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Fallacies
A fallacy is a kind of error in reasoning. The list of fallacies below contains 231 names
of the most common fallacies, and it provides brief explanations and examples of each
of them. Fallacious arguments should not be persuasive, but they too often are.
Fallacies may be created unintentionally, or they may be created intentionally in order
to deceive other people.

The vast majority of the commonly identified fallacies involve arguments, although
some involve only explanations, or definitions, or other products of reasoning.
Sometimes the term “fallacy” is used even more broadly to indicate any false belief or
cause of a false belief. The list below includes some fallacies of these sorts, but most
are fallacies that involve kinds of errors made while arguing informally in natural
language.

A charge of fallacious reasoning always needs to be justified. The burden of proof is on

your shoulders when you claim that someone’s reasoning is fallacious. Even if you do
not explicitly give your reasons, it is your responsibility to be able to give them if
challenged.

An informal fallacy is fallacious because of both its form and its content. The formal
fallacies are fallacious only because of their logical form. For example, the Slippery
Slope Fallacy is an informal fallacy that has the following form: Step 1 often leads to
step 2. Step 2 often leads to step 3. Step 3 often leads to…until we reach an obviously
unacceptable step, so step 1 is not acceptable. That form occurs in both good
arguments and fallacious arguments. The quality of an argument of this form depends
crucially on the probabilities of going from one step to another. The probabilities involve
the argument’s content, not merely its form.

The discussion below that precedes the long alphabetical list of fallacies begins with an
account of the ways in which the term “fallacy” is imprecise. Attention then turns to the
number of competing and overlapping ways to classify fallacies of argumentation. For
pedagogical purposes, researchers in the field of fallacies disagree about the following
topics: which name of a fallacy is more helpful to students’ understanding; whether
some fallacies should be de-emphasized in favor of others; and which is the best
taxonomy of the fallacies. Researchers in the field are also deeply divided about how to
define the term “fallacy” itself, how to define certain fallacies, and whether any theory
of fallacies at all should be pursued if that theory’s goal is to provide necessary and
sufficient conditions for distinguishing between fallacious and non-fallacious reasoning
generally. Analogously, there is doubt in the field of ethics regarding whether
researchers should pursue the goal of providing necessary and sufficient conditions for
distinguishing moral actions from immoral ones.

1. Introduction
The first known systematic study of fallacies was due to Aristotle in his De Sophisticis
Elenchis (Sophistical Refutations), an appendix to the Topics. He listed thirteen types.
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After the Dark Ages, fallacies were again studied systematically in Medieval Europe.
This is why so many fallacies have Latin names. The third major period of study of the
fallacies began in the later twentieth century due to renewed interest from the
disciplines of philosophy, logic, communication studies, rhetoric, psychology, and
artificial intelligence.
The more frequent the error within public discussion and debate the more likely it is to
have a name. That is one reason why there is no specific name for the fallacy of
subtracting five from thirteen and concluding that the answer is seven, though the error
is common.

The term “fallacy” is not a precise term. One reason is that it is ambiguous. It can refer
either to (a) a kind of error in an argument, (b) a kind of error in reasoning (including
arguments, definitions, explanations, and so forth), (c) a false belief, or (d) the cause of
any of the previous errors including what are normally referred to as “rhetorical
techniques.” Philosophers who are researchers in fallacy theory prefer to emphasize (a),
but their lead is often not followed in textbooks and public discussion.

Regarding (d), ill health, being a bigot, being hungry, being stupid, and being
hypercritical of our enemies are all sources of error in reasoning, so they could qualify
as fallacies of kind (d), but they are not included in the list below. On the other hand,
wishful thinking, stereotyping, being superstitious, rationalizing, and having a poor
sense of proportion are sources of error and are included in the list below, though they
wouldn’t be included in a list devoted only to faulty arguments. Thus there is a certain
arbitrariness to what appears in lists such as this. What have been left off the list below
are the following persuasive techniques commonly used to influence others and to
cause errors in reasoning: apple polishing, using propaganda techniques, ridiculing,
being sarcastic, selecting terms with strong negative or positive associations, using
innuendo, and weasling. All of the techniques are worth knowing about if one wants to
reason well.
In describing the fallacies below, the custom is followed of not distinguishing between a
reasoner using a fallacy and the reasoning itself containing the fallacy.

