Module 3

FALLACIES IN ARGUMENT

INTRODUCTION
This chapter offers a field that would bind the proper understanding of the learner to the
argument. It starts in widening the common misuse of statement that leads towards unjustified
discourse as a form of introduction. It covers the majority identified field fallacies. The practice
of making a discourse involves identification and proper orientation of errors.
The major period of the study arrives during the period later in the twentieth century due
to the renewed interest from the disciplines of philosophy, logic, communication studies,
rhetoric, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Learner who understands the disposition of a
good reasoner in the midst of fallacies will be able to distinguish a good argument, and
remarkably can go in to the flow of the demands of technology and different communication
tools. The learner needs to develop the concept of a critical mindset to connect easily to the
discussion design to resolve a different opinion. This part explains how the learner be aware of
the argument fallacies and formulate sound reasoning.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
At the end of this module, you are expected to:

 Identify the fallacies reflected in various statements;

 Discuss ways on how to handle heated argument; and
 Extract fallacies/fallacious statements from news programs.

Let’s see your logical Mind

LOGIC RIDDLES
LR-1 LR-2 LR-3
What common English It occurs once in a minute, Is it correct to say “the yolk of
verb becomes its own past twice in a moment, but egg is white or “the yolk of eggs
tense by rearranging its never in an hour. are white”?
letters?
Clue: _ _ _ L_TT_R M Clue: NE_T_E, T_E Y_K_ EGG
Clue: E
LR-5 LR-6
LR-4 Think of words ending in -GRY.
The prisoner is told: “if you tell Angry and hungry are two of them.
A cowboy rides into town
a lie, we will hang you and if you There are only three words in the on Friday. He stays three
tell the truth, we will shoot you” English language. What is the third days. Then rides out of
what did the prisoner say to save word? The word is something that town on Friday. How?
himself? everyone uses every day. If you
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Clue: NE_T_E, T_EIS Y_K_
THE UNIVERSITY STRICTLYEGG
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I have
1
Clue: NE_T_E, T_E Y_K_ EGG
Clue: NE_T_E, T_E Y_K_ EGG AE YE_ _W
 Module 3

CONTENT

Fallacy is a general type of appeal (or category of argument) that resembles good
reasoning, but that we should not find to persuasive. According to Hamblin, the classical
definition of fallacy is, “an argument that appears to be valid, but is not. Are fallacies arguments?
Strictly and classically speaking, while we may say that an argument is fallacious or commits a
fallacy, the term “fallacy” does not refer to an argument but an error of some identifiable kind. 1

History of Fallacy Theory2

The history of the study of fallacies begins with Aristotle’s work, On Sophistical
Refutations. It is among his earlier writings and the work appears to be a continuation of the
Topics. Aristotle also discusses fallacies in the Prior Analytics and On Rhetoric. While John
Locke who is credited with intentionally creating a class of ad-arguments, and inadvertently
giving birth to the class of ad-fallacies. In an Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he
identified three kinds of arguments, the ad verecundiam, ad ignorantiam, and ad hominem
arguments. John Stuart Mill also recognized his contribution to the study of fallacies found in the
book V of his comprehensive A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, first published in
1843. It stands out most strikingly for placing the study of fallacies within his framework of
inductive reasoning. Mill drew a division between the moral and the intellectual causes of
fallacies. He divides the broad category of argument fallacies into two groups. Those in which
the evidence is distinctly conceived and those in which it is indistinctly conceived.

Common Logical Fallacy

THE AD HOMINEM FALLACY

It is the most common of all mistakes in reasoning. The fallacy rest on a confusion
between the qualities of the person making a claim and the qualities of the claim itself. (“Claim”
is to be understood broadly here, as including beliefs, opinions, positions, arguments, proposals,
and so forth.) For example, “Parker is an ingenious fellow. It follows that parker’s opinion on
some subject, whatever it is, is the opinion of an ingenious person. But it does not follow that
Parker’s opinion itself is ingenious. To think that it is it would be to confuse the content of
Parker’s claim with Parker himself.
We commit the ad hominem fallacy when we think that considerations about a person “refute”
his or her assertions. Ad hominem is Latin for “to the man” indicating that it is not really the
subject matter that’s being addressed but the person.

