Taxonomy – Where am I?
Fallacy of False Attribution
classification : informal – fallacies of ambiguity – equivocation
Occurs when an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument.
Examples
“Objectivism advocates infanticide, therefore Objectivism is evil.”
Foundations
Present a false description of your adversary and then base your repudiation on that description.
Other Names
Equivocation
Fallacy of quoting out of context
Loki’s Wager
No true Scotsman
Reification
Matthew effect ( “accumulated advantage” )
Begging The Question
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Taxonomy – Where am I?
Fallacy of Inconsistency
classification : informal – non sequitur
Where something inconsistent, self-contradictory or self-defeating is presented.
Examples
Yogi Berra quote: “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”
Foundations
Asserts more than one proposition such that the propositions cannot all be true. Arguing from inconsistent statements, or to conclusions that are inconsistent with the premises.
Other Names
tu quoque
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Taxonomy – Where am I?
Denying The Antecedent
classification : formal – fallacy of propositional Logic
Arguments of this form do not give good reason to establish their conclusions, even if their premises are true.
Foundations
When a premise of an argument denies the truth of the antecedent of a conditional premise, then concludes by denying the truth of the conditional premises’ consequent.
Other Names
Same Category: Affirming the Consequent
© 2009 – 2010, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
Taxonomy – Where am I?
Appeal To Consequences (argumentum ad consequentiam)
classification : informal – appeals to motives in place of support
An argument that concludes a premise (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences.
Foundations
Based on an appeal to emotion since the desirability of a consequence does not address the truth value of the premise. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view.
Sub Fallacies
Appeal to Force
Wishful Thinking
Red Herring
© 2009 – 2010, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
Taxonomy – Where am I?
Quoting Out Of Context
classification : informal – fallacies of ambiguity
To quote out of context is to remove a passage from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its meaning.
Foundations
It is often included with the Fallacy of Accent. However, Aristotle’s original Fallacy of Accent referred solely to shifting the accent on syllables within words, and it has already be stretched a little to include shifting the accent between words within a sentence. To expand it further is reason the concept of “quoting out of context” gets its own section.
Fallacious quoting can take two distinct forms; Straw Man and Appeal to Authority.
© 2009, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
Taxonomy – Where am I?
Fake Precision Fallacy
classification : informal – fallacies of vagueness
Occurs when an argument treats information as more precise than it really is.
Foundations
When imprecise information contained in the premises must be taken as precise in order to adequately support the conclusion.
Examples
Other Names
Fake Precision
False Precision
Misplaced Precision
Spurious Accuracy
© 2009, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
Taxonomy – Where am I?
In A Certain Respect And Simply
classification : informal – Non-sequitur
Take an attribute that is bound to a certain area and assume that it can be applied to a wider domain than was originally intended.
Foundations
When we discuss an attribute of something or somebody, we implicitly assume that there is some constraining contextual factors. When the assumption is carried too far in this context, then this fallacy is committed.
Other Names
Secundum quid et simpliciter
Note: On Sophistical Refutations – Translated by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge
© 2009, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
Taxonomy – Where am I?
Affirming The Consequent
classification : informal – Non-sequitur
Affirming the consequent argues backward from the truth of a conclusion to the truth of one of the propositions like this.
Foundations
Together with its similar Sub fallacy, Denying the Antecedent, instances of Affirming the Consequent are most likely to seem valid when we assume the converse of the argument’s conditional premise.
Note: On Sophistical Refutations – Translated by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge
© 2009, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
Taxonomy – Where am I?
Bulverism
classification : informal – Non-sequitur
Rather than proving that an argument is wrong, a person instead assumes it is wrong, and then goes on to explain why the other person held that argument..
Foundations
The term “Bulverism” was coined by C. S. Lewis. Lewis wrote about this in a 1941 essay of the same name, later included in the anthology God in the Dock. It is very similar to Antony Flew’s “Subject/Motive Shift”.
© 2009, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
© 2009, Logic – For the love of it. All rights reserved. GURU Consulting
