Critical Thinking Fallacies

occurs whenever an aruguer poses a conclusion to another person and tells that person implicitly or explicity that some harm will come to him or her if he or she does not accept the conclusion

"carry a big stick"

occurs when an arguer attempts to support a conclusion by mearly evoking pity for the reader or listener

• Bandwagon:
• -everyone is doing it and you don't want to be left behind

• Appeal to Vanity:
• -often associates the product with someone who is admired, persued, or imitated the idea being that you too will be admired and persued if you use it

• Appeal to Snobbery:
• - similar to vanity, but with a group mindset and money

• Abusive:
• -hurling abuse at someone and ignoring the argument

• Circumstantial:
• - the responder attempts to discredit the opponents argument by alluding to certain circumstances that affect the opponent

• Tu Quoque:
• - attempts to make the first arguer appear to be hypocritical or arguing in bad faith

committed when a general rule is applied to a specific case it was not intended to cover

committed when an arguer distorts an opponents argument with the purpose of more easily attacking it, demolishes the distorted argument and then concludes that the opponents real argument has been demolished

occurs when the premise of an argument supports one particular conclusion but then a different conclusion, often vaguely related to the current conclusion, is drawn

committed when the arguer diverts the attention of the reader or listener by changing the subject to a different subject, but sometimes a subtly related one. he or she then finishes by either drawing a conclusion about this different issue or by mearly presuming that some conclusion has been established

occurs when the cited authority or witnesses lack credibility

when the premise of an argument states that nothing has been proved one way or the other about something and the conclusion then makes a definite assertion about that thing, the argument committs an appeal to ignorance

it affects inductive generalization. an inductive generalization is an argument that draws a conclusion about all the members of a group from evidence that pertains to a selected sample. the fallacy occurs when there is reasonable likelihood that the sample is not representitive of the group

occurs whenever the link between premise and conclusion depends on some imagined casual connection that probably does not exist

variety of false cause fallacy. occurs when the conclusion of an argument rests on alleged an chain reaction there is not sufficient reason to think that the chain reaction will actually take place

is committed when the analogy is not strong enough to support the conclusion that has been drawn

committed whenever the arguer creates the illusion that inadequate premises provide adequate support for the conclusion by leaving out a possibly false key premise by restating a possibly false premise as the conlusion or by reasoning in a circle.

committed when disjuctive premise presents two unlikely alternatives as if they were the only ones available and then the arguer then elminates the undesirable alternative, leaving the desirable one as the conclusion

committed when two or more questions are asked in the guise of a single question and a single answer is then given to both of them

the requirement of true premise includes the proviso that the premise not ignore some important piece of evidence that outweighs the presented evidence and entails a very different conclusion. if an inductive argument does indeed ignore such evidence then the argument committs the fallacy of suppressed evidence

occurs when the conclusion of an argument depends on the fact that a word or phrase is used either explicity or implicity in two different senses in the argument. such arguments are either invalid or have a false premise

occurs when the arguer misinterprets an ambiguous statement and then draws a conclusion based on this falty interpretation

is committed when the conclusion of an argument depends on the erroneous transfer of an attribute from the parts of something onto the whole

is the exact reverse of composition. as composition goes from parts to whole, division goes from whole to apart. its committed when the conclusion of an argument depends on the erroneous transfer of an attibute from a whole or a class onto its parts or members