Fallacies Summary

This week I am going to summarize about fallacies.  These are arguments that many people use in their essays that are misleading.  These are a very common mistake for writers of argumentitive essays because they think that they can use these different types of fallacies and they think that this is a sufficient argument for their paper when it really is not.  Using fallacies in an essay is wrong because many times the writer is just making a statement about something that has no evidence to back it up or they do not have any grounds to make that statement at all.  There are many different types of fallacies and they all have different names that pertain to the way that they are wrongly used in papers.  The first fallacy that is very common is ad hominem.  This fallacy is when a writer attacks a person of a source instead of attacking their argument or qualifications that make themselves a viable source.  This is commonly used because many people do not know how to discredit a source so instead they come up with some kind of made up stuff that attacks a person personally rather than attack what their background is in the field that they are being used as a source for.  The book talks about how you should look for the argument and not the man.  This is very true because no matter what the person believes in should not matter.  What they write and how knowledgable that they are about the subject should be the keys to evaluate whether or not they are a credible source.  Another common fallacy is ad ignorantiam.  This fallacy is saying something is true just because they have no evidence that is false.  This is common in society today, especially in sports, where if a guy has an amazing season they are accused of using steroids when nobody really has any evidence to back their accusations at all.  The next fallacy is ad misericordiam.  This fallacy is when people try to use pity in order to gain special treatment for themselves.  A great example of this is the no late grade policy in this class.  If the internet is down right at the deadline nobody is going to feel sorry for that person and give them extra time because they should have been prepared to turn the assignment in ahead of the deadline just in case that problem arises.  Ad populum is the next fallacy and it is when the writer tries to make somebody do what they want by saying that everyone is doing it. This should not be used because even if everybody is doing something, that does not make it right at all.  Affirming the consequent is the next one and that is when a person says if something is happening then it is caused by something else.  This is a common mistake because just because two events happen together does not mean they happened because of each other.  Begging the question is when the writer uses their conclusion as a premise.  The book brings up a great example of this by saying that it says in the bible that God exists, and since God wrote the bible this must be true.  There is no basis for this argument at all because the writer assumes that God wrote the bible when really they have no evidence to back this up.  There are plenty of other fallacies that are not as common that I am going to just define so that this will not take all day to read.  Circular argument is very much like conclusion in which you use your conclusion as a premise.  Complex question is asking a question that a person can not really agree or disagree with.  When using denying the antecedent the writer makes a 2 part statement and says since the first part of a statement did not happen then the second part could not have happend either.  Equivocation is when the writer is arguing something and they move to a different meaning of the term during the argument.  False cause is the questionable conclusion for cause and effect. False dilemna is when there is many sides to an argument and it is reduced to just two when this is not necessary at all.  Loaded language is a fallacy that the writer uses to try to manipulate the readers thoughts.  Non sequitur is drawing a conclusion that is not really related to the evidence.  Overgeneralizing is when the writer has almost no examples but tries to generalize a subject anyways.  Overlooking alternatives is when people do not realize that things could have happened for a lot of different reasons instead of the one that they see.  Persuasive definition is making a definition look straightforward but actually making it so the reader interprets it in the writers favor.  Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is assuming causation on the basis of succession in time.  Red herring is introducing an irrelevant subject so that attention is diverted from the main subject.  The last fallacy is straw man and this is an exaggerated opposing view in a paper so the writer has something to easily refute.  It is of great importance that when writing an argumentative essay that the writer avoids all of these and they will have made great steps in writing an A paper.