Fallacies of relevance.

Fallacies of relevance are the most numerous and the most frequently encountered. In these
fallacies, the premises of the argument are simply not relevant to the conclusion. However,
because they are made to appear to be relevant, they may deceive. We will distinguish and
discuss:
R1. The appeal to the populace (ad populum): When correct reasoning is replaced by
devices calculated to elicit emotional and nonrational support for the conclusion urged.
- It is a fallacy because, instead of evidence and rational argument, the speaker (or writer)
relies on expressive language and other devices calculated to excite enthusiasm for or
against some cause.
- Patriotism is one common cause about which it is easy to stir emotions, and we know
that terrible abuses and injustices have been perpetrated in the name of patriotism.
- The oratory of Adolf Hitler, whipping up the racist enthusiasms of his German listeners, is
a classic example. Love of country is an honorable emotion, but the appeal to that
emotion in order to manipulate and mislead one’s audience is intellectually disreputable.
R2. The appeal to emotion: When correct reasoning is replaced by appeals to specific
emotions, such as pity, pride, or envy.
- Pity is often an admirable human response. Justice, it is wisely said, should be tempered
with mercy. Surely there are many situations in which leniency in punishment is justified
by the special circumstances of the offender.
- In civil suits, when attorneys are seeking compensatory damages for the injuries
suffered by their clients, there is often an effort to rely implicitly on the appeal to pity.
The cause of the injury may be described as a faceless and unfeeling corporate
juggernaut; or the injured party may be presented as the helpless victim of an uncaring
bureaucracy or an incompetent professional. The miseries of the client’s continuing
disability may be depicted in some heart-rending way.
- n criminal trials, the sympathies of the jury plainly have no bearing on the guilt or
innocence of the accused, but an appeal to those sympathies may nevertheless be
made. Such an appeal may be made obliquely. At his trial in Athens, Socrates referred
with disdain to other defendants who had appeared before their juries accompanied by
their children and families, seeking acquittal by evoking pity.
R3. The red herring: When correct reasoning is manipulated by the introduction of some event
or character that deliberately misleads the audience and thus hinders rational inference.
- This fallacy has a fascinating history. The phrase is believed to have been derived from
the practice of those who tried to save a fox being hunted by leaving a misleading trail of
scent (a smoked herring is very smelly and does become dark red) that would be likely
to distract or confuse the dogs in hot pursuit.
- , any deliberately misleading trail is commonly called a red herring. Especially in
literature, and above all in suspense or detective stories, it is not rare for some character
or event to be introduced deliberately to mislead the investigators (and the readers) and
thus to add to the excitement and complexity of the plot.
- At Duke University in 2006, three student athletes were indicted for rape; the indictments
were plainly unfounded and soon withdrawn. When the prosecutor was charged with
 misconduct in office, feelings at the university grew intense. One member of the Duke
faculty, writing in the local newspaper, defended the prosecutor and some other faculty
members who had supported him. In the course of this defense she argued that the real
“social disaster” in the Duke rape case was that “18 percent of the American population
lives below the poverty line,” and that we do not have “national health care or affordable
childcare.” That herring was bright red.
R4. The straw man: When correct reasoning is undermined by the deliberate misrepresentation
of the opponent’s position.
- One may view this fallacy as a variety of the red herring, because it also introduces a
distraction from the real dispute. In this case, however, the distraction is of a particular
kind: It is an effort to shift the conflict from its original complexity into a different conflict,
between parties other than those originally in dispute.
-
R5. The attack on the person (ad hominem): When correct reasoning about some issue is
replaced by an attack upon the character or special circumstances of the opponent.
- A. Argumentum ad hominem, Abusive One is tempted, in heated argument, to
disparage the character of one’s opponents, to deny their intelligence or
reasonableness, to question their understanding, or their seriousness, or even their
integrity. However, the character of an adversary is logically irrelevant to the truth or
falsity of what that person asserts, or to the correctness of the reasoning employed.
- Ad hominem abusive has many variations. The opponent may be reviled (and his claims
held unworthy) because he is of a certain religious or political persuasion: a “Papist” or
an “atheist,” a member of the “radical right” or the “loony left,” or the like. A conclusion
may be condemned because it has been defended by persons believed to be of bad
character, or because its advocate has been closely associated with those of bad
character.
- B. Argumentum ad hominem, Circumstantial The circumstances of one who makes (or
rejects) some claim have no more bearing on the truth of what is claimed than does his
character. The mistake made in the circumstantial form of the ad hominem fallacy is to
treat those personal circumstances as the premise of an opposing argument.
- Thus, it may be argued fallaciously that an opponent should accept (or reject) some
conclusion merely because of that person’s employment, or nationality, or political
affiliation, or other circumstances. It may be unfairly suggested that a member of the
clergy must accept a given proposition because its denial would be incompatible with the
Scriptures.
R6. The appeal to force (ad baculum): When reasoning is replaced by threats in the effort to
win support or assent.
- Threats or strong-arm methods to coerce one’s opponents can hardly be considered
arguments at all. Traditionally, a category of fallacies of this kind has been identified as
the appeal to force or the argument ad baculum (appeal ad baculum means literally
“appeal to the stick”!), and it surely is clear that however expedient force may prove to
be, it cannot replace rational methods of argument. “Might makes right” is not a subtle
principle, and we all reject it.
R7. Missing the point (ignoratio elenchi): When correct reasoning is replaced by the
mistaken refutation of a position that was not really at issue.
- Among the fallacies of relevance, the final category to be identified is perhaps the most
difficult to describe with precision. A variety of alternative names have been applied to
this category, including irrelevant conclusion and mistaken refutation. It arises when the
argument goes awry—when, on close examination, there is a “disconnect” between the
premises and the conclusion.
- The twist may on occasion be an instrument of deliberate deception, but more often the
fallacy is the product of sloppy thinking, a confusion in reasoning that the author of the
argument herself does not fully recognize, or grasp.

