The Fallacy Itself

A fallacy is a part of an argument that usually doesn’t make sense or tries to deceive its audiences. Some fallacies can be accidental, but sometimes that can be purposely used in an attempt to further persuade an audience. If a fallacy is detected then the argument is weakened and the audience begins to question the credibility of the author. Most of the time a fallacy is not detected because the reader or listener may just be casually reading or listening. They can be found in almost every newspaper, journal, and advertisements.

Poisoning the Well

Poisoning the Well discredits opponents before the audience receives their argument. Essentially the opponents are given a bad reputation and are consistently fighting an uphill battle to convince the audience of their argument.

An example would be, “Frank’s got terrible taste in music; I saw that he had Linkin Park on his iPod.” So every time Frank talks about music with people they won’t listen to him because he likes Linkin Park and they are trash.

Guilt by Association

This particular tactic of guilt tries to keep attention away from the main issue and instead divert it towards the reputation of others who support a particular claim. Reminding people that someone is associated with an unpopular person distracts the listener from the actual argument.

For example, “I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton; her husband’s presidency was nearly impeached, not to mention he is an adulterer.”

Attacking the Person

This method attempts to question the credibility of the person making an argument rather than attacking the argument itself. The fallacy lies in the perception that a dishonorable person cannot be trusted no matter what his or her claims may be.

For example, “He never even finished high school, don’t listen to him.”

Appeal to Fear

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 Bush was in more of a position than ever to ensure that people were going to still be his followers and believe in his authority. In the first minute of his speech, he retells the story of what had happened, and how these "vicious enemies" are out to get us and bring us down. By using the fear fallacy, which uses dread to achieve a wanted outcome, he instills such an emotion to where people will think they have no other choice than to be supportive of Bush in hopes that he will get his people through this terrible trauma.

Appeal to Faith

Especially prevalent in religions, the faith fallacy relies on the concept of a blind follower. In the poem above Jesus tells his follower that he was indeed there, even though he could not see him, and it felt otherwise, but because of his blind devotion, the follower accepts it as fact. His faith in the entity substitutes for any lack of factual evidence.

Appeal of Authority

When translated, this poster means "The Jew: Inciter of war, Prolonger of war." Simply because Hitler was a well-known authoritative figure and had a powerful position, his belief that the Jews were essentially "ruining Germany's chance for perfection" was blindly followed by his people. As in Hitler's case, the authority fallacy heavily relies on the authority to replace the logic; Hitler's personal beliefs were followed with no real evidence to back him up, but since he was in high office, everyone went along with him.

Appeal of Ignorance

A fallacy that appeals to ignorance usually states that a claim is true because there is no evidence against it or a claim is false because there is no evidence to support it.

Going with the same religious example, an argument that uses an ignorant fallacy would say something like, “You can’t prove God doesn’t exist, therefore he does exist.”

Appeal to Popularity

This fallacy is also known as the bandwagon, mob appeal, and appeal to the masses. Appealing to the popularity is a strategy meant to persuade audiences that “everyone is doing it”. It’s an attempt to convince individual audience members to conform to the rest of society.

Appealing to the audience with this strategy can be very effective especially when trying to convince someone of a belief. Beliefs are more likely to be accepted if it is a belief that is widely popular. The approval of the many should not be reliable evidence that supports a claim.

Example:
Religious beliefs, for example, can be seen as an appeal to popularity fallacy because many people believe in God or a “higher power”, therefore many people believe such a thing exists.

Appeal to Pity

This type of fallacy substitutes the actual claim of the argument with a feeling of sympathy. It is also known as a special pleading in which the audience feels sympathetic for the particular person’s feelings. Emotion is relied on as the actual evidence.

Appealing to emotion can be a powerful argumentative tool, however just because the arguer has a strong emotional appeal that creates a lot of sympathy with its audience doesn’t exactly mean that their claim should be committed to the truth. Unfortunately, because emotion creates many more reactions, the pity fallacy is one of the most common fallacies out there.

Example:
George is not getting a good grade in English. His teacher see’s how hard he works and how much he participates in class, so she gives him a better grade than he has actually earned.

Appeal to Wealth

This fallacy is directly the opposite of the poverty fallacy, it relies on the false logic that wealth is validating. Thus according to this fallacy because a speaker is rich he must be correct.

Example: You can’t criticize Grand Theft Auto it makes hundred of millions of dollars therefore it must have some merit.

Appeal to Tradition

Tradition: The traditions fallacy tries to tie logic to the claim that older is better. It tries to deem a thesis correct by correlating it with a past or present tradition.

Example: These rules were written 100 years ago and we have always followed them. Therefore, there is no need to change them.

Appeal to Poverty

The fallacy of poverty relies on the false assumption that an avoidance of wealth means you are virtuous. To pare it down further, because the speaker is poor he is correct.

Example: The homeless say that it is hard to find housing, there fore it must be true.

Appeal to Numbers

This fallacy essentially can be boiled down to the phrase, “more is better.” The logic of this phrase dictates that if many people believe or support something then it must be valid and true.

Example: 2.1 billion Christians can’t be wrong about the existence of God.