Faulty arguments A to Z

Construct an argument of the same form whose conclusion is plainly false.

The arguer is compared to something contemptible, and the comparison is offered as though it were an argument.

Meaning is changed by where the stress falls, or by which part of a passage is reproduced, while every word attributed to the speaker is one he said.

A sound general rule is applied to a case that lacks the feature the rule was made for.

A refuted claim is preserved by adding an assumption whose only support is that it saves the claim.

The arguer is attacked in place of the argument, on grounds that would not bear on the claim even if every word of the attack were true.

The arguer is said to be so committed to a side that nothing he says on the subject can count.

The arguer’s position, interest or circumstances are offered as the reason his argument fails.

One member of an either-or is found to hold and the other is denied on that ground alone.

The consequent of a conditional is found to hold and the antecedent is inferred from it.

A matter of degree is argued as though it admitted only the two end states.

The ambiguity sits in the grammar rather than in any word, so one sentence yields two readings and the argument quietly takes the one it needs.

An analogy drawn to make one point is carried on and made to yield conclusions it was never built to support.

A single vivid case is offered where a rate is required.

Authority is invoked without being named, so that it cannot be checked.

A practice is defended on the ground that it is what everybody does.

A proposition is affirmed or denied on the strength of what would follow from accepting it.

A frightening outcome the speaker does not control is described, and the description is offered in place of the case.

The hearer is offered a compliment, or an enemy’s discomfort, as his reason for agreeing.

A penalty is attached to disagreement, and the penalty is offered in the place a reason should occupy.

An expert opinion is cited where the expert is not an authority on the question, or where the question is not one authority can settle.

An argument is dismissed by supplying a motive for making it.

Something is held to be good because it is natural, or bad because it is not.

A thing is recommended by its newness.

Distress is presented where a ground was owed, so that refusing the claim becomes a refusal of the sufferer.

A benefit to the hearer is supplied in place of a reason for the claim.

A claim is supported by the number of people who accept it.

A practice is defended by its age.

A claim is supported by the prosperity of the person making it, or by their lack of it.

A charge is conveyed without being asserted, so that it can be understood and cannot be answered.

A claim is repeated until familiarity does the work that evidence did not.

A conclusion is treated as false because the argument offered for it was bad.

The absence of evidence for a claim is offered as evidence that it is false, or the absence of evidence against it as evidence that it is true.

The arguer’s inability to imagine how something could be so is offered as a reason for thinking it is not so.

An observed indicator is taken to establish the condition it usually accompanies.

A test result or a match is turned into a probability about the case without the prevalence of the condition being used.

The conclusion is assumed among the premises, so the argument is valid and supplies no reason to accept it.

Technical language and apparatus are used to make a claim unchallengeable rather than clearer.

The two alternatives are exhaustive, and at least one of the consequences attached to them does not follow.

The arguer explains why you hold your mistaken view before establishing that it is mistaken.

One contributing cause is named as the cause of an outcome that several conditions jointly produced.

A first step is opposed because it is forecast to set off a chain of consequences ending somewhere unacceptable.

The cases that support the conclusion are reported and the cases that do not are left out.

A view is dismissed because of when it was held rather than because of what is wrong with it.

The conclusion supports a premise which supports the conclusion, around a loop wide enough to be lost.

A statement about a class is made without saying how much of the class it covers, so that it can be defended as “some” and used as “all”.

Give up the part of your position that has been defeated, explicitly, and keep arguing for the rest.

The conclusion, if accepted, undermines the premises that were used to reach it.

A distinction is rejected because no sharp boundary can be drawn between its ends, or a boundary is rejected because any particular placing of it would be arbitrary.

The premises offered cannot all be true, so they establish the conclusion and its denial equally.

A general rule is built out of a case that was exceptional in the respect that matters.

The sheer number of unreliable reports of something is offered as a reason to think some of them must be reliable.

A criticism is refused on the ground that the critic has not read enough of the literature he is criticising.

Every defeasible argument comes with a fixed set of questions it must be able to answer, and asking one is the whole counter-move.

Two things found together are taken to stand in a causal relation on that ground alone.

A position is established by discrediting the other options on a list the arguer drew up.

A contested term is defined into another term, so that a substantive question is settled by the definition rather than by evidence.

A term is redefined in the middle of an argument so that an objection made against the original meaning no longer applies.

The antecedent of a conditional is found not to hold and the consequent is denied on that ground.

Evidence that supports one conclusion is used to announce a different and usually stronger one.

A term keeps its shape across an argument and changes its sense, so that a valid-looking inference joins two claims that are not about the same thing.

A regularity observed in a group is explained by an inner nature the group members are taken to share.

A word’s origin is offered as evidence of what it now means, or of what the thing it names ought to be.

The improbability of an event is calculated after the event has been singled out, and the improbability is offered as evidence.

A conclusion is drawn from two premises both of which are negative, from which nothing follows.

A conclusion asserting that something exists is drawn from premises that assert only universals.

A causal account of why something happened is answered as though it were a justification of it.

Fallacies as strictly defined are almost never committed; the moves that are common almost never meet the strict definition.

A categorical statement is reversed, subject for predicate, where its form does not permit it.

Two options are presented as the whole field, and a third that was available is not mentioned.

Two things are placed on a par by a shared feature, where they differ by a wide margin in the respect that matters.

A figure is given to a sharpness its source cannot support, and the sharpness is what persuades.

Two cases are treated as alike in the respect at issue on the strength of likeness in some other respect.

High-volume, multi-channel, rapid and inconsistent messaging is used to make the truth unlocatable rather than to establish a claim.

A syllogism appears to have three terms and has four, because one word has been used in two senses.

