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A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument. All forms of human communication can contain fallacies. Because of their variety, fallacies are challenging to classify. They can be classified by their structure (formal fallacies) or content (informal fallacies). Informal fallacies, the larger ...
Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments [1] is a textbook on logical fallacies by T. Edward Damer that has been used for many years in a number of college courses on logic, critical thinking, argumentation, and philosophy. It explains 60 of the most commonly committed fallacies.
It also gives specific suggestions about how to address or to "attack" each fallacy when it is encountered. [4] The organization of the fallacies comes from the author's own theories that have accumulated through years of research and study, which defines a fallacy as a violation of one of the five criteria of a good argument.
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument [1] [2] that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian De Sophisticis Elenchis. [3]
The argument itself could have true premises, but still have a false conclusion. [3] Thus, a formal fallacy is a fallacy in which deduction goes wrong, and is no longer a logical process. This may not affect the truth of the conclusion, since validity and truth are separate in formal logic.
A false analogy is an informal fallacy, or a faulty instance, of the argument from analogy. An argument from analogy is weakened if it is inadequate in any of the above respects. The term "false analogy" comes from the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who was one of the first individuals to examine analogical reasoning in detail. [2]
Alternatively, a person might look at a number line, and notice that the number 1 is a square number; 3 is a prime number, 5 is a prime number, and 7 is a prime number; 9 is a square number; 11 is a prime number, and 13 is a prime number. From these observations, the person might claim that all odd numbers are either prime or square, while in ...
The form of the post hoc fallacy is expressed as follows: . A occurred, then B occurred.; Therefore, A caused B. When B is undesirable, this pattern is often combined with the formal fallacy of denying the antecedent, assuming the logical inverse holds: believing that avoiding A will prevent B.