Real arguments are often embedded within a very long discussion. Richard Whately,
one of the greatest of the 19th century researchers into informal logic, wisely said, “A
very long discussion is one of the most effective veils of Fallacy; …a Fallacy, which
when stated barely…would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world if diluted in
a quarto volume.”

2. Taxonomy of Fallacies
The importance of understanding the common fallacy labels is that they provide an
efficient way to communicate criticisms of someone’s reasoning. However, there are a
variety of ways to label fallacies, and there are a number of competing and overlapping
ways to classify fallacies. For example, the fallacies of argumentation can be classified
as either formal or informal. A formal fallacy can be detected by examining the logical
form of the reasoning, whereas an informal fallacy depends upon the content of the
reasoning and possibly the purpose of the reasoning. That is, informal fallacies are
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errors of reasoning that cannot easily be expressed in our system of formal logic (such
as symbolic, deductive, predicate logic). The list below contains very few formal
fallacies. Fallacious arguments also can be classified as deductive or inductive,
depending upon whether the fallacious argument is most properly assessed by
deductive standards or instead by inductive standards. Deductive standards
demand deductive validity, but inductive standards require inductive strength such as
making the conclusion more likely. Fallacies can be divided into categories according to
the psychological factors that lead people to use them, and they can also be divided
into categories according to the epistemological or logical factors that cause the error.
In the latter division there are three categories: (1) the reasoning is invalid but is
presented as if it were a valid argument, or else it is inductively much weaker than it is
presented as being, (2) the argument has an unjustified premise, or (3) some relevant
evidence has been ignored or suppressed. Regarding (2), a premise can be justified or
warranted at a time even if we later learn that the premise was false, and it can be
justified if we are reasoning about what would have happened even when we know it
didn’t happen.
Similar fallacies are often grouped together under a common name intended to bring
out how the fallacies are similar. Here are three examples. Fallacies of relevance include
fallacies that occur due to reliance on an irrelevant reason. Ad Hominem, Appeal to Pity,
and Affirming the Consequent are also fallacies of
relevance. Accent, Amphiboly and Equivocation are examples of fallacies of ambiguity.
The fallacies of illegitimate presumption include Begging the Question, False
Dilemma, No True Scotsman, Complex Question and Suppressed Evidence.

3. Pedagogy

It is commonly claimed that giving a fallacy a name and studying it will help the student
identify the fallacy in the future and will steer them away from using the fallacy in their
own reasoning. As Steven Pinker says in The Stuff of Thought (p. 129),
If a language provides a label for a complex concept, that could make it easier to think
about the concept, because the mind can handle it as a single package when juggling a
set of ideas, rather than having to keep each of its components in the air separately. It
can also give a concept an additional label in long-term memory, making it more easily
retrivable than ineffable concepts or those with more roundabout verbal descriptions.
For pedagogical purposes, researchers in the field of fallacies disagree about the
following topics: which name of a fallacy is more helpful to students’ understanding;
whether some fallacies should be de-emphasized in favor of others; and which is the
best taxonomy of the fallacies. Fallacy theory is criticized by some teachers of informal
reasoning for its over-emphasis on poor reasoning rather than good reasoning. Do
colleges teach the Calculus by emphasizing all the ways one can make mathematical
mistakes? The critics want more emphasis on the forms of good arguments and on the
implicit rules that govern proper discussion designed to resolve a difference of opinion.
But there has been little systematic study of which emphasis is more successful.

