Post No.: 0602
Fluffystealthkitten says:
We should continue on our noble quest to learn more about logical fallacies, which we started in Post No.: 0596.
Furrywisepuppy says:
I’ve grabbed my doppelhänder and my gleaming spangenhelm can take no more buffing – so let’s enter the dungeon!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Lovely.
Let’s commence with some fallacies that come in the form of superficial appeals.
Appeal to beauty or ease – this is the assumption that the more beautiful or simple something is, the more true it must be.
‘The law of parsimony’ or ‘Ockham’s razor’ implies that the simplest solution is most likely to be the correct one but it doesn’t state that it must be so. This ‘law’ isn’t always a reliable heuristic for scientific laws or theories because some answers are truly complex. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”, as Albert Einstein (allegedly) said.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Appeal to fear, threat, pity or emotion – attempting to induce or manipulate emotions to sway the audience rather than using valid reasoning. Or using coercion or threats of force to support a position. Or invoking fear, pity, prejudice and/or snobbery towards the opposing side.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Appeal to legality – confusing legality with morality, ethics, rationality or logic. It’s thought-terminating to not question something just because it is legal or illegal. Legislation should ideally align with encouraging what’s moral and discouraging what’s immoral but laws don’t always due to loopholes or an evolving world.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Appeal to nature – making your claim appear more true or better by drawing a comparison with it to the assumed ‘good’ natural world, or assuming that ‘unnatural’ is always bad. Natural things can be primitive, harmful, cruel or nasty sometimes, like gonorrhoea.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Appeal to equality – this is where an assertion is deemed true/false based on an assumed pretence of equality. Some forms of equality aren’t sensible, such as giving everyone a wheelchair whether they need one or not. We need to clarify what it is we truly want equal (or really equitable), such as accessibility in this example.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Appeal to money or novelty – assuming that if something costs more or is newer then it must necessarily be better.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Appeal to poverty or wealth – supporting/refuting a conclusion just because the arguer is rich/poor.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Appeal to flattery – slipping in an irrelevant compliment with an unfounded claim, which is accepted along with the compliment, or basically using flattery to gather support. I do like what you’re wearing today though ;).
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Fallacies related to lines and boundaries include these.
False dichotomy, false dilemma, excluded middle or black-or-white fallacy – this is when one portrays an issue as having only two options with no spectrum inbetween. Examples include things being ‘either you love it or hate it’ or justifying buying the most expensive clothes because one shouldn’t be expected to wear rags.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Affirming a disjunct – concluding that one disjunct of a logical disjunction must be false if the other disjunct is true.
For example, I am a dog or mammal. I am a dog. Therefore, I am not a mammal. Here, the logic operation OR is being confused with XOR.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
False continuum – the idea that if there’s no definitive demarcation between two extremes then a distinction between them isn’t real or meaningful and they’re the same thing. When we compare this to a false dichotomy, we can see that lots of errors are due to making assumptions one way or another.
Furrywisepuppy says:
I reckon that’s an exquisite observation.
Bald man, fallacy of the heap or line-drawing problem – this is kind of related to the one before but here we’re making an assumption that if one or two small incremental changes won’t make a noticeable difference between something having a particular feature or not then many small incremental changes won’t make a noticeable difference between it having that particular feature or not either.
It’s as if something cannot acquire/lose a feature no matter how much it changes, or improperly rejecting a claim for being imprecise. How many hairs do you need on your body before you can call yourself ‘furry’ rather than ‘bald’? Ten hairs won’t, and a hundred probably won’t, but will a thousand, or a million? How or where do we draw the line between one thing turning into another thing when there’s a spectrum? Yet we cannot deny that there is a difference between being furry and bald, or mentally neurotypical and disordered, for instance.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Argument to moderation, fallacy of the mean, middle ground or false compromise – assuming that because two contending sides apparently have merit then the answer must lie somewhere between them. ‘Going down the middle’ isn’t always the right or best answer.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Inflation of conflict – reasoning that because experts cannot agree precisely or unanimously on an issue then no conclusions can be reached on it at all. We may also therefore attempt to minimise the credibility of their field, or of experts in general, as a result.
It’s a form of black-or-white thinking, as in either we know the exact truth or we know nothing at all. But a disagreement amongst experts doesn’t mean that all sides are wrong, the answer should be a compromise or that there’s no answer to be known. The only thing we can infer is that there is current disagreement!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Relativist or subjectivist – this is about rejecting a claim because of a belief that all truth is relative to each person or group and that there are no absolute truths.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Common fallacies of comparisons and context are next.
