Fallacies Dictionary PDF

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Ad Hoc: when you add a premise to your argument for one purpose and one purpose only: to protect your claims from criticism. Their premise are not independently motivated. Post Hoc: after the fact, therefore because of the fact. When you argue that since A occurred prior to B, A necessarily caused B. Argumentum ad populum: argument to the people is when you rely on popular sentiments to prove your claims. Argumentum ad ignorantiam: not knowing one thing somehow proves another. Circulus in demonstrando: sometimes called begging the question, is when someone merely repeats a premise in the guise of a conclusion. Argumentum ad hominem: arguing against the person rather than against a claim. Guilt by association: is the tactic of impugning (challenge as false, to attack) others by calling attention to some organization or ideology that your audience will perceive as abhorrent (detestable, disgusting). Genetic Fallacy: related to guilt by association in that it aims to discredit arguments on the basis of their ORIGINS rather than on their MERITS. Special pleading: when someone proposes an exemption from the standards that apply to everyone else. Argumentum ad verecundiam: depends, as its name implies, one someone’s authority, be it real or imagined, to prove a point. Straw man: is one that distorts (alter, change) or simplifies a claim in order to refute it. This is when you quote someone’s actual words out of context, or carefully edit quotes to make it appear that someone who disagrees with you actually agrees with you, or you partially edit someone’s quote to make that someone appear foolish, or whatever. Slippery Slope: i. ii. iii. iv. v.

P => Q Q => R R=> S S => T P

Therefore: T (by eliminating some steps that are obvious) One can also construct premises with many conjoined propositions in the consequent, as in P => ((Q & R) & (S & T)) Equivocation: is a way of allowing yourself to weasel out of your arguments after you make them, just in case someone proves you wrong. Texas Sharpshooter: finding coincidental patterns in random events.

False Dilemma: (P v Q) & (P => ˜Q). In other words: “Either P is true or Q is true, and if P is true, then Q is not, and vice versa.” … is when someone wrongly uses “or” in its exclusionary sense. FALSE DILEMMAS ARE POPULAR AMOUNG CONSPIRACY THEORIST. Shotgunning: people who promote nonsense sometimes use disjunctive propositions in similar ways. Anecdotal evidence: Anecdotes are secondhand stories that people try to pass off as proof. Tu quoque: “you as well”. Is a way of deflecting criticism from yourself by accusing others of having the same faults you have. Faulty Analogy: “comparing apples and oranges,” tries to establish similarities between things that are in fact fundamentally different. Gambler’s Fallacy: this is the belief that random events in the present or future are affected by random events from the past. Garbage in a pretty pail: those who promote weird ideas will often dress their writing up in hifalutin, scientific-sounding prose to make it appear that they are saying something profound. Appeal to nature: arguments that appeal to nature suggest that anything “natural” is good, and everything “unnatural” (that is, man by humans) is bad....