4. What is a fallacy?
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Researchers disagree about how to define the very term “fallacy.” Focusing just on
fallacies in sense (a) above, namely fallacies of argumentation, some researchers define
a fallacy as an argument that is deductively invalid or that has very little inductive
strength. Because examples of false dilemma, inconsistent premises, and begging the
question are valid arguments in this sense, this definition misses some standard
fallacies. Other researchers say a fallacy is a mistake in an argument that arises from
something other than merely false premises. But the false dilemma fallacy is due to
false premises. Still other researchers define a fallacy as an argument that is not good.
Good arguments are then defined as those that are deductively valid or inductively
strong, and that contain only true, well-established premises, but are not question-
begging. A complaint with this definition is that its requirement of truth would
improperly lead to calling too much scientific reasoning fallacious; every time a new
scientific discovery caused scientists to label a previously well-established claim as false,
all the scientists who used that claim as a premise would become fallacious reasoners.
This consequence of the definition is acceptable to some researchers but not to others.
Because informal reasoning regularly deals with hypothetical reasoning and with
premises for which there is great disagreement about whether they are true or false,
many researchers would relax the requirement that every premise must be true. One
widely accepted definition defines a fallacious argument as one that either is
deductively invalid or is inductively very weak or contains an unjustified premise or that
ignores relevant evidence that is available and that should be known by the arguer.
Finally, yet another theory of fallacy says a fallacy is a failure to provide adequate proof
for a belief, the failure being disguised to make the proof look adequate.

Other researchers recommend characterizing a fallacy as a violation of the norms of

good reasoning, the rules of critical discussion, dispute resolution, and adequate
communication. The difficulty with this approach is that there is so much disagreement
about how to characterize these norms.

In addition, all the above definitions are often augmented with some remark to the
effect that the fallacies are likely to persuade many reasoners. It is notoriously difficult
to be very precise about this vague and subjective notion of being likely to persuade,
and some researchers in fallacy theory have therefore recommended dropping the
notion in favor of “can be used to persuade.”

Some researchers complain that all the above definitions of fallacy are too broad and do
not distinguish between mere blunders and actual fallacies, the more serious errors.

Researchers in the field are deeply divided, not only about how to define the term
“fallacy” and how to define some of the individual fallacies, but also about whether any
general theory of fallacies at all should be pursued if that theory’s goal is to provide
necessary and sufficient conditions for distinguishing between fallacious and non-
fallacious reasoning generally. Analogously, there is doubt in the field of ethics whether
researchers should pursue the goal of providing necessary and sufficient conditions for
distinguishing moral actions from immoral ones.

5. Other Controversies
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How do we defend the claim that an item of reasoning should be labeled as a particular
fallacy? A major goal in the field of informal logic is provide some criteria for each
fallacy. Schwartz presents the challenge this way:

Fallacy labels have their use. But fallacy-label texts tend not to provide useful criteria
for applying the labels. Take the so-called ad verecundiam fallacy, the fallacious appeal
to authority. Just when is it committed? Some appeals to authority are fallacious; most
are not. A fallacious one meets the following condition: The expertise of the putative
authority, or the relevance of that expertise to the point at issue, are in question. But
the hard work comes in judging and showing that this condition holds, and that is
where the fallacy-label texts leave off. Or rather, when a text goes further, stating
clear, precise, broadly applicable criteria for applying fallacy labels, it provides a critical
instrument more fundamental than a taxonomy of fallacies and hence to that extent
goes beyond the fallacy-label approach. The further it goes in this direction, the less it
need to emphasize or event to use fallacy labels. (Schwartz, 232)
The controversy here is the extent to which it is better to teach students what Schwartz
calls “the critical instrument” than to teach the fallacy-label approach. Is the fallacy-
label approach better for some kinds of fallacies than others? If so, which others?

Another controversy involves the relationship between the fields of logic and rhetoric.
In the field of rhetoric, the primary goal is to persuade the audience. The audience is
not going to be persuaded by an otherwise good argument with true premises unless
they believe those premises are true. Philosophers tend to de-emphasize this difference
between rhetoric and informal logic, and they concentrate on arguments that should fail
to convince the ideally rational reasoner rather than on arguments that are likely not to
convince audiences who hold certain background beliefs. Given specific pedagogical
goals, how pedagogically effective is this de-emphasis?
Advertising in magazines and on television is designed to achieve visual persuasion. And
a hug or the fanning of fumes from freshly baked donuts out onto the sidewalk are
occasionally used for visceral persuasion. There is some controversy among researchers
in informal logic as to whether the reasoning involved in this nonverbal persuasion can
always be assessed properly by the same standards that are used for verbal reasoning.