A
BEGINNER’S
GUIDE TO
LOGICAL
FALLACY.
Introduction This booklet will help you gain a better understanding of logical fallacies and how to spot them in an argument. You will f ind some easy to understand illustrated examples of logical fallacies along with a description of that par ticular fallacy.
Dictionary definitions
Fal - la - cy [fal - uh - see] non plural - cies
FALLACY
1. A deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, e tc; That the world was f lat at one time is a popular fallacy. 2. A misleading or unsound argument. 3. Deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erronerous. 4. L ogic. Any various types of erronerous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.
Synonyms misconception, delusion, missaprehension.
Logical fallacy A logical fallacy is a collapse in logic of ten used in debate to mislead or distract people from the real issue.
DeďŹ nition of Logical Fallacy A logical fallacy is an element of an argument that is f lawed, essentially rendering the line of reasoning, if not the entire argument, invalid.
The slippery slope fallacy States a relatively small f irst step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some signif icant effect, much like an object given a small push over the edge of a slope sliding all the way to the bottom. If you were to smoke cannabis you may be lead on to use harder drugs, but there is no cer tainty. In this example it shows how this fallacy is used to jump from one small step to a giant leap, there are many drugs in between cannabis and heroin but there is nothing to say by smoking one you will be lead to any of the others.
Most of the green is touching the purple. Most of the purple is touching the red.
Because most of the green is touching purple, most of the green must be touching red as well.
The false dilema fallacy Giving two choices when in actuality there could be more possible choices. Look at the illustration and tex t on the lef t hand page, because the f irst two pieces of tex t are correct it can lead you to think that the third piece on the bottom is also correct, but it is actually not correct. Just because the f irst two pieces of tex t are correct it does not mean that are the only answers meaning the third piece of tex t.
“ You may think he cheated on the test, but look at the poor little thing. How would he feel if you made him resit the test.�
The red herring fallacy Introducing a topic not related to the subject at hand. On the page to the lef t you can see by the tex t that one of the teachers talking has changed the topic of the conversation in order to distract from the original topic. By diver ting the conversation like this you can cause the other person to be confused and move on from the original topic of conversation. In this example it would mean the other teacher forgets that the boy may have cheated and not make him resit the test.
If you would like to know more about logical fallacies or just fallacies in general then check out our website with even more breakdowns, explanations and examples helping you to gain a better knowledge of fallacies.
www.fallaciesexplained.com