Many people when engaged in an argument often yell that the other person involved is reasoning fallaciously. "You're reasoning is fallacious" or "that's a fallacious argument." However, not many people actually understand what a fallacy is. A fallacy is simply a mistake in reasoning. Some fallacies are due to the form of the argument, and are known as formal fallacies. I will not be discussing those here. My focus will be on fallacies of content, or what is more commonly known as informal fallacies. There are hundreds of fallacies out there, but I will focus on a few that are very common in everyday discourse. And once these fallacies are known, they can be avoided in one's own arguments, and also identified in the arguments of others. I will discuss ad hominem, ad populum, appeal to tradition, begging the question, ad ignorantiam, and the false dichotomy. I will also provide two examples of each.
An ad hominem fallacy occurs when the individual, instead of responding to the content of an argument, attacks irrelevant personal characteristics about the arguer. For example, a Nazi white supremacist claims that illegal immigration should be controlled. Most of us would respond in disgust due to the source, but the source is irrelevant. The argument lives or dies on it's own. It's just usually the case a racist making arguments that deal with ethnicity are usually bad. A second example would be if a scientist were to claim that climate change should be controlled, providing evidence along the way, and the response is "you are just a hippy who wants to protect turtles over people." It is irrelevant to the argument at hand, even if true.
Argument ad populum is extremely easy to fall prey to, and to use when constructing an argument. This fallacy is when an individual makes an argument and simply appeals to popular opinion to support it. If I say child rape is wrong, and 90% of people think so, I have given no support to my position. Or if 90% of people say God exists, it does not follow that God does exist. Mere numbers (who are not experts) prove nothing.
Appeal to tradition is convincing to some, and to others it is utterly unconvincing prima facie. When an individual makes the claim that "traditionally" something has been the case, and they are only using tradition as the support, then he/she has committed this fallacy. Tradition, if supplemented with reasons in favor of the tradition, is not fallacious. Two really prominent examples of this commonly seen in American discourse is arguing against homosexuality by simply saying "marriage has traditionally been between a man and a woman" and "traditionally, schools have used test scores to evaluate students." Neither one of these ideas is very often adequately defended on any other grounds.
Begging the question is something we have all done from time to time. However, this one is a horrible fallacy to commit because there is not even an attempt at reasoning involved, whereas in the other cases discussed so far, weak attempts at reasoning have been made. One may have heard a reporter or political commentator say "this piece of information begs the question that..." This is an inaccurate use of the term. Begging the question means you assume in your reason what you want to prove in your conclusion, not that information raises a troubling or interesting question you feel should be answered. Examples of this are "The Bible is true because it says it's true" and a parent saying "Do this because I said so." It is also called circular reasoning.
Ad ignorantiam is when an arguer claims either something cannot be disproved, and is therefore true; or something cannot be proved, and therefore it is false. An example of the former is asserting that God cannot be disproved, therefore God exists. An example of the latter is claiming that God cannot be proved, therefore God does not exist.
A false dichotomy is when the individual claims that there are only two choices in a given situation, when in fact there are more than two. There could be three, four, five, or more. A famous example is when former President George Bush said "you are either with us or you are with the terrorists." I could be neutral. Or I could be on the side of the United States, and not agree with their methods for dealing with terrorism. Another example is "Cut taxes or stifle economic growth." Taxes and economic growth can both co-exist.
In conclusion, identifying these fallacies in your own reasoning and in that of others will increase your ability to think critically, and hopefully pave the way for the truth to rise amongst falsehood. Once these fallacies are learned, they seem to pop up everywhere, when in fact they were already being committed and just not noticed. Be cautious with your own reasoning, and that of others.
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