A logical fallacy is a false claim that supports an argument without solid evidence that at first seems correct to an individual’s unaware of the fallacy. Reasoning, on the other hand, has always been assumed to have developed so people can search for the truth (Cohen, 2011). Some researchers have recently been looking into reasoning as a result of the need to win arguments. According to Mercier & Sperber (2011), the development of reasoning had nothing to do with accuracy or the truth but to help convince others and be hard to convince. This paper, however, is not arguing about which theory of the evolution of reasoning is correct. However, it is a summary and exposition of different logical fallacies starting with confirmation bias.
A confirmation bias, according to Liden (2018), is a filter through which someone will disregard some information while disproportionately accepting information that matches one’s expectations and theories. As a result, confirmation bias results in selective thinking which changes the individual’s pursuit of facts. For instance, people tend to read books not based on the information they contain but to confirm the facts they already believe in. By doing this, they close themselves to the other side of the truth or story that is important though the individual does not think so. In this manner, selective thinking distorts the pursuit of facts which in turn changes the thinking process. It is a vicious cycle.
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Confirmation bias is, however, not the only logical fallacy in existence. Other informal fallacies are explained as follows. Ad Hominem is a logical fallacy that attacks the claimant instead of the claim (Hansen & Fioret, 2016). This fallacy is very popular in political scenes. The fallacy comes about because people rarely recognize that the individual making a claim and the claim itself are separate entities and discrediting one does not imply discrediting the other.
Another informal fallacy known as appeal to popular opinion assumes that the masses are always right, and if many people do or believe in something, then that is evidence of its correctness (Hansen & Fioret, 2016). This fallacy works well that advertisers regularly use it to promote their products. They do this by appealing to one’s desire to be accepted by others then implying that taking such an action will make them acceptable. A false analogy, on the other hand, is a fallacy where an analogy is used to support a claim when it does not apply (Hansen & Fioret, 2016). A good example is the analogy “if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” is used to detract a child from behaviours such as buying a t-shirt.
Attacking the motive is another informal fallacy where the claimant’s motive for the claim is used as evidence to invalidate the claim. This fallacy is similar to Ad Hominem because an individual’s motivation is not evidence in support of or against their claims. Another fallacy that attacks the claimant is Look Who’s Talking fallacy that uses the claimant’s hypocrisy to invalidate their claim. An argument from a hypocrite does not imply that the argument itself is invalid. This fallacy is embodied in statements such as “do as I say, not as I do.”
There are other fallacies such as a straw person, begging the question, and inconsistency among others. Identifying fallacies is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult, such as with Ad Hominem as compared to begging the question. A general strategy that applies is to investigate the argument. Specifically, look into the premise and determine if it is true or false. The argument “all mammals are warm-blooded, John is a mammal, John is warm-blooded” is true because the premise (all mammals are warm-blooded) is true. This other argument is fallacious; however: “Peter said pollution is bad, but Peter is an idiot, so who knows.”
References
Cohen, P. (2011). Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth. The New York Times , 14 .
Hansen, H. V., & Fioret, C. (2016). A Searchable Bibliography of Fallacies–2016. Informal Logic , 36 (4), 432-472.
Lidén, M. (2018). Confirmation Bias in Criminal Cases (Doctoral dissertation, Department of Law, Uppsala University).
Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2011). Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory.