1
https://www2.palomar.edu/users/bthompson
2
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies
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 Module 3
STRAW MAN
A man made of straw is easier to knock over than a real one. And that’s the reason this
fallacy has its name. we get a straw man fallacy when a speaker or writer distorts, exaggerates, or
otherwise misrepresents an opponent’s position. In such a case, the position attributed to the
opponent isn’t a real one, it’s a position made a straw and thus more easily criticized and
rejected. Here’s a real example: Imagine that our editor’s wife says to him, “Mark, it’s time you
got busy and cleaned out the garage. “He protests, “What? Again? Do I have to clean out the
garage every blasted day?” In saying this, he is attributing to his wife a much less defensible
position than her real one, since nobody would agree that he should have to clean out the garage
every day.

SLIPPERY SLOPE
Also, the domino theory, the common fallacy that “one thing inevitably leads to another.
E.g. “if you two go and drink coffee together, one thing will lead to another, and soon enough
you’ll be pregnant and end up sending your life on welfare living in the projects” or “if we close
Gitmo, pretty soon armed terrorist will be on our door step.

EQUIVOCATION
The fallacy of deliberately failing to define one’s terms, or deliberately using words in a
different sense than one the audience will understand. (E.g. Bill Clinton stating that he did not
have sexual relations with “that woman”, meaning no sexual penetration, knowing full well that
the audience will understand his statement as “I had no sexual contact of any sort with that
woman.”) this is a corruption of the argument from logos, and a tactic often used in American
jurisprudence.

HASTY GENERALIZATION
Also known as fallacy of insufficient statistics, fallacy of insufficient sample, leaping to a
conclusion, hasty induction. This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about
a
population based on a sample that is not large enough. It is making an assumption about a whole
group or range of cases based on a sample that is inadequate (usually because it is a typical or to
small). Stereotypes about people. (E.g. “my roommate said her philosophy class was hard, and
the one I’m in is hard to. All philosophy classes must be hard “two people’s experiences are in
this case not enough on which to base a conclusion.

APPEAL TO AUTHORITY
Often, we add strength to our arguments be referring to respected sources or authorities
and explaining their positions on the issues we’re discussing. If, however, we try to get readers to
agree with us simply by impressing them with a famous name or by appealing to a supposed
authority we really aren’t much of an expert, we commit the fallacy of appeal to authority.
Example, “we should abolish the death penalty. Many respected people, such as actor Guy
handsome, have publicly stated their opposition to it. “while guy handsome maybe an authority
on matters having to do with acting, there’s no particular reason why anyone should be moved
by his political opinions-he is probably no more of an authority on the death penalty than the
person writing the paper.

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 Module 3

AD POPULUM
The Latin name of this fallacy means “to the people”. There are several versions of the ad
populum fallacy, but what they all have in common is that in them, the arguer takes advantage of
the desire most people have to be liked and to fit in with others and uses that desire to try to get
the audience to accept his or her argument. One of the most common versions is the bandwagon
fallacy, in which the arguer tries to convince the audience to do or believe something because
everyone else supposedly does. For example, gay marriage is just immoral. 70% of Americans
think so! While the opinion of the most Americans might be relevant in determining what laws
we should have, it certainly doesn’t determine what is moral or immoral; there was a time where
a substantial number of Americans were in favor of segregation, but their opinion was not
evidence that segregation was moral. The arguer is trying to get us to agree with the conclusion
by appealing to our desire to fit in with other Americans.

FALSE DICHOTOMY
In false dichotomy, the arguer sets up the situation so it looks like there are only two
choices. The arguer then eliminates one of the choices, so it seems that we are left with only one
option: the one the arguer wanted us to pick in the first place. But often there are really many
different options, not just two-and if we thought about them all, we might not be so quick to pick
the one the arguer recommends. For example, building one is in bad shape. Either we tear it
down and put a new building or we continue to risk student’s safety. Obviously, we shouldn’t
risk anyone’s safety, so we must tear the building down. The argument neglects to mention the
possibility that we might repair the building or find some way to protect students from the risks
in question. For example, if only a few rooms are in bad shape, perhaps we shouldn’t hold
classes in those room.

BEGGING THE QUESTION

A complicated fallacy, it comes in several forms and can be harder to detect than many of
the other fallacies we’ve discussed. Basically, an argument that begs the question asks the reader
to simply accept the conclusion without providing real evidence, the argument either relies on a
premise that says the same thing as the conclusion (which you might hear referred to as “being
circular” or circular reasoning”) or simply ignores an important (but questionable) assumption
that the argument rests on. Sometimes people use the phrase “beg the as a sort of general
criticism of arguments, to mean that an arguer hasn’t given very good reasons for a conclusion.

