On the Informal Fallacies
Have you discovered a new and aptly named fallacy? Please do share. I accept any fallacy by e-mail.
The philosopher always loves a good fallacy. Students in introductory
logic classes are required to memorize lists of them: the fallacy
of composition, argument ad hominem, the genetic fallacy, and
so on. Some climb beyond fame into infamy, like the naturalistic
fallacy which may not be a fallacy at all. Fallacies are so much
fun that some authors amplify their arguments by coining a fallacy
for their opponents to have committed. This page is a collection
of such one-off fallacies from real sources. (To my delight, this rhetorical
strategy is not confined to philosophers.)
- argumentum ad Gaulum
"If the French do it, it therefore must be good."
(Chuck Taggart in his explanation
of why tripe is just wrong.)
- the boy's club fallacy
Supposing that it cannot be sexist to prefer people because of social connections you have to them or the depth of information you have about them, even though the connections and information are distributed in an inequitable way.
For example, "my not picking her (for a student position) was not sexist, since I don't know her at all. But I do know the other (male) candidate, admire his work, etc. So I picked him."
(Anne Jacobson at Feminist Philosophers, February 15, 2013)
- the counterculture fallacy
"...a direct descendant of the Beat fallacy that preceded it by a decade: Lefties of a certain age, like me, still presume, in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, that a conservative who has messed around with mind-altering substances is somehow cooler, less straight, less, well, right-wing, than a conservative who hasn't."
(Gary Kamiya in Salon, June 2, 2001)
- the covariance fallacy
Presuming that the presence or absent of consensus regarding matters of fact
is indicative of agreement or disagreement about the ends with respect to
which matters of fact are judged.
(Larry Laudan in Science and Values, 1984)
- the ecological fallacy
"[A]ttributing absolute badness to styles or features or artists or individual works when, in fact, our true complaint is... relativis[ed]" to contingent facts such as the overuse of style (etc.)
(John Holbo, June 25, 2012)
- fallacy ex homine
alternately, fallacy ab homuncule.
The opposite of ad hominem. A sense of decorum stops anyone from making accusations of some particular dark motive, such as racism, while charges of other dark motives are still hurled around. The result is that the unspeakable dark motive gets a free pass.
(John Holbo, March 25, 2010)
- fallacies of functional localization
- Because an animal can perform a distinct function, it is supposed there is a distinct place in the animal's body where that function is carried out.
(Bill Wimsatt in a public lecture on generative entrenchment, 1998)
- the fallacy of internal monologue
- Considering the paradigm case of a mental event to be a propositional thought is "a classic case of where highly educated people read back their degenerate form of experience onto everybody else."
(Wayne Martin in a reading group on intentionality, 1998)
- geek social fallacies
- The error of taking a social adaptation of being a geek to an unreasonable extreme; for instance, extending excessive tolerance to disruptive members of the community.
(Michael Suileabhain-Wilson in an essay on geekdom)
- the linguist's fallacy
- A scholar's error in "imputing his own sophisticated attitudes to the speakers he is studying."
(Max Black in Linguistic Relativity: the Views of Benjamin Lee Whorf, 1956)
- the Jedi Master fallacy
Arguing against a just arrangement for people who are not in power on the grounds that the ones in power are mystically attuned and that oppression is the proper order of the universe.
Given a mock-latin name, it might be called the argumentum ben kenobi.
"[M]ost arguments against TA/RA unionization stem less from a coherent set of arguments, than a semi-inchoate sense that giving organizing rights to Jedi Apprentices will lead to a Great Disturbance in the Force. The obvious rejoinder to this is that professors are not Jedi Masters, and that there is nothing inherent to the balance of the universe that is likely to change if grad students have the right to organize."
(Henry Farrell, February 6, 2012)
- the ludic fallacy
Presuming that performance on some made-up task will generalize to situations actually encountered in the world.
"[T]he set-up of situations in academic-style multiple choice questions, made to resemble 'games' with crisp, unambiguous rules. These rules are divorced from both their environment and their ecology. ... [I]f people often sometimes appear inconsistent, as shown in many 'puzzles,' it is often because it is the exam itself that is wrong."
(Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Freakanomics blog at the New York Times, August 9, 2007)
- the Netflix fallacy
- This is an interesting specimen, because the author coins it so as to describe his own behavior. Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear what the fallacy is supposed to be. The initial example suggests that it's the irrational decision to pay for something which could possibly to be money-saving but which, as one actually uses it, costs more than it is worth. Later discussion suggests that it's about 'intertemporal decision making': If you choose movies one at a time, then you are apt to pick schlocky entertainments— but if you choose a batch of movies all at once, then you are apt to choose some hifalutin films that you won't actually watch.
and August 2, 2004)
- the 'passes for' fallacy
- Since much of what has passed for truth, fact, and objective warrant has been
nothing of the sort, it is supposed that there is no truth or objectivity.
(Susan Haack in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, 1998)
- the fallacy of physical object primacy
- The name given to
"giving physical objects and the criteria that apply to them priority over
the whole range of describable phenomena." For instance, GE Moore's "thinking
that because it makes sense on a given occasion to assert that you and I are seeing
numerically the same physical object, say a particular light bulb, it also makes sense
to apply the adjective 'numerically the same' to the after-image I have of that light bulb."
(Avrum Stroll in Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty, 1994)
- the psychological or historical fallacy
- "A set of considerations which hold good only because of a completed
process is read into the content of the process which conditions
this completed result." (John Dewey in The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, 1896)
- the fallacy of selective emphasis
- After abstracting from raw experience, the resultant abstraction
is treated as primary and more real than the experience from which
it was abstracted. (John Dewey in Experience and Nature)
- reductio ad Hitlerum, argumentum ad Nazium
A Nazi would say that; ergo, it's false.
(Leo Strauss, perhaps)
- the sentimentalist fallacy
- "[T]o shed tears over abstract justice and generosity, beauty, etc., and never to know these qualities when you meet them in the street, because the circumstances make them vulgar."
(William James in Pragmatism's Conception of Truth, 1907)
- the Wittgenstein fallacy
- Inferring "that the profession of philosophy as currently practiced is somehow flawed, because a modern day Wittgenstein would not receive recognition or employment."
(Jason Stanley, 2007)