Critical Thinking 102- Fallacies
Some of my favorite days as a teacher were the days I got to watch my students participate in Socratic discussions. It was fascinating to watch them talk about the inferences they made from the reading material and come to conclusions and stances. I got to watch them form arguments and reasons for why they came to their conclusions and then defend those stances to their classmates. Sometimes I would jump in and say something designed to challenge their thinking or bring it to a deeper level. I would also invite them to debate with me, without fear of getting in trouble. I always encouraged conversations and debates in my classroom. The art of discussion with those we don’t agree with is far lost. The art of debate is slowly dying. Well, I’ve already talked about critical thinking and what a lost art that is.
So our next lesson for our critical thinking toolkit is understanding fallacies. Fallacies, if you remember the philosophy class you probably had to take your freshmen year in college. Fallacy is defined as “a false or mistaken idea.” That’s the first definition. Fallacies are not false or mistaken ideas though. There are arguments that come from fallacies that would also fit in that definition. I’m not talking about that today though, we’re going to skip down to the third definition for fallacy for this article and we now have a definition of, “an often plausible argument using false or invalid inference.”
Fallacies are errors in reason or thinking that lead to conclusions that are questionable at best, extreme hyperbole at worst. (Want to know what hyperbole means? Find out here!)
So, let’s talk about some fallacies so you can have an understanding of these different debate tactics as you engage in public life. By public life, I mean open a social media app or listen to a podcast or listen to any type of advertising.
The Big Fallacies:
Slippery Slope- If A happens then B will happen and C will happen, all the way down to Z. Therefore, A will cause Z. This is flawed logic because usually getting from A to Z ends up requiring us to compare things that are not the same thing.
Generalization (Sometimes called Hasty Generalization)- when you have some facts and make a conclusion based on the small facts. We make a lot of generalizations based on first impressions and we will use first impressions to determine who a person is. We usually learn that our first impressions are wrong but we still see this logic happening in instances outside of determining the character of someone based on a first impression.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc-This one is so much fun to say. It’s Latin, translated it means, “after this therefore because of this.” A happened and B happened after, therefore, B was caused by A. If I got sick right now right after drinking a diet coke, it doesn’t mean that the diet coke made me sick. Hence, why post hoc ergo propter hoc logic is faulty.
Circular Argument- This logic ends up restating the argument (usually as a fact) instead of proving the argument. For example, The Patriots are a great team because they are a professional football team. If we were to look at some football games and stats recently and we would quickly find out that statement is not true. However, instead of proving that the Patriots are a great team by giving a reason, I gave an empty filler reason that circled back to my stance. (This also plays into post hoc ergo propter hoc, fallacies can fall into multiple categories.)
Ad Hominem—Ad hominem attacks or arguments target a person’s character instead of their stances. We also see this play out in general terms to groups of people. Ad hominem is probably the starting point for stereotypes. (I have zero basis for this stance/thought but something to think about.)
There are so many more fallacy types, these are just some of the big ones that I think are a good starting point for learning fallacies. If you want to learn more about fallacies, check out this Purdue Owl article.