Quick Rererence: Informal Fallacies

Fallacies of Distraction

Appeal to Emotion (Argumentum ad Populum)

Diverting the listener’s attention from dispassionate evaluation of premises and their degree of support for the conclusion, in order to encourage an emotional instead of rational response.

Appeal to Force (Argumentum ad Baculum)

Distracting listeners from the facts of a situation by threatening them or causing them to feel threatened.

Argumentum ad Hominem

Attacking the opponent personally instead of the opponent’s argument.

Strawman

Misrepresenting the opponent’s position with the aim to disprove a different, distorted argument instead of the actual one.

Red Herring

Distracting one’s audience from the main thread of an argument, taking discourse in a different direction.

Fallacies of Weak Induction

Argument from Ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam)

From the premise(s) that there’s a lack of knowledge about some topic, inferring a definite conclusion about that topic.

Appeal to Inappropriate Authority

Using the testimony of someone who’s not an authority on the issue at hand to make a conclusion on this issue.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (“false cause”)

On the grounds that event #1 occurred before event #2, declaring event #1 to be the cause of event #2.

Slippery Slope

Making an insufficiently supported claim that a certain action or event will set off an unstoppable causal chain-reaction leading to some disastrous effect.

Hasty Generalization

Making an inference from a particular premise(s) to a general conclusion when there is an insufficient number of particular premises/occurrences.

Fallacies of Illicit Presumption

Accident

Inferring a particular conclusion from a general premise when the general “rule” is incorrectly assumed to have to have no exceptions.

Begging the Question (Petitio Principii)

Arguing in a circle by inferring a conclusion that is already claimed as a premise.

Loaded Question

Asking a question that presumes the truth of some claim.

False Choice

Presenting a limited number of options as the only choices when there are actually more available.

Composition

Mistakenly concluding that a property of all parts of something applies also to the whole thing.

Division

Mistakenly concluding that a property of the whole applies also to all of its parts.

Fallacies of Linguistic Emphasis

Accent

Devious use of stress to emphasize contents that are helpful to one’s rhetorical goals, and to suppress or obscure those that are not.

 Quoting out of Context

Using/quoting remarks taken out of their proper context to convey a different meaning than they had within that context.

Equivocation

Choosing words that have multiple related or unrelated meanings to support false claims or words that falsely communicate meanings over and above the literal meaning of those used.

Manipulative Framing

Choosing words to frame issues intentionally to manipulate your audience.