Category mistake – here, things that belong to one particular category, group or context are mistakenly presented as if they belong to another category, group or context too. Or ascribing a property to a thing that could not possibly have that property, such as when taking metaphors literally.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
False analogy or faulty comparison – analogies allow us to draw lessons from the familiar and apply them to the unfamiliar, but an analogy is false if the assumed similarity is false, poorly suited or we’re comparing between two irrelevant things. Or just because two things are analogous in some ways, it doesn’t mean they are in every way.
Furrywisepuppy says:
False equivalence – when two completely opposing arguments appear to be logically equivalent when they’re actually not.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Taking things out of context – the selective excerpting of words from their original context, or misappropriating the meaning of something by taking it out of context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Prosecutor’s fallacy – the mistake of overemphasising the strength of a piece of evidence whilst paying insufficient attention to its context. Or a low probability of finding particular false matches does not mean a low probability of finding some false match somewhere.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Oversimplification – reducing an argument until it doesn’t fully encompass its full intended scope.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Causal oversimplification – assuming that there is only one simple cause of an outcome when in reality there may be a multitude of jointly sufficient causes. People too often attempt to reduce complex issues in the real world down into oversimplistic ones.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Ludic fallacy – this is likewise the belief that the outcomes of non-regulated random or complex chaotic occurrences can be encapsulated by a simple statistic or model. It’s thus a failure of taking into account the unknown unknowns when determining the probability of certain events happening.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Finally for now, some habitual fallacies of personal bias of various kinds.
Unfalsifiability or self-sealing – offering a claim that cannot currently, or ever, be proven false because there’s no way to check. Or believing that when an opponent denies a claim, it only proves that the claim is true, hence it can never be falsified in one’s own mind. You sometimes hear people fallaciously argue along the lines of, ‘the lady doth protest too much, methinks’!
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Burden of proof – assuming that others must prove that your claim is false rather than you prove that your claim is true. The burden of proof should be upon whomever challenges the status quo or forwards a claim. It should not be upon whomever questions or denies it. So an accuser needs to provide evidence to prove that the accused is guilty. It isn’t down to the accused to prove her/his own innocence. Or whoever comes up with a scientific hypothesis must prove that it is true. It should not be simply assumed to be true unless someone can prove it to be false.
It is problematic when certain hypotheses are unfalsifiable. But it’s still only fair for the burden of proof to be upon the shoulders of whoever forwards a claim, otherwise all kinds of ludicrous claims can be made and accepted as true just because we cannot prove them to be false, such as claiming that, countless millennia ago, donkeys rode humans on the sandy beaches of an artificial planet that orbited Betelgeuse.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Betelgeuse?
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Betelgeuse.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Misleading vividness of recall – assuming that if something stands out vividly in our memories then it must be a big problem. But something might stand out vividly simply because it is a rare or unique occurrence rather than because it is a major or commonplace event. Terrorist attacks stand out, yet they don’t cause as many deaths as obesity-related diseases for instance.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Appeal to adverse or desirable consequences – claiming that because the implications of a statement being true would create negative outcomes, or it’s something one would rather not believe in, then it must be false. Alternatively, it’s claiming that because the implications of a statement being true would create positive outcomes, or it’s something one would rather believe in, then it must be true.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Argument from personal incredulity, wishful thinking, divine fallacy or appeal to common sense – arguing that if one cannot personally comprehend something, or if it merely sounds unbelievable or implausible, then it must be false. But some facts are counterintuitive. Or it’s suggesting that a claim is true/false just because one strongly wishes it is because it might be the most pleasing conclusion to imagine.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Moral high ground fallacy – expressing a ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude in an attempt to make oneself look good to win an argument.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Argument from ignorance or appeal to ignorance – saying that if something isn’t known to be false then it must be true. Or saying that if one hasn’t personally heard of something then it must be false.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Naïve realism – is when one considers the way one sees the world as the way the world really objectively is, and anyone who disagrees with us personally must be the one who’s stupid and wrong.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Psychologist’s fallacy – similarly, this is when an observer presupposes the objectivity of his/her own perspective when analysing a behavioural event or another person. It’s also the presumption that other people think or know only the same as one does and would necessarily behave in the exact same way if exposed to the exact same stimuli. Or it’s when reading into the mind one is examining what is merely true of one’s own mind… as I’m sure you know what I mean (because I know what I mean(!))
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Confusing the currently unexplained with the unexplainable – this is when we assume that if we don’t know something by now then we’ll never know it.
Furrywisepuppy says:
Perfectionist or nirvana fallacy – believing that the only option on the table is perfect success and therefore rejecting any solution that will not work utterly perfectly.
Fluffystealthkitten says:
…This is fun, but we must rest again. We will return some day with more. Meow.
Furrywisepuppy says:
In the meantime, you can comment on the logical fallacies we’ve covered so far by using the Twitter comment button below. Woof!
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