Michael LaBossiere
A fallacy is an error in reasoning. That is, it is a piece of bad logic. Just as it is a good idea to avoid eating bad food, it is also a rather good idea to avoid bad reasoning. Unfortunately, bad reasoning is all too commonâ€”it pours out of the television and infests the web like an army of venomous spiders. Perhaps even worse than the fallacies inflicted from the outside are self-inflicted fallacies. These can lead people to make poor decisions about matters great and small.,Fortunately, there is a defense against bad reasoning, namely knowledge. This concise book provides the reader with definitions and examples of forty-two common fallaciesâ€”the knowledge a person needs to defend herself in a world awash in fallacies. This short book is not intended to be a handbook on winning arguments or a text on general logic.,The book contains the following fallacies:,Ad Hominem,Ad Hominem Tu Quoque,Appeal to the Consequences of a Belief,Appeal to Authority,Appeal to Belief,Appeal to Common Practice,Appeal to Emotion,Appeal to Popularity,Appeal to Fear,Appeal to Flattery,Appeal to Novelty,Appeal to Pity,Appeal to Popularity,Appeal to Ridicule,Appeal to Spite,Appeal to Tradition,Begging the Question,Biased Generalization,Burden of Proof,Circumstantial Ad Hominem,Fallacy of Composition,Confusing Cause and Effect,Fallacy of Division,False Dilemma,Gamblerâ€™s Fallacy,Genetic Fallacy,Guilt by Association,Hasty Generalization,Ignoring a Common Cause,Middle Ground,Misleading Vividness,Peer Pressure,Personal Attack,Poisoning the Well,Post Hoc,Questionable Cause,Red Herring,Relativist Fallacy,Slippery Slope,Special Pleading,Spotlight,Straw Man,Two Wrongs Make a Right,Two Wrongs Make a Right
Philosophy,Nonfiction,Philosophy,Logic,Psychology,Self Help,Personal Development
42 Fallacies