The right to hold a view is offered as a reason to accept it, or as a defence against its being examined.

Rejection by the established view is offered as evidence that the view is right.

A run of one outcome in an independent process is offered as a reason to expect the other.

A claim is judged by where it came from rather than by what supports it now.

So many claims are made so quickly that answering any of them costs more time than the audience will give.

A gap in the available explanation is filled with a preferred explanation, on the ground that nothing else currently occupies it.

A claim or a person is discredited by naming somebody disreputable who shares the position.

A general claim is drawn from a sample too small to have shown anything else.

The wording is chosen in advance to be loose enough that any outcome can afterwards be claimed as the one predicted.

A position is attributed to an opponent who cannot be shown to exist, and is then refuted.

Both sides of a question are answered with equal warmth, each under a different sense of the key word, so that a position appears to have been taken and none has.

A conclusion is established soundly, and it is not the conclusion that was owed.

A correlation produced by a third factor acting on both variables is reported as a link between them.

What a statement implies but does not assert is treated as though it had been asserted, so that a contrast the speaker never made is used as a premise.

A term is taken in its whole extent in the conclusion having been taken in part only in the premise.

Disagreement among experts is taken to show that nothing in the field is known.

A claim is offered with no support beyond the fact that it has been asserted.

An evaluative conclusion is drawn from premises that are wholly descriptive.

An assertion is made in the form of a question, so that it need not be defended.

Denial of the charge is counted as evidence for it, so that no answer is available to the accused.

Several defences are offered together, each adequate alone, which cannot all be true at once.

A question is put whose presupposition cannot be rejected by any answer it allows.

A fallacy label is used to end an exchange rather than to improve it.

Two terms for the same thing are swapped inside a claim about what somebody knows or believes, and the claim changes truth value.

The position between two stated positions is taken to be the correct one because it lies between them.

A figure called the average is offered as the typical case, in a distribution where it is not.

A descriptive conclusion is drawn from a premise about what ought to be the case.

Two claims share a name, one striking and wanted, one modest and defensible, and the arguer occupies whichever the moment requires.

Evidence of the kind demanded is produced, and a further or different demand is substituted for it.

Settle who has to show what, before the evidence is discussed.

A natural property is offered as the meaning of “good”, so that an evaluative question is answered by a definition.

A condition without which the outcome cannot occur is treated as one that brings it about, or the reverse.

A workable proposal is rejected by comparison with an ideal that is not among the options.

A counterexample is met by narrowing the definition of the subject term until the counterexample no longer falls under it.

A document that undertook to weigh a question presents only the considerations on one side of it.

A generalisation is stated with its force intact and qualified until almost nothing is left inside it.

A familiar word keeps its emotive force while its descriptive content is quietly changed, so that approval or disapproval is transferred to something new.

Adverse information about the arguer is supplied before he speaks, so that whatever he says arrives already discounted.

An affirmative conclusion is drawn where one of the premises denies rather than affirms.

One event is taken to have caused another because it came first.

A decision is opposed not for its own consequences but for what it would commit the decider to next.

Argue against the strongest version of what the other party said, including the parts they left out.

The argument is made too long and too dense to be examined, and the difficulty of examining it is taken for strength.

An argument is shown to be defective by showing that its form would equally establish something the arguer rejects.

An explanation at one causal level is offered as refuting an explanation at another.

A term is defined so that the disputed conclusion follows from the meaning rather than from any evidence.

The conclusion is carried by the choice of words rather than by anything asserted, so that accepting the description concedes the argument.

The subject under discussion is replaced by a different subject, and the replacement is not announced.

A position is refuted by pointing out that the Nazis, or some comparable party, also held it.

An illustration offered in support of a claim is defeated, and the claim is treated as defeated with it.

A movement back towards the average is explained by whatever happened in between.

An abstraction, a construct or a statistic is treated as a concrete thing with properties and powers of its own.

A claim is conceded as true for the speaker and denied for the hearer, so that a disagreement is dissolved rather than settled.

The argument is answered with a joke, and the laughter is allowed to stand in place of a reply.

The effect is named as the cause and the cause as the effect.

A sequence of steps is taken so rapidly and with such momentum that no individual step is examined.

Relentless, courteous requests for evidence are used to exhaust rather than to learn.

Turn the argument on the position it was offered to support, and show that it defeats itself.

The party who made the claim requires the other party to disprove it.

A rule accepted as general is applied to others and an exemption is claimed in one’s own case without a relevant difference being given.

State the other side’s case better than they did, and then answer that.

A concept is used in the act of denying something the concept depends on.

The opponent’s position is restated in a weaker form and the weaker form is refuted.

A claim with a truth-value is reclassified as a matter of taste, and thereby placed beyond assessment.

The hypothesis is drawn round the data after the data have been seen, and then tested on the same data.

A short, final-sounding phrase is produced where an argument would have to begin, and the question closes.

The manner in which an argument was made is treated as a reason not to address it.

Six parts — claim, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier, rebuttal — that make visible the step an argument usually leaves out.

A minor and genuine defect in a case is treated as sufficient reason to reject the whole of it.

The argument is answered by showing that the arguer does not live by it.

An argument is left with a premise unstated which the audience does not in fact grant.

Two classes are linked through a shared term that was never taken in its whole extent.

A claim is put in a form that no possible observation could count against, and its immunity is then offered as its strength.

A generalisation is drawn from cases selected in a way that is related to what is being measured.

An argument rests on a proposition that is neither stated, defended, nor of a kind that could safely be taken for granted.

The feeblest real holder of a position is selected, defeated, and the defeat reported as a defeat of the position.

A charge is met with a charge against the accuser, and the first charge is left where it fell.

A proposition is believed because it would be good if it were so.