Fallacies of Defective Induction

In fallacies of defective induction, the premises may be relevant to the conclusion, but they are
far too weak to support the conclusion. Four major fallacies are as follows:
D1. Appeal to ignorance (ad ignorantiam): When it is argued that a proposition is true on the
ground that it has not been proved false, or when it is argued that a proposition is false because
it has not been proved true.
- The fallacious appeal to ignorance crops up in science when plausible claims are held to
be false because evidence of their truth cannot be provided. There may be good reason
for its absence: In archeology or in paleontology, for instance, that evidence may have
been destroyed over time. In astronomy or in physics, the evidence desired may be so
distant in space or in time that it is physically unobtainable. The fact that some desired
evidence has not been gathered does not justify the conclusion that an otherwise
plausible claim is false.
D2. Appeal to inappropriate authority (ad verecundiam): When the premises of an argument
appeal to the judgment of some person or persons who have no legitimate claim to authority in
the matter at hand.
- Thus, in an argument about morality, an appeal to the opinions of Darwin, a towering
authority in biology, would be fallacious, as would be an appeal to the opinions of a great
artist such as Picasso to settle an economic dispute. Care must be taken in determining
whose authority it is reasonable to rely on, and whose to reject. Although Picasso was
not an economist, his judgment might plausibly be given some weight in a dispute
pertaining to the economic value of an artistic masterpiece; and if the role of biology in
moral questions were in dispute, Darwin might indeed be an appropriate authority.
D3. False cause (non causa pro causa): When one treats as the cause of a thing that which is
not really the cause of that thing, often relying (as in the subtype post hoc ergo propter hoc)
merely on the close temporal succession of two events.
- Whether the causal connection alleged is indeed mistaken may sometimes be a matter
for dispute. Some college faculty members, it has been argued, grade leniently because
they fear that rigorous grading will cause lowered evaluations of them by their students
and damage to their careers. Gradual “grade inflation” is said to be the result of this fear.
 - Post hoc ergo propter hoc A fallacy in which an event is presumed to have been
caused by a closely preceding event. Literally, “After this; therefore, because of this.”
- Slippery slope A fallacy in which change in a particular direction is asserted to lead
inevitably to further changes (usually undesirable) in the same direction.
D4. Hasty generalization (converse accident): When one moves carelessly or too quickly
from one or a very few instances to a broad or universal claim.
- An anecdote or single instance may indeed be relevant support for a general rule or
theory; but when it is treated as proof of that theory, the generalization is not well
founded—the induction is defective. Here is an example: Eating deepfried foods tends
to raise one’s cholesterol level. A single instance in which it does not do so is hardly
sufficient to show that such foods are healthy. The owner of a “fish and chips” shop in
England fallaciously defended the healthfulness of his deep-fried cookery with this
argument:

“Take my son, Martyn. He’s been eating fish and chips his whole life, and he just had a
cholesterol test, and his level is below the national average. What better proof could
there be than a fryer’s son?”

