Brief Presentations of most common fallacies

2. Reasons
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4.  Ad Hominem :
 Latin for "to the man." An arguer who uses ad
hominems attacks the person instead of the
argument. Whenever an arguer cannot defend
his position with evidence, facts or reason, he
or she may resort to attacking an opponent
either through: labeling, straw man
arguments, name calling, offensive remarks and
anger. In politics this is quite frequent as
politicians slanders the character of their
opponent.

5.  Appeal to ignorance as evidence for
something. As our book says “We have no
evidence that God doesn't
exist, therefore, he must exist”
Simply put, lack of existence is not evidence
itself to conclude something exist or to
negate its existence.

6.  A conclusion supported, simply because it
has long believed to be „true‟.
 Example Until Early modern
period, predominant belief was that Earth
was Flat. Now we know that was not the
case, and we were wrong. Tradition cannot
be used as evidence as traditions
themselves can be prone to errors.

7.  A small step toward something will inevitably
lead toward a chain of events resulting in an
significant impact.
 Example: If you stay home and watch TV all
day, you will get fat. If you get fat you‟ll not
get a girlfriend. If you don‟t get a girlfriend
you can‟t marry. If you don‟t marry your life
will be miserable.

8.  False dilemma occurs when one is given
only two alternatives, while there could be
more than two.
 Example:
 1. Claim X is true or claim Y is true (both
could be false)
 2. Claim Y is false
 3. Claim X is true

9.  This fallacy occurs when one draws conclusion on
a population with out taking a proper sample size
into consideration.
Example: Suzy goes to 24 hr fitness near house and
she realizes the atmosphere is not amicable, thus
she concludes all 24 hr fitness stores are horrible.
Many of us are guilty of committing hasty
generalization with race and religion. A few Arabs
are political fanatics and terrorist does that mean all
Arabs are fanatics terrorist? There are 20-30 million
Christian Arabs who does not fit this criteria thus
such generalization are invalid and misleading.

10.  Fallacy of non-sequitor (non-sequitor in latin
means „‟it does not follow” ) is an argument in
which its conclusion does not follow its
premises.
 Example: A lunar eclipse is a sign of bad luck
for an Amazon Tribe, they believe the spirits
comes down from heaven and watches them
and if they do not honor the spirit bad luck will
occur. The year of the lunar eclipse saw the
Amazon tribes gather less and less haunt. The
lack of haunting game can be attributed to
deforestation rather than the lunar eclipse.

11.  Something has validity because everyone else
is adhering to it.
Bandwagon fallacies are quite common in fashion.
Example: A few years back the black/white and
red/white Palestinian scarf was became a must
have fashion accessory after it was seen on
some celebrity.
Example: A lot of products claim to be # 1 or most
popular, the popularity of the product does not
prove its effectiveness. The popularity might
have occurred because of good marketing
strategy.

12.  Arguer attempts to reach the audience
threshold by appealing to their pity.
 Example: Pro life campaigners use a
strategy to show visual of aborted fetuses
which usually repel people and turn them
against abortion.