The Logical Fallacies: Table of Contents. Logical Fallacies Handlist. Logical Fallacies Handlist: Fallacies are statements that might sound reasonable or superficially true but are actually flawed or dishonest. When readers detect them, these logical fallacies backfire by making the audience think the writer is (a) unintelligent or (b) deceptive. It is important to avoid them in your own arguments, and it is also important to be able to spot them in others' arguments so a false line of reasoning won't fool you. Think of this as intellectual kung-fu: the vital art of self-defense in a debate.
For extra impact, learn both the Latin terms and the English equivalents. You can click here to download a PDF version of this material.In general, one useful way to organize fallacies is by category. We have below fallacies of relevance, component fallacies, fallacies of ambiguity, and fallacies of omission. . (2) Circumstantial: To argue that an opponent should accept or reject an argument because of circumstances in his or her life. Fallacies. Dr. Michael C. Labossiere, the author of a Macintosh tutorial named Fallacy Tutorial Pro 3.0, has kindly agreed to allow the text of his work to appear on the Nizkor site, as a Nizkor Feature. It remains © Copyright 1995 Michael C.
Labossiere, with distribution restrictions -- please see our copyright notice. If you have questions or comments about this work, please direct them both to the Nizkor webmasters (webmaster@nizkor.org) and to Dr. Labossiere (ontologist@aol.com). Other sites that list and explain fallacies include: Constructing a Logical Argument Description of Fallacies In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. There are two main types of arguments: deductive and inductive. A fallacy is, very generally, an error in reasoning.