Fallacies related to audience

I&W 4: Ad hominem - Irrelevant attack on the person
What could a rich conservative possibly know about poor, single mothers?

I&W 4: Ad populum - Assumption that something that is popular is therefore good.  (M&M’s appeal to popular prejudice)
More headache sufferers use Bayer than any other pain relief medicine.

I&W 4: Appeal to tradition - Assumption that something is good because “it’s always been done that way”
There has always been a hazing tradition for new freshmen, so it’s an important part of this school.

I&W 4: Straw arguments - Using a weakened form of opponent’s argument so it can be easily defeated
No blood for oil!  (Opponents of war in Iraq imply that people who support the war feel that oil is more important than loss of life in such a conflict – this often represents an oversimplification and weakened form of the pro-war position)
 

Fallacies of language use

I&W 5: Equivocation - Exploits the fact that a word has more than one meaning so as to lead to a false conclusion
(M&M’s ambiguity)
Take this television home today for just $1. (You can buy it for just $1 down but you’ll have to make payments on the balance)

I&W 5: Amphiboly - Exploits ambiguity in grammatical structure to lead to false conclusion
Visit our website and win great prizes!  (You won’t win just by visiting – you probably only have a chance to win)
TelPay, the better way to pay. (Better than what?)

I&W 5: Emotive language - Manipulates the connotative meaning of words to establish a claim without proof.
Greedy developers are raping the earth and leaving nothing for future generations.

M&M 7:  Vagueness - Exploits the fact that a word’s meaning is unclear so speaker does not have to commit to or take a position
This new tax bill will be beneficial to the American taxpayers.

M&M 7:  Equivocation- Changing meanings during an argument to sound more compelling
We should protect America’s national forests. . . . We should only allow the most profitable companies cut the trees down.

M&M 7:  Obscuration - Arguments that rely on unnecessarily complex language, sentence structure, etc. so as to confuse or hide the truth (includes doublespeak)
Logomachies obfuscate the semantic germination of meaning.
 

Fallacies of Evidence

I&W 7: Begging the question - Assumes as a premise or evidence the very claim or point that is in question
 (M&M’s circularity)
It is good to help others because helping others is good.

I&W 7:  Non sequitur - (“It does not follow”)  Making a claim that does not follow from the evidence
Handguns kill innocent people, so handguns should be banned.

M&M 7:  Repeated assertion - Relying on repetition to support an unwarranted claim
Lose weight with our diet!  Our diet is the fastest way for you to lose weight!  You can lose weight with our diet in just 48 hours.  You’ll be more attractive after losing weight with our diet.

M&M 7:  Non-representative instance - Using evidence that is atypical or not representative of what is usually the case
Lose 100 pounds in just one week! (Perhaps only one person who has been on this diet has ever lost that much weight in that amount of time, so these results are not typical)

M&M 7:  Invalid statistical measure - Any misuse of statistics in order to support a claim, including using results stemming from bad samples, providing misleading graphic representations of numbers, and using misinterpretations of averages
Example 1: The same increase over time could be shown as large or small, depending on how the graph is labeled.
Example 2: Some argue that Bush is committing this fallacy when he says how much Americans will save, on average, with his new tax cuts. They claim that the average is skewed by the large savings that people with large incomes will receive.  The calculated average is factually correct, but it’s misleading because most people will receive much less.

M&M 7:  Unreliable source - Using sources likely to be biased or lacking in credibility (depends on context because credibility is context-dependent)
The RJ Reynolds tobacco company says that smoking does not cause cancer.

Appeal to authority – Assumption that because a source is recognizable, s/he is more likely to be correct
Example:  Using a tennis star to sell investment services when there are no credentials other than her/his fame.
 

Fallacies of faulty reasoning

I&W 8: False analogy - Making comparisons when there are really major differences in the issues or instances
(similar to M&M’s faulty comparison)
Teaching sex education in schools is like telling our children to go out and have sex.
Legalizing marijuana would be a good policy for the US because it works well in the Netherlands.

I&W 8:  Hasty generalization - A claim based on too small a pool of examples; generalizing from an inadequate number of instances (Same as M&M’s insufficient instances)
There are obviously too few sections of SOC 110 because my friend and I both had trouble getting into the course

I&W 8:  False cause - Offering a cause for a consequence not directly related to the consequence (two types)

        Post hoc -Because event B followed event A, event A must have caused event B
        It rained this afternoon because I washed my car this morning.

        Single-cause - When an advocate attributes only one cause to a complex problem
        We’ll solve the welfare problem as soon as we can get all those lazy people to get a job.

I&W 8:  Slippery slope - Assumes, without evidence, that a given event is the first in a series of steps that will lead inevitably to some outcome.
Communism will have a domino effect – once one country falls, other countries will follow.

M&M 7:  Appeal to ignorance - Supporting a claim by noting that others are unable or unwilling to prove the claim is unacceptable; unfair shift in burden of proof
Because you cannot prove that life begins at conception, therefore life does not begin at conception.

M&M 7:  Oversimplification - Overlooking potentially relevant considerations that could weaken one’s position

         False dilemma - Oversimplifying by posing arbitrarily limited options (also called “either-or” fallacy)
         We can either attack Iraq to disarm them now, or we can wait and be attacked by them.

         Oppositional thinking - Arbitrarily divides ideas into two opposites, allowing no middle ground
         Either you are for us, or you are against us.

Red herring - Focusing on an irrelevant part of an argument in order to divert attention away from the subject under discussion
(same as M&M’s begging the question)
Example: A politician under attack for her views on abortion may emphasize her opponent’s bad record on equal wages in order to divert attention away from the argument at hand.

Undistributed middle - guilt by association; because an individual or group shares certain attributes with another, that individual or group must share other attributes.
She’s a Democrat, so she must have a liberal position on abortion.