Fallacy CONTENTS FALLACY TITLE INTRODUCTION The Counterfeit PART I: MATERIAL FALLACIES of Argument ● TROUBLE W. WARD FEARNSIDE WITH PROPOSITIONS WILLIAM B. HOLTHER 1. Faulty Generalizations a. Hasty Generalization 1959 b. Unrepresentative Generalization 2. Faulty Causal Generalization It would be a very good 3. Assuming the Cause: "post hoc thing if every trick could reasoning" receive some short and 4. Faulty Analogy obviously appropriate 5. Composition and Division name, so that when a 6. The All-or-Nothing Mistake man used this or that 7. The False Dilemmas particular trick, he could at once be reproved for ● TROUBLE it. WITH CONSTRUCTIONS —Schopenhauer 8. Faulty Classifications a. Non-exhaustive Classifiication (Rule l) Dedicated to b. Non-exclusive Classification (Rule 2) 9. Misconceptions about HELEN MARGARET Classifiication (Rule 3) HOLTHER a. Reifications ALICE WARD b. Relativism FEARNSIDE 10. Unnecessary Vagueness (Rule 4) 11. Over-precision 12. Word Magic Transcribed into hypertext by Andrew Chrucky, 2005. The numerous "example" and "comment" have been formatted as the left and right cells respectively in PART II PSYCHOLOGICAL FALLACIES tables. ● EMOTIONAL COLORATION 13. Emotive Language: "colored words" 14. Ceremony or Setting: "pomp and circumstance" ● MISUSING AUTHORITY 15. Appeal to Authority: "Ipse dixit" or He says so! 16. Appeal to Tradition or Faith: "tried and true" 17. Impressing by Large Numbers: "get on the band wagon" file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/fallacy.html (1 of 3) [5/29/2009 1:22:21 AM] Fallacy ● STIRRING UP PREJUDICE 18. Popular Passions: "ad populum appeals" 19. Damning the Origin: "consider the source" 20. Personal Attacks: "ad hominem" 21. Forestalling Disagreement 22. Creating Misgivings: "where there's srnoke, there's fire" ● RATIONALIZATION AND LIP SERVICE 23. Self-righteousness 24. Finding the "Good" Reason 25. Wishful Thinking 26. Special Pleading: waving it both ways" 27. Lip Service ● BIASED MISCONSTRUCTIONS 28. Apriorism: "Invincible Ignorance" 29. Personification 30. Cultural Bias 31. The Gambler's Mistake ● DIVERSIONS 32. Humor and Ridicule: "lost in the laugh" 33. Demand for Special Consideration 34. Clamorous Insistence on Irrelevancies: "red herring," 35. Pointing to Another Wrong 36. The Wicked Alternative 37. Nothing but Objections 38. Impossible Conditions: "the call for perfection" 39. Abandomnent of Discussion PART III LOGICAL FALLACIES ● LOGICAL TRUTH ● VALIDITY 40. The Undistributed Middle Terrn 41. Suppressed Quantification 42. False Conversion of Propositions 43. Non Sequitur 44. Trouble with Conditionals and Alternatives 45. Ambiguous Terms file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/fallacy.html (2 of 3) [5/29/2009 1:22:21 AM] Fallacy 46. Amphibole: "double talk" 47. Ambiguous Accent 48. Ambiguous Punctuation and Word Order 49. Circular Definitions and Question Begging 50. Misuse of Etyrnology 51. Idiosyncratic Language ● CONCLUSION: OVERSIMPLIFICATION ● EXERCISES ● APPENDIX: SOME LOGICAL PARADOXES ● INDEX file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/fallacy.html (3 of 3) [5/29/2009 1:22:21 AM] Fallacy FALLACY The Counterfeit of Argument W. WARD FEARNSIDE WILLIAM B. HOLTHER 1959 It would be a very good thing if every trick could receive some short and obviously appropriate name, so that when a man used this or that particular trick, he could at once be reproved for it. —Schopenhauer Dedicated to HELEN MARGARET HOLTHER ALICE WARD FEARNSIDE Transcribed into hypertext by Andrew Chrucky, 2005. The numerous "example" and "comment" have been formatted as the left and right cells respectively in tables. file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20Hol...1959)%200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/main.html [5/29/2009 1:22:22 AM] Fallacy Introduction The famous pessimist Schopenhauer, in "The Art of Controversy," turns an experienced eye on "the art of getting the best of it in a dispute. He allows that "unquestionably the safest plan is to be in the right to begin with," but sarcastically adds that "this in itself is not enough in the existing disposition of mankind, and, on the other hand, with the weakness of the human intellect, it is not altogether necessary." It seems doubtful that the level of public discussion has much improved in our own day. Cogency, to be sure, is admired in the scientific laboratories, just as coherence and sensitivity are encouraged amongst our mathematicians and poets. In the committee rooms of Congress, in the editorials of the chain newspapers, on radio, TV, and billboards -- in all of the noise and distraction in which we live our lives, only a child or a saint could expect truth to prevail simply because it is true. Truth has a chance when Noise and Distraction are on her side; otherwise she may be overcome. And these two can and do daily prevail without her or against her. The triumph of rhetoric is like the spread of a virus infection. When an epidemic spreads through an area, it is said to prevail there, and local measures may be taken. But to say it prevails does not mean that everyone is infected. Some persons escape infection; others are immune. It is not necessary to labor the analogy in order to show that it would be a good idea if the community could somehow develop a serum against some forms of persuasion. Few can hope to become immune to all the tricks of persuasion since, like viruses, there are too many of them. People arc daily exposed to appeals to blind faith, self interest, fear, prejudice, fancy. This book cannot discuss persuasion in all its variety and complexity, but it can attempt to describe and illustrate some of the most dangerous strains. Logic is the defense against trickery. The kinds of argument with which logic deals are the reasonable ones. Mistakes are possible, even frequent, in applying the forms of logical argument, and these mistakes are regarded as fallacies, many of them having been noted as early as Aristotle. We shall wish to guard against them. But the most common fallacies today are of a very different sort. It is a small comfort to know that an argument is entirely logical, that it validly derives its conclusion from its premises, and that all file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...)