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Fallacy of Relevance: A Fallacy in Which The Premises Are Irrelevant To The Conclusion. 1) Appeal To The Populace

This document defines and provides examples of various types of logical fallacies. It discusses fallacies of relevance, defective induction, presumption, and ambiguity. Some key fallacies explained include appeal to popularity, straw man, false cause, begging the question, fallacy of equivocation, and fallacy of composition. Examples are given to illustrate how each fallacy occurs in arguments.

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Siddharth Shahi
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
58 views

Fallacy of Relevance: A Fallacy in Which The Premises Are Irrelevant To The Conclusion. 1) Appeal To The Populace

This document defines and provides examples of various types of logical fallacies. It discusses fallacies of relevance, defective induction, presumption, and ambiguity. Some key fallacies explained include appeal to popularity, straw man, false cause, begging the question, fallacy of equivocation, and fallacy of composition. Examples are given to illustrate how each fallacy occurs in arguments.

Uploaded by

Siddharth Shahi
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Fallacy of relevance: A fallacy in which the premises are irrelevant to the conclusion.

1) Appeal to the populace:


 An informal fallacy in which the support given for some conclusion is an appeal to popular
belief.
 An informal fallacy committed when the support offered for some conclusion is an
inappropriate appeal to the multitude.
 Example – A 2005 Gallup Poll found that an estimated 25% of Americans over the age of 18
believe in astrology or that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives.  That
is roughly 75,000,000 people.  Therefore, there must be some truth to astrology!
2) Appeal to pity:
 A fallacy in which the argument relies on generosity, altruism, or mercy, rather than on
reason.
 An informal fallacy committed when the support offered for some conclusion is emotions—
fear, envy, pity, or the like—of the listeners.
 Example - "You must have graded my exam incorrectly. I studied very hard for weeks
specifically because I knew my career depended on getting a good grade. If you give me a
failing grade I'm ruined!"
3) Red herring:
 A fallacy in which attention is deliberately deflected away from the issue under discussion.
 An informal fallacy committed when some distraction is used to mislead and confuse.
 Example - There is a lot of commotion regarding saving the environment. We cannot make
this world an Eden. What will happen if it does become Eden? Adam and Eve got bored there!
4) Straw man:
 A fallacy in which an opponent's position is depicted as being more extreme or unreasonable
than is justified by what was actually asserted.
 An informal fallacy committed when the position of one’s opponent is misrepresented, and
that distorted position is made the object of attack.
 Example –
A: We should relax the laws on beer.
B: No, any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic and goes only
for immediate gratification.
5) Argument against the Person:
 A fallacy in which the argument relies upon an attack against the person taking a position.
 An informal fallacy committed when, rather than attacking the substance of some position,
one attacks the person of its advocate, either abusively or as a consequence of his or her
special circumstances.
 Example – "You didn't even finish high school. How could you possibly know about this?"
6) Appeal to force:
 A fallacy in which the argument relies upon an open or veiled threat of force.
 An informal fallacy committed when force, or the threat of force, is relied on to win consent.
 Examples - I deserve a raise in salary for the coming year. After all, you know how friendly I
am with your wife, and I'm sure you wouldn't want her to find out what's been going on
between you and that sexpot client of yours.
7) Missing the point:
 A fallacy in which the premises support a different conclusion from the one that is proposed.
 An informal fallacy committed when one refutes, not the thesis one’s interlocutor is
advancing, but some different thesis that one mistakenly imputes to him or her.
 Example –
A: Does the law allow me to do that?
B: The law should allow you to do that because this and that.
Fallacy of defective Induction: A fallacy in which the premises are too weak or ineffective to warrant the
conclusion.
1) Argument from Ignorance:
 A fallacy in which a proposition is held to be true just because it has not been proven false, or
false because it has not been proven true.
 An informal fallacy in which a conclusion is supported by an illegitimate appeal to ignorance,
as when it is supposed that something is likely to be true because we cannot prove that it is
false.
 Example - "Although we have proven that the moon is not made of spareribs, we have not
proven that its core cannot be filled with them; therefore, the moon’s core is filled with
spareribs."
