Fallacies, What are they? What to look for.

One of the first classes I taught was a Critical Thinking class. I've long held that this class should be mandatory for everyone no matter what their major. In this post i'm going to share what a fallacy is and how to spot a few common ones.  There is also a clip of an argument embedded at the bottom of this post,  can you spot any of the fallacies discussed in the video?

Fallacy: A fallacy is a reasoning “trick”, that an author might use while trying to persuade you to accept a conclusion

Fallacies are distractions from the truth. They are implored usually in desperate attempts to convince us of radical ideas. Weak Sense critical thinkers fall prey to such attempts more than strong sense critical thinkers for obvious reasons. Fallacies are a lazy way to argue and write.  For the most part fallacies are most common in personal arguments, radical persuasions, and opinionated writings.  That is not say some of the most intellectual people don’t try to use fallacies often.  The fallacies below are some of the most basic.  Truly deviant debaters will use much heavier handed tactics that I will discuss in some later posts.  Some of the fallacies by name are as followed:

Ad Hominem fallacy:  Ad Hominem Latin for “against the man or against the person refers to the fallacy where an attack or insult is made on the person rather than directly addressing the person’s reasons

Fallacy slippery slope: making the assumption that a proposed step will set off an uncontrollable chain of undesirable events, when procedures exist to prevent such a chain of events.

Fallacy Searching for perfect solutions: Falsely assuming that because part of a problem remains after a solution is tried, the solution should not be adopted. It takes the following form: A solution to X does not deserve our support unless it destroys the problem entirely.

Fallacy Equivocation: A key word or phrase  used  with two or more meanings in an argument such that the argument fails to makes sense once the shifts in the meaning are recognized

Fallacy appeal to questionable authority : Supporting a conclusion by citing an authority who lacks special expertise on the issue at hand (Prensky? #Edtech597).

Fallacy appeals to emotions: The use of emotionally charged language to distract reader and listeners from relevant reasons and evidence. Common emotions appealed to are fear, hope, patriotism, pity and sympathy.