FALSE CAUSE AND EFFECT

Assuming that because B comes after A, A caused B. of course, sometimes one event
really does cause another one that comes later-for example, if register for a class, and my name
later appears on the roll, it’s true that the first event caused the one that came later. But
sometimes two events that seem related in time aren’t really related as cause and event. This is,
correlation isn’t the same thing as causation. For example, President Jones raised taxes and then
the rate of violent
crime went up. Jones is responsible for the rise in crime. The increase in taxes might or might not
be one factor in the rising crime rates, but the argument hasn’t shown us that one caused the
other.

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 Module 3

COMPOSITION
The fallacy of composition is committed when a conclusion is drawn about a whole based
on the features of its constituents when, in fact, no justification provided for the inference. The
reasoning would look something. Assuming that because parts have certain properties, the whole
does as well. For example, all the parts of the engine were light weight, so the engine should
have been lightweight.

APPEAL TO IGNORANCE
This fallacy occurs when you argue that your conclusion must be true, because there is no
evidence against it. This fallacy wrongly shifts the burden of proof away from the one making
the claim. More so, this argument offers lack of evidence as if it were evidence to the contrary.
The argument says, no one knows it therefore it is false or no one knows it is false therefore it is
true. For example, “since you haven’t been able to prove your innocence, I must assume your
guilty”

STACKING THE DECK

It is a fallacy in which any evident that supports an opposing argument is simply rejected,
omitted, or ignored. Stacking is a technique that’s commonly used in propaganda. It is also
known as special pleading, ignoring the counter evidence, slanting, or one-sided assessment.
also, when writers give only the evidence that their premise, while disregarding or withholding
contrary evidence, they are stacking the deck.

IGNORING THE ISSUE

You avoid the central point of argument, instead drawing attention to a minor issue. For
example. You’ve put through a proposal that will cut overall loan benefits for students and
drastically raise interest rates, but then you focus on how the system will be set up to process
loan applications for students more quickly. More so, when an arguer responds to an argument
by not addressing the points of the argument. Unlike the straw man fallacy, ignoring the issue
does not create an unrelated argument to divert attention, it simply avoids the argument.

Watch a particular news on Television and identify some of the fallacious arguments.
Write the statement including the name of the news program and the person who is
uttering the statement.
(you can use another paper for activity)

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 Module 3

INSTRUCTION:
IDENTIFY THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS
USING ARGUMENT FALLACIES i. Hasty Generalization
(WRITE YOUR ANSWER ON THE LINE
BELOW) ii. Slippery Slope
iii. Appeal to Authority
Logical Fallacy Quiz iv. Ad Populum (Appeal to
1. All the parts of the engine were lightweight, so Popular Opinion)
the engine should have been lightweight. v. Ad Hominem
2. All murderers are criminals, but a thief isn’t a murderer (Attacking the Person)
and so, can’t be a criminal. vi. Appeal to Ignorance
3. There are no convincing arguments in books. In order to vii. False Dichotomy (False
be convincing an argument has to be sound, but Dilemma)
arguments written books clearly do not make any noise. viii. Begging the Question
(Also called Circular
4. Those who oppose abortion have no respect for women’s
ix. Equivocation
rights and see women as a baby making machines, which
x. Composition
is of course wrong. Women must be able to choose.
xi. False Cause and Effect
5. Legalizing prostitution is undesirable because it would
xii. Ignoring the Issue
cause more marriages to break up, which would in turn (Also called Arguing
cause the breakdown of the family, which would finally beside the Point and
result in the destruction of civilization. Ignoratio Elenchi)
6. Tin: it is 5:00 in the morning you are drunk covered in xiii. Straw Man
lipstick, and your shirt is on backward! Would you care xiv. Stacking the Deck
to explain yourself?
Caloy: I was out with the guys.
Tin: And the lipstick? 1.____________________________________
Caloy: You look wonderful tonight, honey! 2. ___________________________________
Tin: (softening) you think so? I got my hair cut today! 3. ___________________________________
7. Cardo used special pleading when he claimed that the 4. ___________________________________
presence of unbelievers (such as stage magicians) made 5. ___________________________________
him unable to demonstrate his psychic powers. 6. ____________________________________
8. Every time I wash my car, it rains 7. ____________________________________
9. Extended warranties are a very popular purchase by the 8. ____________________________________
9. ____________________________________
consumer, so extended warranties must be good for the
10. ___________________________________
costumer. 11. __________________________________
10. God is real because the Bible says so, and the Bible is 12. __________________________________
from God. 13. ___________________________________
11. Some people can become millionaires with the right 14. _________________________________
Business concept. Therefore, if everyone has the right
Business concept, everyone will become a millionaire.
12. If you want better public schools, you have raised taxes,

