stress. If someone concludes that we may speak ill of people
who are not our friends, then he has apparently switched premises by emphasizing
the last word. Emphasizing other words (we,speak) yield yet other distinct
meanings and conclusions. Quoting someone out of context is an example of this
fallacy. Often a passage can only be correctly understood with its explanatory
context, which sets the environment, sense and qualifications. Other examples of
this fallacy: tabloid headlines ("Revolution in China" headline, continuing in
small print "...not likely to occur soon."); advertising posters and ads ("PC System
$800" banner, then in small print "keyboard, monitor, CD drive not included.")
Ambiguous Collective
[Rel] The use of a collective term without any meaningful delimitation of the
elements it subsumes. "We" "you" "they" and "the people" are the most widely
used examples. This fallacy is especially devastating in the realm of political
discussion, where its use renders impossible the task of discriminating among
distinctly different groups of people. I often challenge those who commit this
fallacy to eliminate from their discussion vocabulary all general collective terms,
and each time they want to use such a term to use instead a precisely delimiting
description of the group the term is intended to subsume.
An antecedentless pronoun is an example in the singular of the Ambigious
Collective fallacy. Here are two examples of the Ambiguous Collective fallacy:
"Last November, 77% of us voted in favor of term limits." In this statement, who
exactly are the "us"? The speaker wants to convey the idea that term limits are
very widely supported, but if in fact the 77% refers only to those who voted, that
subgroup may well be a quite small percentage of the total population. "We need
to train doctors to teach us how to get and stay healthy." In this statement, who
are the "we" and who are the "us"? Is the speaker trying to promote socialized
medicine by advocating government control of the medical schools? When he
says "we need to" does he really mean "the government should"? And is the "us"
merely a subtle way of saying "me"?
Amphiboly
[Amb] Amphiboly refers to ambiguity due to the grammatical construction of the
premises. A statement is amphibolous when its meaning is indeterminate because
of awkward word combinations and tricky phrasings. "Save Soap and Waste
Paper" Croesus, the king of Lydia, was contemplating war with the kingdom of
Persia. Being cautious, he consulted the Delphi, who told Croesus that "he would
destroy a mighty kingdom." Delighted, he went to war - and was defeated by
Cyrus. He survived and later complained to the Oracle. The prists of the Oracle
answered that the Oracle was quite right, Croesus had destroyed a kingdom - his
own! Amphibolous statements make dangerous premises.
Baculum, Argumentum ad
[Rel] Appeal to force. When one appeals to force or threat of force to cause
acceptance of a conclusion. It is usually used when rational arguments fail.
"Disagree with me and I'll take you straight to jail." "I'll remind the senator that
his constituents will surely vote him out of office unless he concurs with his
vote."
Boolean Syndrome
Choosing to view a continuum as represented by only its extremities. It consists in
dividing a range of options exhaustively into the two extremes and then insisting
that a choice be made between one or the other extreme, without regard to any of
the intervening alternatives.
Converse Accident
[Rel] Hasty Generalization. Considering only a few cases, or only exceptional
cases, and making an erroneous generalization from these limited examples.
"Everyone on Skid Row was dirty and destitute and half-dead. Alcohol is
obviously poison to man."
Complex Question
[Rel] Compound or otherwise non-straightforward questions which cannot be
answered appropriately with a simple "yes" or "no." They may presuppose a
definite answer to an unasked prior question. "Do you still beat your wife?" "Did
your sales increase as a result of your misleading advertising?" Another variation
of this fallacy conjoins two questions and attempts to force an identical answer.
"Or you for the Republicans and prosperity or not?" "Be a good boy and go to
bed." The best way to handle such questions is to break them down into
component parts. E.g. "I have never beat my wife, so your question is irrelevant."
"I am for prosperity, but I'm no damn Republican." Parliamentary procedure does
this with a motion to "divide the question."
Composition
[Amb] Actually two closely related fallacies. In one form the fallacy of
composition is falsely ascribing the properties of the parts of a whole to the
whole. "Every part of this machine is light in weight. Therefore the whole
machine is light in weight." But a heavy machine could have a large number of
light-weight parts. The second form of this fallacy consists of confusing the
distributive and collective use of general terms. [Are there languages which make
such a distinction?] "A bus uses more gas than a car. Therefore all buses use more
gas than all cars." The premise is a (distributive) comparison of one bus to one
car. The conclusion compares the (collective) use of all buses to all cars.
Distributively, buses use more gas than cars. But collectively, cars use more gas
because there are so many more of them. The reverse of the fallacy of
composition is the fallacy of division.
Columbus
[Rel] Assuming that if something had not occurred one way, it would never have
occurred. "If it hadn't been for Columbus, America never would have been
discovered."
