Talk:Logical fallacy

message: Is this vandalism?  Ad Hoc isn't a logical fallacy that I know of.  --The Yar 21:57, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Definitely not vandalism.  This is the section that refers to the logical fallacy.  Basically if you make a hypothesis then new data falsifies your hypothesis and you ammend it 'ad hoc' it is a logical fallacy.  While ammending a hypothesis to incorporate new data is not neccessarily wrong, hypotheses that require constant 'ad hoc' adjustments are generally weak compared to ones where new data matches the existing theory.  At least that is my understanding from high school forensics. --Rtrev 14:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ad Hoc? 

message: I while ago I added this link : http://www.geocities.com/safacta/fallacies.html
It contains many good examples. I think we can safely re-use these inside Wikipedia : they surely do not have a copyright on these example cases. Just to be different, we can change the names, the places and the events. Mathieugp 21:11, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  More examples 

message: Should this be added to the list? Filiocht 13:28, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)
:I am not sure that an analogy (false or otherwise) is a logical argument. Isn't it just an illustration.  A false analogy could really be a hasty generalization. -- Chris Q 06:34, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I like the first reference, which states that analogies are not a logical argument but describes it as it is a wideley used form of argument anyway. I think that it is worth emphasising that argument from analogy is itself a logical fallacy. -- Chris Q 10:17, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: [[False Analogy]]

message: (This text is included here for completeness)
::: I have responded to this on the logical fallacy talk page, as well as on the pages of the above mentioned users.  It does appear that these pages were as Hu suggests the victim of a tiresome semi-sophisticated troll.  But I wasn't the perpetrator.  This suggestion appears to have been an honest mistake, I consider the matter closed, and it appears that Hu does as well. CSTAR 01:46, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Point of information 

message: There is another class of statistical fallacies, which I have observed (related to, but not quite, biased sample and statistical special pleading): Infering a mean value or correlation (or anything else) from an incomplete distribution of random variable.
Example of wrong mean value (which I made up):
# Most of the best universities in the world are in the USA.
# Therefore, USA has the best system of universities (average university is better than average university anywhere else).
This is wrong, because we look only how the distribution of quality of universities looks among those best, and estimated a mean value of the whole distribution. But it is possible that USA also has many very bad universities, so we cannot say anything about their system.
Example of wrong correlation:
# Intelligent and beautiful women are less common than beautiful women of average intelligence.
# Intelligent and beautiful women are less common than intelligent women of average beauty.
# Therefore, intelligent woman is probably not beautiful, and vice versa (there is correlation between intelligent and beautiful).
It is perfectly possible that beauty and intelligence are in fact independent variables. But we don't know this unless we look at how many average women there are in ratio to other 3 categories. So we infered the correlation by looking only to incomplete distribution.
Although the background I gave is quite mathematical, this is widely (mis)used in the way I presented the examples, so I hope someone will write an easier to understand explanation. Samohyl Jan 00:22, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think these two are similar. My examples are fallacies based on incomplete part of probabilistic distribution rather than on too small statistical sample. The distribution used may well be correct. Maybe it should be classified as misuse of probability, not statistics. I think it deserves mention here, because it's often used as fallacious argument, even where there are no "hard" numbers involved (as in above examples). Samohyl Jan 09:07, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see what you mean, some tunnel vision, which might come from an initial prejudice and is applied to the selection / interpretation of data or facts. I agree it deserves mention, the only things are how to call this specific bias and where to find references. I would be interested also to get more explanations and resources. If somebody can help... --Pgreenfinch 10:15, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distribution misuse - another statistical fallacy 

message: I wonder if this should be listed on fallacies or not. Can't think of a name for it .. well, might have something to do with ignorance, or wrong use of the concept of "fairness". I'll give an example.
A: The computers of today are far more intelligent and knowledgeable than their creators. See, the one I bought yesterday asked me to connect my camera! How did it know that I had one?
B: Computers really do not "know" anything, they just follow pre-described deterministic algorithms with some initial data and user input.
A: I'm not a technical person, so you should give me some leverage and drop the tech jargon. From what I can tell, it's wiser than anyone I've met! 
(Alternative A: I'm a botanist so don't get technical on me. I'll just argue with you on the basis on my personal experience that the machine is as wise as anyone.) 62.220.237.74 10:32, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another type of fallacy? 

