Rhetorical Fallacies

As Julie Andrews would say, “let’s start at the very beginning/it is a very good place to start”--what is a fallacy?

Oxford English Dictionary definition (OED):

1. Deception, guile, trickery; a deception, trick; a false statement, a lie.

2. A deceptive or misleading argument, a sophism. In Logic esp. a flaw, material or formal, which vitiates a syllogism; any of the species or types to which such flaws are reducible. Also, sophistical reasoning, sophistry. In certain phrases in the formal terminology of Logic, as fallacy of accident (see quots.); fallacy of composition (see COMPOSITION 4b); fallacy of division, the fallacy that whatever is true of a whole must be true of any part or member of that whole.

TYPES OF FALLACIES

Pathetic Fallacies

• Argument to the People (Appeal to Stirring symbols) Politicians sometimes drape themselves in American flags to convince voters to vote for them
• Appeal to Ignorance (Presenting Evidence the Audience Can’t Examine) This is not necessarily ignorance of the audience, just using evidence they have no access to.  For instance, a literary critic may discuss the intention or state of mind of James Joyce.
• Appeal to Irrational Premises
•         1. Appeal to common practice (everyone else is embezzling, why shouldn’t we?)
•         2. Appeal to traditional wisdom (we’ve always embezzled)
•         3. Appeal to popularity (buy the Toyota Camry because it’s the best selling car in the world)
• Red Herring (Shifting the Audience’s Attention) When someone begins an answer to a question with “Let me tell you a story,” they are often shifting the focus of the question, even if unintentionally
• Provincialism (Known is better than the Unknown) In the 1960s, American car companies tried to fight off Japanese manufacturers with ad campaigns that claimed “Americans like big cars.”

Ethical Fallacies

• Appeal to False Authority In the 1970s a Michigan mortgage company ripped off a bunch of customers.  With no legal grounds for suing the company, the customers sued George Hamilton, the celebrity spokesperson, for misleading them.  They didn’t win, and the court established that companies may not lie, but they may use fallacious arguments in their ads.
• Appeal to the Person (Ad Hominem) For instance, in the 1980s, a group of physicists opposing Reagan’s SDI (“Star Wars”) signed a lengthy letter to that effect.  A pro-SDI group claimed that the anti- crowd was only opposed to it because they weren’t getting any of the research and development money.  The accusing group was vulnerable to the opposite accusation: they were in favor of it only because they were getting money for it.
• Strawman (Oversimplifying Opponent’s Position) Politicians do it all the time: “My opponent wants to let murders out of jail where they’ll be free to kill again.”

Logical Fallacies

• Begging the Question (Supporting the Claim with a Restatement of the Claim) Abortion is murder.  Since most legal definitions of murder include reference to a human being, pro-lifers slip their premise in the conclusion that way.
• Complex Question (Asking a Question that Cannot be Answered Harmlessly) When did you stop beating your wife?
• False Dilemma (Either/Or) When Truman dropped the bombs on Japan, he had convinced himself he was down to two choices: nuclear strikes or a ground invasion costing the lives of thousands on both sides.  Some historians are questioning whether he may have had other options.
• Equivocation (Using Different Definitions of the Same Word)  Cultural literacy proponents have been known to say things like, “People can’t flourish without being culturally literate.”  But ‘flourish’ is never defined, and it is often used many ways: financial success, moral probity, family happiness, etc.
• Confusing Correlation with Causation (Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc--After it, therefore because of it)  Correlation is when two things happen together; causation is when one actually causes the other.  A couple obvious examples of the fallacy: “Cramming for a test really helps.  Last week I crammed for a psych test and got an A on it.”  “I am allergic to the sound of a lawn mower because every time I mow the lawn, I start to sneeze.” 
• Slippery Slope A lot of First Amendment arguments fit here: “If he’s forced to cut his hair, next thing you know all the kids will be wearing uniforms and saying ‘Heil Principal.’”
• Hasty Generalization
•         1. Mistaking the part for the whole We should get rid of the NEA because they have sponsored a few questionable events lately.
•         2. Suppressed evidence The NEA director not mentioning the few questionable events when he asks for more money.
• Faulty Analogy This comes from psychologist Carl Rogers: “During the war when a test-tube solution was found to the problem of synthetic rubber, millions of dollars and an army of talent was turned loose on the problem of using that finding…But in the social science realm, if a way is found of facilitating communication and mutual understanding in small groups, there is no guarantee that the finding will be utilized.”
• Non Sequitur I can’t get a C on this paper because I got A’s in high school.