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46 thoughts on “Logical Fallacies”

  1. I am forever grateful for my 12th grade English & philosophy (I know, I’ve since heard it’s totally weird be to taught philosophy in high school let alone a Catholic high school) for teaching us about logical fallacies!!’

  12. Here's another one for you: Argument From Ignorance.

    An argument from ignorance is a fallacy that seems to stem from the idea that if a claim hasn't been proven false; then it must be true. However, if we automatically assume something is true because no evidence is pointing to it being false, that leaves so many other options out of the picture. By assuming it's true, you overlook to see if there could be proof saying that it's "Not proven false yet," "Not completely true," or "Not completely false," just to name a few.

    To go along with this, if you make an argument; there's an unspoken rule called the Burden Of Proof. This rule states that whoever makes the claim must provide the evidence; no matter if you're making your own original claim, or refuting an already established one.

    For example; when Nicholaus Copernicus claimed that the sun was the center of our solar system, while all the evidence currently there said it was the earth; he did his own research to prove his claim to be true, he didn't just say "Oh the sun's in the center because there's no proof saying it's not." Like I said, you make the claim you give the proof.

    Another example: Say someone were to tell you that ghosts exist, like the example showed in the video. Would you go running around trying to find proof that they don't? No! You'd ask the person to show you evidence of ghosts being real, and I mean visible proof; one that can be fact-checked at any point in time to confirm that it's valid.

    It's a quite interesting topic, and you can watch a TED-Ed video on the subject, which discussing how this fallacy was overlooked during a communist witch hunt.

  16. I love this video so much. Very straight forward, has great visuals and enticing voice. Really helped me out with my homework tonight. No I’m not a bot I’m just super faded rn and trying to get my point across but I still feel smart form this video. Anywayssss have a happy day!

  23. After learning about fallacies and cognitive errors I got the distinct impression while listening to classmates in college that most people suffer from this. It's my belief, based on the all-be-it small sample size of my own life experience, most people's world views are informed by arguments that make these mistakes. Somewhere along the line of their lives, they pick up beliefs about all manner of things from arguments that are fallacious. Practically everything the average human being believes is riddled with fallacy and cognitive error.

    What truly shocked me though, wasn't the fact that most college students make these kinds of mistakes all the time, it was the fact that the college professors didn't correct them. In fact, some of my professors suffered from these fallacies as well. I'm also not convinced most people are amenable to being convinced these kinds of arguments are fallacious. Whenever I confronted people on this way of thinking I was frequently met with hostility. Very few people were open to having their perceptions changed. This doesn't help me with being optimistic about our future.

  29. Wait a moment.. about the Begging the Question one… so if I say that I saw something (or heard, or smelled, or touched, whatever), this is not enough to say that it exists? Fair enough. I could be hallucinating. BUT what about all the rest? What makes something "real"? What if ANYONE is hallucinating? Recognizing this fallacy doesn't really help us refraining from this possibility. It doesn't help us separating hallucination from reality, but what does really?

    Example: let's say I did see a ghost and I'm sure it was a ghost. How could I prove its existence? If I just saw it, say, for a moment while I was passing by a shop and saw it inside the shop from the outside, and then it was gone… what other way do I have to say it, if not a fallacious one?

    I think this fallacy fails to be applied to existence. We say that something "exists" based upon what we perceive with senses. You should say, then, that everything we call "real" it's actually assumed as such, and not shown with evidence and reasoning. What is evidence, at all? Is it whatever has the most consensus upon? Then we're going straight into another fallacy, the consensus fallacy. In this case:

    "If the majority (or unanimity) of people say x exists, then it exists" , which happens to be the real-life actual worldwide case. Is the world labelling things as "real" by a fallacy? Or rather, two fallacies since there's the Begging the Question one and the Consensus one?

    One has to fallaciously speculate the existence of something to proceed and find proofs of it. Why would anyone go and find evidence about the existence of something if they don't even suspect it to exists? Is our perception of reality programmed to be – at least initially – fallacious in its nature? Are our brains somehow hardwired to fallacy?

  32. TO SUM IT UP:
    False cause (correlation-causation): identifies the cause of something incorrectly because they are correlated
    Straw man: Misrepresenting someone else's argument to make them seem better or worse
    Begging the question: Using part of the conclusion as reasoning
    False dichotomy: representing only two choices when there are more.

  33. I'm not sure I accept your explanation of begging the question. Begging the question is a way of not answering a question. Consider the original version of "why did the chicken cross the road?" We can assume that the intent was to get to the other side, but if we use that as the answer, we have not identified the motive.

  34. Something that sometimes happens to me is that when someone cooks something that looks and/or smells good, I say "That looks good", or "That smells good", but the one who cooked it replies almost as if correcting me saying "It IS good". As if I was saying that it only smells or looks good but probably doesn't taste good. That always annoys me and I can't understand how someone's logic can be so twisted to assume that I'm saying it doesn't taste good just because I say it looks/smells good. Can someone give me some insight on this? or if you respond like this, please explain!

  35. Great video, all in all. But right at the end, you create a false dichotomy yourself when you ask us to choose between “rhetoric” and “logic”. Reasoning and logic are aspects of rhetoric, along with all the other appeals and fallacies we use. Using logic and reasoning well are powerful rhetorical tools, but they are just one of the ways we engage in dialogue with each other in the hopes of changing each other’s minds and gaining assent through debate/discussion.

  38. a false correlation: Dinosours went extinct right after flowering plant evolved. Therefor flowers killed dinosours.

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