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 you can’t have better schools; a third alternative is that
Module 3
you could spend the existing tax money more efficiently.
13. According to St. Augustine of Hippo a famous converted Christian patience is the companion of
wisdom, therefore it is true
14. If someone is guilty, they always try to deny their guilt. This man has never said that he is not guilty,
and therefore he must be innocent.

LET’S reflect!

1. Cite and instance when you argued with someone. How did you handle the
situation?
2. When arguing with someone, do you focus more on emotion or technicalities (e.g.
you are very particular the way someone is speaking, standing or even the body
language)? Elaborate your answer. (see the rubric below)
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CRITERIA UNSATISFACTORY (3-4) NEEDS IMPROVEMENT (5-7) SATISFACATORY (8-9) OUTSTANDING (10)
Content & Content is incomplete.  Content is not comprehensive and or Content is accurate and Content is comprehensive,
development Major points are not clear. persuasive. persuasive. accurate, and persuasive.
Specific examples are not used. - Major points are addressed, but not - Major points are stated. - Major points are stated
well supported. - Responses are adequate and clearly and are well supported.
- Responses are inadequate or do not address topic. - Responses are excellent,
address topic. - Content is clear. timely and address topic.
-Specific examples do not support -Specific examples are used. - Content is clear.
topic. -Specific examples are used.
Organizational Organization and structure Structure of the paper is not easy to Structure is mostly clear and Structure of the paper is clear
structure detract from the message. follow. easy to follow. and easy to follow.

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 Writing is disjointed and lacks - Transitions need improvement. - Transitions are present. Module 3
- Transitions are logical and
transition of thoughts. - Conclusion is missing, or if - Conclusion is logical. maintain the flow of thought
provided, does not flow from the throughout the paper.
body of the paper. - Conclusion is logical and
flows from the body of the
paper.
Grammar, Paper contains numerous Paper contains few grammatical, Rules of grammar, usage, and Rules of grammar, usage, and
punctuation and grammatical, punctuation, and punctuation and spelling errors. punctuation are followed with punctuation are followed;
spelling spelling errors. minor errors. spelling is correct.
Spelling is correct.

SUMMARY
In our everyday activities, we used to encounter arguments from those people we used to
meet. And most of the time, we forget to clarify our thoughts and reasons that lead us to conflict
and misunderstanding. This lesson covers all the arguments that will verify the truth. And from
this verification, there is the identification of errors that we can use to disseminate every single
correct argument.
This lesson also explores the argument of others it teaches us to analyze not just the
wholeness of an argument but also the way they deliver a particular discourse. The very essence
of this lesson is to engage ourselves in three things: first, clarifying our opinions if it is in the
periphery of truth, facts, data, and updated research. We cannot just throw a single word without
looking at it in a detailed concept. Second, the step by step procedure, most of the time the
introduction of our thoughts is simply not connected to the body and in the conclusion. The
tendency of this is the vague figure of an argument that sometimes we don’t know the way to
finish it. The third is the choosing of a word, indeed, we become somehow intelligent when we
throw decorated terms and expressions. But understanding and give meaning to this word is to
make sense for a good argument.

REFERENCES:

Kitchenham, A. (2008). The evolution of John Mezirow's transformative learning theory. Journal
of transformative education, 6(2), 104-123.
Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New directions for adult and
continuing education, 1997(74), 5-12.
Taylor, E. W. (2017). Transformative learning theory. In Transformative learning meets bildung
(pp. 1729). Brill Sense.
Wodak, R. (2007). Language and ideology—Language in ideology. Journal of Language and
Politics, (1), 1-5
https://www.pocoyo.com/en/riddles/logic
https://www.brainzilla.com//brain-teaser

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8