message: Would someone be kind enought to categorize this statement into a particular fallacy and also add it as an example to that page? Thanks much.--Metron4 03:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A logical fallacy is a improperly formed argument. "Heads I win, Tails you lose" isn't an argument, so it can't be considererd a logical fallacy. --Flatline 15:22, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heads I win, Tails you lose 

message: I would like to see the word "interlocutor" replaced.  I think the word is overly complex and actually hurts communication.  I looked up the word, and think a simpler word could suffice.  I suggets "audience" if it is appropriate.  If it is the other side of the arguement, I would suggest proponent or advocate.
192.132.64.229 21:15, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, good catch.  I made the change. StuRat 21:38, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better word for "interlocutor"? 

message: I haven't found this fallacy yet in the list, maybe somebody could classify it:
:A: A comparison of the leading online music stores concluded "If you simply want to download music from the charts, then Yahoo is your cheapest options. For your MP3 player, there are several options, with Yahoo the best. If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes."
:B: Oh no! A mass suicide of iPod owners has been reported on the eve that they discovered they were "stuck" with iTunes. (source)
Let's assume that A mentioned a valid concern about iPods. B used a Appeal to ridicule, correct, but the center of the fallacy seems to be something else, it's a three-step process:
#To exaggerate your opponent's point, 
#making fun of this just created exaggeration,
#and then redirecting this mocking towards the original argument.
Is there a name for this logical fallacy? Peter S. 13:33, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Strawman. --Hob Gadling 11:41, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perfect. Thanks :-) Peter S. 21:06, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yet another type of logical fallacy? 

message: StuRat's asking the question is not a well-known fallacy. If it is, then please provide a reference. More to the point, what does this fallacy refer to:
# A rhetorical device used by the questioner,  intended for example to confuse the listener or to suggest irrelevant considerations in the mind of the listener? In which case it may be something else, such as a red herring.
#The listener's act of misinterpretation or his state of confusion in pondering irrelevant alternatives? What about other misinterpretations or other irrelevant considerations in the listener's mind. 
::The difference here is that the statement is DESIGNED to mislead the listener, it's not an accident.  How to categorize such "deceptive speech" is problematic, however, do we call this a logical fallacy (in the listener's mind) or rhetorical device or what ?  Another example of a similar argument designed to confuse is the famous "...his sister is a thespian...", designed to make the audience think she is a lesbian. StuRat 14:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  I have nothign against StuRat and nothing against its inclusion if it is a documented fallacy, but I have not come across it before (as I said) and to be blunt the article is quite long enough already, with several instances being nuances of others (and I acknowledge my own complicity in this). -Just zis Guy, you know? 08:50, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The asking the question fallacy has been rolled into fallacy of many questions, which I oppose, but won't fight.  IMO it's sufficiently different to merit it's own article. StuRat 14:43, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purported fallacy ''Asking the question'' 

message: Maybe someone can point out fallacies which better phrase, or include the following: what could be called "premature set completion". An example would be fallacies of causality (Rigorously these examples have some rough edges):
:say all members of set A imply predicate b.
:b states "my car ceases to function"
:a1 = running out of gas
:suppose we know a1 implies b is indeed true.
:FALSE: "if my car ceases to function it must have run out of gas" (even if gas gauge read near empty)
The fallacy is prematurely regarding the set A to consist entirely of a1, whereas many things could cause a car not to function. This could be extended to another form of causal fallacy by considering
:say all members of A imply predicate c, c="my rpm gauge goes to 0"
Then an unknown element of A can simultaneously imply b and c, so it could be reasoned
:FALSE: "if my rpm gauge breaks it will cause my car to cease functioning"
It seems that causality requires proof of converses, forming an equivalence of logic in an asymetry in time, but suppose we had a mechanically perfect car, and the only way it could stop would be to run out of gas. Then could we say that the car stopping causes the car to run out of gas, as well?
OK, I just skimmed causality, and needless to say one can quickly be in quite deep when casually reflecting on such philosophical issues. At any rate, perhaps these fallacies should be mentioned in the article.--RichG 08:23, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like a simple affirming the consequent: If A1 then B.  B, therefore A1.   64.216.205.121 03:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Causality??