%200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/intro.html (1 of 4) [5/29/2009 1:22:23 AM] Fallacy the rules of the syllogism, or whatever, are observed to a nicety, if it turns out that the premises are frauds, snares, delusions. There are brilliant tricks for getting people to accept all sorts of false premises as true (some of these tricks have been spotted since the time of ancient Greece), and these tricks of argument are so prevalent that even when people realize that something is being pulled on them, they tend to let it pass. Arguments are a highly complicated human activity and cannot be successfully studied in a sort of vacuum, as if the language uttered and answered itself. Like Schopenhauer, we have just had some hard words for the general run of discussion. This discussion at least takes place in a world of activity and interest, is directed toward goals, and, if at all successful, takes shrewd account of human nature. lt is an oversimplification to suggest a clear-cut opposition between argument on one side and persuasion on the other. The most blatant singing commercial usually contains some argument, some alleging of reasons and drawing of conclusions: buy this because it's so good. That the argument is not spelled out, that the audience has to supply the premises, generously allow a connection between them and the evidence cited, and then still accept the conclusion more on faith than reason -- all this does not much matter. Even in logic books the arguments are seldom spelled out, except in the examples. After all, no one is overtaxed by the unstated premise in the argument "This man cannot vote since he is unable to read English." The argument runs: All voters must be able to read English, (unstated) This man is unable to read English. Therefore, this man is not a voter. (This form of argument is the syllogism, first described by Aristotle; he also noted the fact that in ordinary discussion one of the premises, or even the conclusion, is often assumed rather than expressly stated. Where a premise or the conclusion is unstated he called the argument an enthymeme. The unstated portion always can be supplied so that the enthymeme is expanded into a syllogism as was done here.) One is not troubled by the ellipsis, that is, by the omission of words expressing an idea that can be taken for granted. Nor does it matter that speakers employ the embellishments, the metaphors, the richness and complexity of the living language. Ordinary speech, arising in a live situation, is not designed to satisfy the formulas of logicians. What does matter is the taking advantage of ellipsis, complexity, and verbal display to deceive and obfuscate. In this book we intend to take a look at some distinguishable varieties of fallacious argument, so that we can recognize file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...)%200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/intro.html (2 of 4) [5/29/2009 1:22:23 AM] Fallacy them in the speech around us and avoid using them ourselves. We have chosen to examine chiefly the notorious fallacies. ln our descriptions we try to make it clear what the particular case before us is, and, in the examples, we try to illustrate one particular fallacy at a time, without entirely sterilizing the sample. But fallacies reinforce each other, and in a weak argument there is apt to be more than one thing wrong. In almost all cases the examples are derived from the world we live in. They are representative of actual discussion, so they are often disguised for obvious reasons, though perhaps not out of all recognition, and trimmed down to size. The word "fallacy" is sometimes used as a synonym for any kind of position that is false or deceptive, and sometimes it is applied in a more narrow sense to a faulty process of reasoning or to tricky or specious persuasions. We will use "fallacy" in the latter sense so that one may say a fallacy occurs where a discussion claims to conform to the rules of sound argument but, in fact, fails to do so. We classify fallacies under three heads. There is nothing compelling about the arrangement, and many individual fallacies could be placed as well under one heading as another. The divisions are: Part I. Material Fallacies, Part II. Psychological Fallacies, Part III. Logical Fallacies. This arrangement can be illustrated by a figurative analogy. Suppose we compare argument to a manufacturing process which uses a machine, an operator, and raw materials. If the materials are up to standard, the operator efficient, and the machine running smoothly, the finished product will probably pass inspection. However, three kinds of things can go wrong. The materials can be below standard or poorly prepared. The operator can make a mistake -- get sleepy or be distracted and turn the wrong knob. And the machine itself can break down or misfunction. In any of these three cases, the product will probably not pass inspection. If the trouble lies with the material, we call it material; if with the operator, we call it psychological; if with the machine, then logical. The analogy is crude, but it gives an idea of the emphasis in each section. Under material fallacies we take up faulty generalization and other contaminations of the premises. Under the psychological heading we discuss such common fallacies as emotive language. The processes of logic are rather like those of a machine, and the logical fallacies show a clear misfunctioning of forms designed to go smoothly and produce valid arguments. file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...)