2) Appeal to Inappropriate authority:
 A fallacy in which a conclusion is accepted as true simply because an expert has said that it is
true. This is a fallacy whether or not the expert’s area of expertise is relevant to the
conclusion.
 An informal fallacy in which the appeal to authority is illegitimate, either because the
authority appealed to has no special claim to expertise on the topic at issue, or, more
generally, because no authority is assured to be reliable.
 Example - Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and perhaps the foremost expert in the
field, says that evolution is true. Therefore, it's true.
3) False cause:
 A fallacy in which something that is not really the cause of something else is treated as its
cause.
 An informal fallacy in which the mistake arises from accepting as the cause of an event what
is not really its cause.
 Example - "Every time I go to sleep, the sun goes down. Therefore, my going to sleep causes
the sun to set."
4) Hasty generalization:
 A fallacy of defective induction in which one moves carelessly from a single case, or a very
few cases, to a largescale generalization about all or most cases.
 An informal fallacy in which a principle that is true of a particular case is applied, carelessly
or deliberately, to the great run of cases.
 Example - If my brother likes to eat a lot of pizza and French fries, and he is healthy, I can say
that pizza and French fries are healthy and don't really make a person fat.
Fallacy of Presumption: Any fallacy in which the conclusion depends on a tacit assumption that is dubious,
unwarranted, or false.
1) Fallacy of accident:
 A fallacy in which a generalization is mistakenly applied to a particular case to which the
generalization does not apply.
 Example - I believe one should never deliberately hurt another person, that’s why I can never
be a surgeon.
2) Complex question:
 An informal fallacy in which a question is asked in such a way as to presuppose the truth of
some conclusion buried in that question.
 Example - How many school shootings should we tolerate before we change the gun laws?
3) Begging the question:
 An informal fallacy in which the conclusion of an argument is stated or assumed in any one of
the premises.
 Example - Everyone wants the new iPhone because it is the hottest new gadget on the market!
Fallacy of ambiguity: An informal fallacy caused by a shift or a confusion in the meanings of words or phrases
within an argument.
1) Fallacy of Equivocation:
 A fallacy in which two or more meanings of a word or phrase are used, accidentally or
deliberately, in different parts of an argument.
 An informal fallacy in which two or more meanings of the same word or phrase have been
confused.
 Example - Noisy children are a real headache. Two aspirin will make a headache go away.
Therefore, two aspirin will make noisy children go away.
2) Fallacy of amphiboly:
 A fallacy in which a loose or awkward combination of words can be interpreted in more than
one way; the argument contains a premise based upon one interpretation, while the conclusion
relies on a different interpretation.
 Example - "Last night I caught a prowler in my pyjamas."
3) Fallacy of Accent:
 A fallacy of ambiguity that occurs when an argument contains a premise that relies on one
possible emphasis of certain words, but the conclusion relies on a different emphasis that
gives those same words a different meaning.
 An informal fallacy committed when a term or phrase has a meaning in the conclusion of an
argument different from its meaning in one of the premises, the difference arising chiefly from
a change in emphasis given to the words used.
 Example - In the movie, My Cousin Vinny, Ralph Maccio's character, Bill, was interrogated
for suspected murder. When the police officer asks him, "when did you shoot the clerk?" Bill
replies in shock, "I shot the clerk? I shot the clerk?" Later in the film, the police officer reads
Bill's statement as a confession in court, “Then he said, 'I shot the clerk. I shot the clerk.”
4) Fallacy of Composition:
 A fallacy of ambiguity in which an argument erroneously assigns attributes to a whole (or to a
collection) based on the fact that parts of that whole (or members of that collection) have
those attributes.
 An informal fallacy in which an inference is mistakenly drawn from the attributes of the parts
of a whole to the attributes of the whole itself.
 Example - Your brain is made of molecules.  Molecules do not have consciousness. Therefore,
your brain cannot be the source of consciousness.
5) Fallacy of division:
 A fallacy of ambiguity in which an argument erroneously assigns attributes to parts of a whole
(or to members of a collection) based on the fact that the whole (or the collection) has those
attributes.
 An informal fallacy in which a mistaken inference is drawn from the attributes of a whole to
the attributes of the parts of the whole.
 Example - His house is about half the size of most houses in the neighbourhood. Therefore,
his doors must all be about 3 1/2 feet high.

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