message: There is a proposal to rename the Bandwagon fallacy article, please visit its talk page for discussion. Shawnc 17:09, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for discussion 

message: Is FUTON bias a logical fallacy? --136.142.46.175 20:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  FUTON bias

message: One way to promote WP:NPOV and improve the quality of articles about logical fallacies (:Category:Logical fallacies) is to use only cited examples in the articles, replacing randomly made up examples by actual quotes, or at least actual beliefs by the population at large. Consider WP:NOR. Shawnc 17:32, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using cited examples only 

message: It seems that there is a nice list of logical fallacies on the fallacies page, but this page has only a small italicies note about it. I was looking up logical fallacies to get the name of one of the types of ad hominem, and I typed in logical fallacies because I thought that would be where I would find a list. I would recommend making the link to the list on the fallacies page a little more obvious.
Also, why does list of logical fallacies redirect to this page, when the list is on the fallacies page?
*Update: I realized why it redirects to this page, it is because it was made to redirect to it before the list was moved to fallacies. Therefore I updated the redirect to go to fallacies instead of here.
Who is the idiot who removed the List of Logical Fallacies page and made it redirect to the Fallacy page?  Do you not understand the usefulness of a list without an accompanying article?  Why have you idiots suddenly decided to destroy the logical fallacies pages?  PLEASE bring back the List of Logical Fallacies page.  I used to direct people to that page in conversations.  I'm not going to direct them to 'Fallacy' when what the need access to is the list that USED to exist.
As far as I know this is a non-issue.  There is now no merge.  Also, more civility would be nice. Rtrev 06:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link to list of logical fallacies 

message: FUD certainly is a rhetorical strategy, but could we also count it as a logical fallacy? Peter S. 19:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  FUD? 

message: We seem to have passed the Spam Event Horizon with the external links here.  
* The Fallacy Files by Gary N. Curtis
* Logical Fallacies from Philosophical Society.com
* Logical Fallacies Online edition of Madsen Pirie's Book of the Fallacy
*Logic & Fallacies, from Atheism Web (no strict relation to Atheism)
*Logic and fallacies: How to spot a problem argument
* Stephen Downes's Guide to the Logical Fallacies  *(Mirror)
*Humbug! Online by Clark & Clark - Fallacies and Humour
*Bruce Thompson's table of fallacies
*Logical fallacies on WikiWikiWeb
*The Woolly-Thinker's Guide to Rhetoric
*The Autonomist's Logical Fallacies
*A list of Fallacious Arguments
*Propaganda techniques at Disinfopedia
*Logical fallacies > Bad logic or propaganda? connection between logical fallacy and propaganda
*Informal Fallacies by Michael Connelly, contributed to the Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum Project.
*Papers on fallacies and argumentation by Douglas N. Walton.
*Dr. Michael C. Labossiere's list of fallacies at the Nizkor Project site
*A Guide to Logical Fallacies by Paul Newall, aimed at beginners.
*Geometric Fallacies
I pruned most of them per my reading of WP:EL.  I left Stephen Downes in there because it's the one I've most often seen cited, but arguably that is alos redundant per the internal list which is already linked - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C]  21:47, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links 

message: Critical thinking is a logical fallacy? LOL. I'm removing that.... Kuroune 02:14, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: the heck?

message: I've read that Aristotel (I think) sugessted a categorisation of logical fallacies according to the intention of the person that commited them, on intentional and unintentional fallacies. This categorisation is not used today, but it might be mentioned as a historical wiev. -- Obradović Goran  (talk 16:23, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This could apply to just about any logical fallacy.  Surely for every faulty logic type, someone has realized the fault in their logic, yet still used it, figuring their audience was not smart enough to see the flaw. StuRat 19:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fallacies by intention 

message: Lately I've encountered several arguments that hinged on "how can you oppose A when B is so much worse", where A and B are related but independent.  For example:
* How can you be against gun control when cars kill more people than guns?
* How can you be against what our troops did in Abu Ghraib when Saddam Hussein was so much worse?
* How can you be against Saddam Hussein when the LRA and Janjaweed in Africa are so much more barbaric?
"Relativist fallacy" is a bad name for it since that could be confused with moral relativism which is not a related topic.  Is this a type of red herring?  Sorenr 01:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well there is also no real logic statement in those kinds of positions.  They are questions and don't propose anything based on facts.  Those kind of statements are kind of like non sequiturs more than anything else.  Rtrev 03:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relativist Fallacy 

message: It would be a good idea to have an example of each fallacy on the page. Perhaps it could be done as a table.
At the moment it is just a list and the reader does not know what all these terms mean, and there are too many to jump to. Most fallacies I think can be summarised by a short example. m.e. 03:48, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restructure with examples? 