%200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/intro.html (3 of 4) [5/29/2009 1:22:23 AM] Fallacy We have not by any means exhausted all the things that can go wrong in an argument. What we aim to do is to produce a description of the most notorious fallacies, with some additions that today seem to deserve special notice, and to illustrate them fully. file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...)%200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/intro.html (4 of 4) [5/29/2009 1:22:23 AM] Fallacy I PART Material Fallacies In terms of the analogy of a manufacturing process (p. 4), the final section of this book will examine the misfunctioning of the formal machinery of argument, where the product is so poorly fitted together that the conclusion dangles unsupported in reason. The second source of error is the emotional tricks and appeals which distract from the process of reasonable discussion and tempt disputants to hold all sorts of untruths and half-truths to be self- evident. These, the vulgar sources of error and befuddlement, the claptrap of argument, will have their turn in the next section. There remain the errors that come from raw material of poor quality., When the material is bad, it can be small wonder if the product is also unsatisfactory, however carefully processed, however careful the manufacturer . This failure in the materials is described in the present section, where we take up some of the more common ways in which the materials of argument fall below standard. To find good standards, the best thing to do is to examine a model product. The field of science abounds in clear examples of sound reasoning. The very model of a convincing argument built on reliable evidence is a scientific argument. Let us look at these model arguments, the demonstrations of science, and we may see more clearly how some other arguments fall short. The various physical sciences establish their general laws by working backwards, as it were, from observational sentences, sentences known to bo true in experience. The laws can be considered as premises that lead to the observations as conclusions: if the laws arc true, the observations have to be true, too. This is the backwards effect, since, after all, it is the observations that are known to be true -- the laws are inferred from them. But in the demonstrations, the arguments in scientific writing, the observations are "derived" from the laws by a vigorous process of logical or mathematical proof. The laws are so designed as to be perfectly inclusive; that is, no known observations contradict them., Moreover, no other plausible premises are known from which the observations could follow. The laws are economically drafted: each has as wide a scope as the facts allow, and two file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...)%200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/part1.html (1 of 5) [5/29/2009 1:22:25 AM] Fallacy laws never stand where one would do.^Finally, all scientific laws are consistent with one another. In all cases new observations can be predicted, not mere duplications of previous data (such as laboratory experiments in school), but actually new experiments. When Einstein published his theory, in addition to taking into account all relevant past observations in a way no other theory had succeeded in doing, he was also able to predict further observations that would be logical consequences of the laws he had discovered. The observations were made as soon as feasible, for example those connected with the bending of light rays. They "confirmed" the laws, since they could not have been predicted as a consequence of any other intelligible hypothesis. Why, in their arguments, do the scientists treat the laws as "premises"? Why, that is, do they want to express the observations as conclusions derivable from the laws? They want to know exactly where they stand. If only one predicted observation should contradict the "law," then the latter would become a discarded hypothesis. Moreover, though the observations are derived from the law, they do not prove the law true in Jurn, no matter how numerous they are. The so-called la^s remairyhypotheses. What would it mean to "prove" a law? Until the time of David Hume it had been thought that there was a "necessary connection" between the law and the observations, the sort of relation that there is in geometry between the theorem and the postulates and axioms. Hume showed that in the case of empirical laws, one can always imagine the sun rising in the west, gravitation working in reverse, water freezing at 100° C. But where there is a necessary connection, the contrary case is inconceivable. I cannot conceive of a prime number between 7 and 11. I cannot conceive of my being both present and absent at the same time, in the literal sense of these words. I can say these things, but I cannot say them without contradiction. I can say that 8, or 9, or 10 is a prime number, but I cannot say so and mean by "prime number" or by "8," "9," "10" what mathematicians mean by them. On the other hand, there is no logical contradiction at all in speaking of water running uphill. There is no mathematical certainty, but the probability that the laws of science hold is enormous . They may be regarded as generalizations with no exceptions. Moreover, these generalizations are much stronger than the sort of naive generalizations traditionally discussed by philosophers of science, such ajJlA]J,.i;ri^^jireJilacJsil" or J. S. Mill's "All hyacinths are blue.". The generalizations of science never stand isolated. Rather, they are interwoven file:///D:/=FIX/=CREATE%20CHMs=/Fearnside%20and%20...)%200133017702/www.ditext.com/fearnside/part1.html (2 of 5) [5/29/2009 1:22:25 AM]