Fallacies of Relevance

Informal Fallacies
The following "Informal" or "Material" Fallacies are mistakes of reasoning that

depend on the meaning of the words and sentences involved in arguments. They may
thus be contrasted with the Formal Fallacies that result from logically
invalid deductive arguments. Formal Fallacies are things like affirming the
consequent, in which the antecedent of a conditional is inferred from the affirmation
of the consequent. The argumentum ad absurdum, or reductio ad absurdum, is itself a
valid argument, based on the principle [the Law of Clavius, (-P -> P) -> P] that the
introduction of the denial of the conclusion into a valid argument produces a
contradiction and establishes the conclusion. This is widely used in mathematics and
in natural argument -- though some mathematicians, the "Intuitionists," don't like it.
The first group constitutes "Fallacies of Relevance," i.e. the subject matter of the
argument is actually irrelevant to the truth of the conclusion. They are thus the
opposite of the argumentum ad rem, which is the relevant appeal to evidence and
truth.
1. Argumentum ad Baculum or Argumentum Baculinum, appeal to force -agreement won by threats or violence.
2. Argumentum ad Hominem (abusive) -- simply denigrating the author of the
argument -- though "impeaching a witness" is a relevant action in law because
of the difference between reasons for truth and reasons for belief (discussed
with the Genetic Fallacy).
3. Argumentum ad Hominem (circumstantial):
o positive: you should agree with me because of your
circumstances; Argumentum ad Crumenam, appeal to the purse, to
profit; Argumentum ab Inconvenienti, appeal to hardship or
inconvenience.
o negative (poisoning the well): you only believe what you do because of
your self-interest, the benefit your derive from your own circumstances - this is the bread and butter of Marxism and related ideologies.
4. Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, argument from ignorance, something must be
true because it cannot be disproven, or be false because it cannot be proven.
Such arguments figure prominently in the recent Intelligent Design arguments
against Darwinism.
5. Argumentum ad Misericordiam, appeal to pity.
6. Argumentum ad Populum or Argumentum ad Captandum (Vulgus), appeal to

the gallery, demagoguery (captandum, what is desired).
7. Argumentum ad Invidiam, appeal to envy.
8. Argumentum ad Verecundiam (respect, scruple) or Argumentum ab
Auctoritate (power, command, authority), appeal to authority.
9. Accident, applying a general rule to a particular case whose characteristics
render the rule inapplicable. "What you bought yesterday, you eat today; you
bought raw meat yesterday; therefore you eat raw meat today."
10. Converse Accident or Hasty Generalization, moving to a general rule from an
exceptional specific case.
11. False Cause:
o non causa pro causa, to mistake what is not a cause as the cause
o post hoc ergo propter hoc, to mistake something as a cause just because
it precedes something else.
12. Begging the Question or Petitio Principii or Circular Argument, assuming what
is to be proven.
13. Complex Question, questions which presuppose a certain answer (begging the
question) to a question that has not been asked -- as when the feminist asks,
"Why do men hate women?" The remedy is to "divide the question," e.g. ask,
"Do men hate women?"
14. Ignorantio Elenchi or Irrelevant Conclusion, an argument presented as
establishing a particular conclusion actually proves a different one; e.g. arguing
that children must be protected when the question is whether a particular policy
or institution will do so or not.
While the previous kinds of arguments are all fallacies because they are not relevant
to the truth of the conclusion, they are not therefore fallacies in every possible context.
Beliefs are not always based on actual evidence of truth, but often on other reasons
which may provide grounds for credibility, but not for truth. Thus the argumentum ad
hominem and argumentum ab auctoritate are forms of the Genetic Fallacy that, in the
context of belief, are not fallacies at all. Impeaching a witness in a legal case is an ad
hominem argument, but as the credibility of the witness is reason for believing his
testimony, attacking his credibility is relevant to the situation.
The second group constitutes "Fallacies of Ambiguity," i.e. the meanings may be
relevant to the conclusion but the force of the argument is lost by differences in
meaning or ambiguity, which may confuse, deceive, or even produce arguments that
are formally invalid (i.e. the validity depends on one unambiguous term being used).
1. Equivocation, argument turns on the different meanings of a word -- as in the
case of "logical quadrupeds," when the middle term in a syllogism means
different things in each premise.
2. Amphiboly, arguing from premises which are ambiguous; a premise may be

true on one interpretation but the conclusion may only follow from another
interpretation which is false.
3. Accent, ambiguity depends on stress or context.
4. Composition, reasoning from properties of parts to properties of the whole, or
from properties of an individual to properties of a group.
5. Division, reasoning from properties of the whole or of the group to the
properties of parts or individuals; "books are abundant; the Gutenberg Bible is
a book; therefore the Gutenberg Bible is abundant."
An argument that turns on an ambiguity would be John Locke's argument for the
existence of God. Thus, he first sought to establish that "Something has always
existed." This is true because, if there were a time when nothing existed, there would
be nothing around to make something come into existence -- an argument from
"sufficient reason" first used by Parmenides. Locke then argued that "that something
would be God." This argument fails because the first argument only established
that something or other must always have existed, not that some particular
something always existed. So an ambiguity in the word "something" allows for the
apparent inference.
As it happens, Locke's argument was a poor rendering of a similar argument by St.
Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas argued that a necessary being must exist. A "necessary
being" is something that cannot not exist. The argument is that if there are only
contingent beings, which can possibly not exist, then, in an eternity, every possible
thing will have happened. With nothing but contingent beings, one possibility is that
they might all not exist at once. But if there is a time when nothing exists, then there is
nothing around to make anything exist, so there would be nothing for the rest of time
after that. Since in an eternity of time, an eternity would already have passed, there
would now already be nothing, if only contingent beings existed. Thus, since things
now do exist, there must be an necessary being, which by definition would be God.
If St. Thomas' argument commits a fallacy, it would be that of a "Complex Question"
or perhaps simply "Begging the Question," for is it the case that the only "necessary
being" would be God? No. Any substance could be a necessary being, since by
definition a substance can be that which exists independently and is durable, i.e.
persists through time. St. Thomas was using Aristotle's theory of substance, in which
substance can come into being and also cease to exist. But the older, indeed the first,
conception of substance was that of Parmenides, in which substance can neither come
into being nor cease to exist. As it happens, Materialists, like Democritus, applied the
Parmenidean conception of substance to matter. The Materialist would say that the
"necessary being" is not God but simply matter. This is actually a foundational
principle in modern physics, where there are a number of "conservation" laws. So a
physicist could simply say that St. Thomas' argument establishes, if anything, the
Conservation of Mass/Energy -- Einstein's combination of the previously separate
principles of the Conservation of Mass and Conservation of Energy. Thus, the total
amount of mass and energy in the universe, related by Einstein's equation, E=mc 2,
remains constant. Mass/energy has necessary existence. On the other
hand, Buddhist metaphysics denies that there are substances, or durable existence, at
all, which rules out the independent existence of anything St. Thomas considers,
including God.

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Informal Fallacies

The following "Informal" or "Material" Fallacies are mistakes of reasoning that

6. Argumentum ad Populum or Argumentum ad Captandum (Vulgus), appeal to

2. Amphiboly, arguing from premises which are ambiguous; a premise may be

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