Division
[Amb] This is the reverse of the fallacy of composition. It involves the same
confusion between whole and parts, but reverses the direction of inference. "This
machine is heavy, so each part must be heavy." "Corporation X is very important;
Joe Blow works for corporation X; Therefore Joe Blow is important." "American
Indians are disappearing; That man is an American Indian; Therefore that man is
disappearing." "Riddle: Why do white sheep eat more than black sheep? A:
Because there are more of them."
Donut Fallacy
A form of false dichotomy. Insists that all donuts be divided into two piles: large
donuts and sugar donuts.
Equivocation
[Amb] alt Fallacy of Four Terms in the context of categorical syllogisms.
Many words have more than one meaning. If we use a word in two or more
different ways, we are using that word equivocally. If this is done in an argument,
we commit the fallacy of equivocation. "The end of a thing is its perfection; death
is the end of life; hence, death is the perfection of life." This is fallacious because
"end" is used in two different ways: 1) goal, and 2) final event. In the example
these two meanings are confused. One special kind of equivocation are those
using relative terms. "He must be a good man, because he is a good football
player." Equivocation refers to ambiguity in the meaning of a particular word or
phrase.
False Attribution
The Straw Man syndrome. Present a false description of your adversary and then
base your repudiation on that description. "Objectivism advocates infanticide,
therefore Objectivism is evil."
Falsifiability
(Karl Popper) A conjecture or hypothesis must be accepted as true until such time
as it is proven to be false. Popper maintains that scientists approach the truth
through what he calls "conjecture and refutation." In actuality, scientists approach
the truth not through conjecture and refutation, but through conjecture and
CONFIRMATION, i.e. demonstration, by means of careful experiment, that a
hypothesis corresponds to the facts of reality. Until the phenomenon is proven
TRUE there is no obligation to base my attitude toward it on the assumption that
it MIGHT be true. If there were such an obligation, then I would be obliged to
give serious consideration to every crackpot notion that has ever been put
forward.
Gratuitous Inculpation
aka Spurious Causation
"The consumer will have to pay the bill for the oil spill." "Scientists are
responsible for the danger of nuclear war." "The advance of modern medicine
underlies the present population explosion." "Henry Ford is responsible for air
pollution." "Taxpayers are forced to finance policies that many of them would
oppose." The taxpayer does not do the financing the government does. The
statement implies that the taxpayer is performing some positive action, when in
fact he is the passive victim. These seem to be variants of the POST HOC fallacy.
The selected element is contributory but is certainly not a sufficient cause. An
attempt is being made to transfer blame onto someone who is only marginally (or
not at all) responsible.
Ignorantiam, Argumentum ad
[Rel] Appeal to Ignorance. When it is argued that a proposition is true simply
because it has not been proved false, or false because it has not been proved true.
"There must be ghosts (UFO's, deities, dragons) because no one has been able to
prove there aren't any."
Assertions based on what we do NOT know: "No one knows precisely what
would happen if a core was to melt down, so ... ." And the compounding of
arbitrarily asserted possibilities. What could happen is what is possible. The
burden of proof is on the skeptic to provide some specific reason to doubt a
conclusion that all available evidence supports.
Ignoring Historical Example
People who do not look into the future beyond the end of their nose also do not
look into the past beyond yesterday (and sometimes not even that far). If they did,
they would readily see that the previous implementation of their schemes was
invariably a failure. Not only do they fail to see that the scheme WOULD BE a
failure, they fail to see that it HAS BEEN a failure.
Journalistic Fallacies
Some subtle methods of media distortion: use of emotionally loaded images,
isolation of events from their historical context, limitation of debate to
"responsible" options, framing of dissident viewpoints in ways that trivialize
them, personification of complex realities (Saddam = Iraq), objectification of
persons ("collateral damage")
Populum, Argumentum ad
[Rel] Bandwagon Fallacy. The attempt to win popular assent to a conclusion by
arousing the feelings and enthusiasms of the multitudes. This is a favorite of
advertisers, who surround their products with pretty models and various icons of
popular approval. "Lying on your resume is OK since everybody does it." "All
societies require military service. We are a society. Therefore we should require
military service."
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
[Rel] Falsely assuming that an earlier event caused a later event for the mere
reason that it happened earlier. "Over 95% of all heroin addicts in the US have
previously used marijuana. Therefore marijuana leads to heroin." (Substituting
"milk" for "marijuana" neatly exposes the preceding.) This fallacy is a variation of
the False Cause fallacy.
Selective Sampling
"The death rate among American soldiers in Vietnam was lower than among the
general population." But the soldiers in Vietnam were young and healthy. You are
comparing them with a data base including non-young and non-healthy people.