Logical Fallacy Essay

According to the text, The Power of Critical Thinking, by Louis Vaughn, a fallacy is defined as, “An argument form that is both common and defective; a recurring mistake in reasoning (Vaughn, 561). Fallacies can be found in many places whether it is in the media, the workplace, or around your peers. Some fallacies contain the truth while others at a time can be false or misleading. It is essential to be able to identify fallacies because they can be used in many ways, some good some bad. Fallacies are used every day, whether it is to influence someone's opinion to agree with one side of an argument rather than the other or to draw in others by appealing to their emotions or authority. Today, I will be discussing three important fallacies and give examples of each. These fallacies include Genetic Fallacy, Ad Hominem, and Appeal to Tradition.

A fallacy, by definition, is an argument that uses poor reasoning. Before one uses a fallacy, it’s important to have full understanding or else you risk losing your whole ethos aspect of your argument. Heinrichs gives three important parts to detecting fallacies. “All you have to do is look for a bad proof, the wrong number of choices, or a disconnect between the proof and the conclusion.” (Heinrichs 146)

A fallacy is defined as a kind of error in reasoning. They can be persuasive and be created both unintentionally and intentionally in order to deceive others from the truth. Fallacies often indicate a false belief or cause of a false belief (dowden, 2006). An argument or situation commits a fallacy when the reasons offered do not support the conclusion. This defeats the purpose of the argument since its point is to give reason to support the conclusion. Fallacies affect the outcome of our everyday decision making process. There are three types of logical fallacies discussed in this paper along with the importance of utilizing critical thinking skills.

The one that sticks out personally to me is Appeal to Authority, Ancient Wisdom, and Red Herring. Appeal to Authority consist of giving credibility based on a degree and schooling. For instance, someone in a white such as a doctor; people will assume since they are educated they know what they are talking about but they are not always right. Ancient Wisdom is a big NO! there is no way that ancient had a better understand or the tools compared to today’s science. Red Herring is the distraction from logical evidence such as conspiracy theories. Red Herring tends to distract people from an actual important topic.

An argument is an effective strategy used to persuade individuals or public that a general opinion or perception is either right or wrong. Although, as we try to create a reasonable argument, chances are we encounter logical fallacies. A fallacy is a faulty line in reasoning that hinder our ability to make an argument invalid, affecting our ability to argue effectively. Fallacies are more commonly used as a tool to influence opinion or actions of individuals or group of individuals to as to obtain a future goal while obscuring the truth of the matter. These are more commonly referred to as propagandas, which persuades the public to be “for” or “against” certain political ideas, religion, races and opinions as a whole. A propagandist wants invoke

| Demonstrates solid understanding of the concept of reasoning fallacies and identifies the most important fallacies in the argument by name and discusses their

1) Consider one of these arguments you have either experienced or witnessed, and then identify the fallacies that were expressed during this discussion or argument. Note how the fallacies prevented the discussion from being resolved.

5.   Trying to argue that "God exists" because it says so in the Bible and "the Bible is the

Amid the unexpected claims made by Abigail Williams, questions have been raised about the trials and whether, "There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!" as Mrs Putnam states angrily

The three fallacies that I going to talk are appeal to pity, appeal to force and appeal to ignorance. First appeal to pity is a fallacy that involves an appeal to the emotions of another in an effort to prove the conclusion of an argument. One example is when a student asks to his professor to make up and exam because he was involving in a car accident the day of the test. Another fallacy is appeal to force is when the premise is used to support a particular conclusion is one of violence, force, or harm. For instance, sometimes parents talked very rude with their kids, they always said if you don’t do this you are going to be in your room the whole weekend. The last one is appeal to ignorance is the fallacy involves arguing from the absence

The appeal to spite fallacy is a fallacy where spite is used as evidence when an argument is made against a claim (Labossiere, 2012). This is a fallacy because the actual feelings and emotions for spite do not serve as sufficient evidence for a claim (Labossiere, 2012). The appeal to spite takes on the following form: a claim is presented with the intent of generating spite, therefore that claim is or is not false (Labossiere, 2012). This is commonly seen in politics, and many examples of it can be found in the most recent United States election.

These types of fallacies occur when there are false dilemmas, ignorance, slippery slopes, or complex questions. Each of these fallacies are characterized by the illegitimate use of a logical reasoning to distract the reader from the false reasoning of

There are also many diverse kinds of fallacies. Some include, appeal to the popular, meaning to urge the listener to accept a position because a majority of people do it or believe in it. For example, the majority of people like soda. Therefore, soda is good. Or everyone else is doing it, so why can 't I? Another common fallacy is poisoning the well, this occurs when negative information is presented about a person before he/she speaks. In order to redirect the person 's point of view of that person. an example is, Frank is disagreeable, arrogant, and thinks he knows everything. So, let 's hear what Frank has to say about the subject. There are many more kinds of fallacies.

c. Errors in logic, or fallacies, can make an argument appear weak and unconvincing. Read about good arguments versus fallacies, and complete the five exercises. Then write two syllogisms of your own that are based on fallacies, and explain their logical errors. You might choose from these fallacies: validity problem, post hoc, slippery slope, straw man, inconsistency, begging the question, false dilemma, non sequitur, and ad hominem.

On pages 164-175, we learn over the 8 common propositional argument evaluations. Every argument must be valid in order to pass the Proper Form Test. In the cases of fallacies, not every premise will support the conclusion making that argument invalid.