message: I have created some navigational templates for the fallacy articles. Please view and comment on them at the WikiProject Philosophy talk page. Thanks Andeggs 16:16, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fallacy navigational templates 

message: The "tu quo que" argument is missing from the list of logical fallacies.  Can we get some discussion going on exactly how to define it here and what an article on it should contain?  Frotz661 20:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's usually regarded as a subtype of Ad hominem, and is covered in that article. It has its own article as well. If you're having trouble finding it, try spelling it correctly; it's two words, not three. PurplePlatypus 19:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "tu quo que"  missing 

message: I'm having trouble classifying the following fallacy.  Often one will challenge another to falsify an inadequately defined claim.  There is deception however, in that the claim is not well defined, and this fact is intentionally is obscured.
As an example:  It could be claimed that it cannot be proved that leprechauns do not exist.  But this is only true to the extent that what is meant by the word leprechaun remains undefined.  Once specific claims are made, such as "leprechauns are evidenced by pots of gold at the end of a rainbow," these claims can be shown to be true or false (false in this case).  The supporter could attempt to argue that the pots of gold are 'invisible' or 'in-another-dimension' but this merely repeats the same fallacy by again invoking undefined terms, i.e. 'invisible' and 'in-another-dimension'.  
This appears to me to be close to Ad hoc, but I believe in the case of Ad hoc, the claim is well defined, it is just modified in light of new evidence.  Here the one making the claim is relying on the listener to mistakenly think that the claim is well defined, perhaps because the terms or concepts are commonly used.
RDU 03:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unable to classify this fallacy 

message: Just a quick thought here: the article  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undue_weight redirects to this page but there seems to be no info on it here.  it seems to me an important term/logical fallacy in journalism and politics.  hoping to get more info on it.  do people agree this would be a good term to add under logical fallacies?.  Beakermeep 11:15, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undue weight redirect? 

message: In internet forums arguments, I often see the following occur:
Two people are arguing over something they have opposing views over. One of the people states "I feel so and so. You'll say that this is wrong because X. That's nonsense, because X is not true for the following reasons. Therefore, you're a moron."
The point being that that person dictates what the other person is saying (making an assumption), and then immediately proceeds to debunk that statement. The debunking would prove that the other person is wrong, were it not that he/she may never have even said that. In the discussion, this immediately makes the first person 'lose a point' while he/she has not even had a chance to defend him/herself and may never have actually made that claim to begin with.
Say for instance that person A is a proponent of Windows, while person B is a proponent of MacOS. Person B may say "MacOS is a great operating system. You'll say that it sucks because 'there are no games' for Macs, but this isn't the case. Here is a list of mainstream games that run on MacOS: you obviously don't know what you're talking about."
Now, person B has branded person A an ignorant, but it might have been that person A wasn't even going to bring up the 'no games for macs' argument. However, since the debunking of A's fictional claim occured immediately, before A even had a chance to say that he wasn't going to mention games at all, B has 'scored a point' by false means.
Is this a logical fallacy, and if so, what is it called. If not, why not, and what is it? 82.95.254.30 12:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Putting words into someone's mouth: a logical fallacy? 

message: Is it a logical fallacy?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  02:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Pathetic fallacy]]

message: I have to say I find it a bit sad that this article was renamed.  I feel that the title "Logical Fallacy" is more accurate as to exactly what types of errors in logic and arguments these fallacies are.  "Formal" almost implies that because an argument doesn’t take a proper form it is incorrect.
Also, I believe that the term logical fallacy is more common than formal fallacy. admittedly this is a terrible citation but searching for "logical fallacy" produces 371,000 hits in google while "formal fallacy" produces a mere 956 hits.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22formal+fallacy%22&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22logical+fallacy%22&btnG=Search
I propose that this page be renamed to its previous name and have formal fallacy redirect here.
Beakermeep 06:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you may be a lone voice, but to gain maximum possible support I think you would be best off posting here. Grumpyyoungman01 13:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I disagree with renaming this article to "Formal Fallacy"