Fallacies of Presumption
In fallacies of presumption, the mistake in argument arises from relying on some proposition that
is assumed to be true but is without warrant and is false or dubious. Three major fallacies are as
follows:
P1. Accident: When one mistakenly applies a generalization to an individual case that it does
not properly govern.
- In the preceding section we explained the fallacy of converse accident, or hasty
generalization, the mistake of moving carelessly or too quickly to a generalization that
the evidence does not support. Accident is the fallacy that arises when we move
carelessly or unjustifiably from a generalization to some particulars that it does not in fact
cover.
- For example, there is a general principle in law that hearsay evidence—statements
made by a third party outside court—may not be accepted as evidence in court; this is
the “hearsay rule,” and it is a good rule. However, when the person whose oral
communications are reported is dead, or when the party reporting the hearsay in court
does so in conflict with his own best interest, that rule may not apply.
P2. Complex question (plurium interrogationum): When one argues by asking a question in
such a way as to presuppose the truth of some assumption buried in that question.
- The complex question is often a deceitful device. The speaker may pose some question,
then answer it or strongly suggest the answer with the truth of the premise that had been
buried in the question simply assumed.
- Egregious examples of the fallacy of the complex question arise in dialogue or cross-
examination in which one party poses a question that is complex, a second party
 answers the question, and the first party then draws a fallacious inference for which that
answer was the ground. For example:

Lawyer: The figures seem to indicate that your sales increased as a result of these
misleading advertisements. Is that correct?
Witness: They did not!
Lawyer: But you do admit, then, that your advertising was misleading. How long have
you been engaging in practices like these?

When a question is complex, and all of its presuppositions are to be denied, they must
be denied individually. The denial of only one presupposition may lead to the assumption
of the truth of the other. In law, this has been called “the negative pregnant.” Here is an
illustration from a notorious murder trial:

Q: Lizzie, did you not take an axe and whack your mother forty times, and then whack
your father forty-one times when faced with the prospect of cold mutton stew?
A: Not true. We were to eat Brussels sprouts fondue that day.
P3. Begging the question (petitio principii): When one assumes in the premises of an
argument the truth of what one seeks to establish in the conclusion of that same argument.
- In the effort to establish the desired conclusion, an author may cast about, searching for
premises that will do the trick. Of course, the conclusion itself, reformulated in other
words, will do the trick very nicely. Another illustration, equally fallacious, is found in this
claim by a sixteenth-century Chinese philosopher:

There is no such thing as knowledge which cannot be carried into practice, for such
knowledge is really no knowledge at all.

Fallacies of Ambiguity
In fallacies of ambiguity, the mistakes in argument arise as a result of the shift in the meaning of
words or phrases, from the meanings that they have in the premises to different meanings that
they have in the conclusion. Five major fallacies are as follows:
A1. Equivocation: When the same word or phrase is used with two or more meanings,
deliberately or accidentally, in formulating an argument.
A2. Amphiboly: When one of the statements in an argument has more than one plausible
meaning, because of the loose or awkward way in which the words in that statement have been
combined.
A3. Accent: When a shift of meaning arises within an argument as a consequence of changes
in the emphasis given to its words or parts.
A4. Composition: This fallacy is committed (a) when one reasons mistakenly from the
attributes of a part to the attributes of the whole, or (b) when one reasons mistakenly from the
attributes of an individual member of some collection to the attributes of the totality of that
collection.
A5. Division: This fallacy is committed (a) when one reasons mistakenly from the attributes of a
whole to the attributes of one of its parts, or (b) when one reasons mistakenly from the attributes
of a totality of some collection of entities to the attributes of the individual entities within that
collection