Logical Fallacies

This fallacy occurs when, instead of addressing someone's argument or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument. The fallacious attack can also be direct to membership in a group or institution.

• Red Herring

• Appeal to False Authority

• Ad Hominem

• Slippery Slope

Sometimes called the over-generalization fallacy. It is basically making a claim based on evidence that it just too small. Essentially, you can’t make a claim and say that something is true if you have only an example or two as evidence.

• Hasty generalization

• Either/Or (False Dilemma)

• Post Hoc

• Non-Sequitor

Asserts that a complex situation can have only two possible outcomes and that one of the options is necessary or preferable.

• False Authority

• Ad Hominem

• Straw Man

• Either/Or

When the support only restates the claim.

• Post Hoc

• Slippery Slope

• Circular Reasoning/ Begging the Question

• Non-Sequitur

Assumes that just because B happened after A, A caused B.

• Post Hoc

• Red Herring

• Slippery Slope

• Circular Reasoning/

  Begging the Question

An irrelevant (and often unfortunate and emotionally loaded) example meant to distract from actually relevant or important claims or counterclaims.

• Straw Man

• Red Herring

• False Authority

• False Analogy

A course of action is rejected because, with little or no evidence, one insists that it will lead to a chain reaction resulting in an undesirable end or ends.

• Bandwagon

• False Analogy

• Slippery Slope

• Red Herring

A conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement

• Hasty Generalization

• Ad Hominem

• Either/Or

• Non-Sequitur

When you use a single source, or too small of a sample, as the pinnacle of authority on the issue

• False Authority

• Straw Man

• Post Hoc

• False Analogy

Making a comparison between unrelated things

• Bandwagon

• Slippery Slope

• False Analogy

• Either/Or