"Enter the Wonderful World of Geometry" Author: (UK) Gerry Bailey / (UK) Felicia Law / (UK) Mike Phillips Publisher: Zhejiang Education Publishing House

21 Thinking Fallacies

Correlation Fallacy

1. Ad hominem fallacy – attempting to refute an argument by discussing the source of a position rather than addressing the position.
2. Straw Man Fallacy - refutation of an opponent's point of view by distorting his or her point of view.
3. False dilemmas - attempts to present options that are unacceptable, unattainable, or unbelievable, from which the conclusion must be chosen.
4. Shifting the burden of proof - supporting or proving one's position by putting the burden of proof on the other party.
5. Begging the question - repackaging the controversial argument as "evidence" for presentation.
6. Appeals to emotion – “supporting” an argument by appealing to our emotions rather than giving a real argument.
7. Irrelevant conclusions – fallacies of relevance that are difficult to classify into the above categories.

Nondeductive fallacy

8. Fallacy of generalization – making hasty generalizations, generalizing from exceptions.
9. Weak analogies – providing arguments based on controversial or unimportant similarities between things.
10. False appeal to authority – attempting to support a claim by citing non-authoritative sources.

11. Wrong appeal to the public - citing public opinion to deal with issues that cannot be resolved by public opinion.

12. The fallacy of causation - assuming that there is a cause-effect relationship between successive events or between two variables occurring simultaneously.
13. Slippery slope - warnings that something will develop gradually towards an undesirable outcome without supporting evidence.
14. Untestable Interpretations – Expressing opinions based on untestable interpretations.

Formal and linguistic fallacies

15. Three formal fallacies: affirmation of the consequent, negation of the antecedent, and incomplete middle term.
16. The fallacy of equivocation and ambiguity - a word or phrase that appears multiple times in the same argument can be interpreted in different ways.
17. Composition and decomposition fallacy - misattributing characteristics of something's parts to the whole, or vice versa.
18. Confusing explanation with justification – attempting to provide a rationale or defense for an event by assuming an explanation for how or why an event occurred.
19. Confusing opposing relationships with contradictory relationships - failing to note that contradictory propositions cannot both be true and false, while propositions in opposing relationships cannot both be true but can both be false.
20. Consistency and Inconsistency – Inconsistent beliefs are inconsistent, but this does not constitute a refutation of any belief held.
21. Miscalculation of probability - incorrectly combining the probability of independent events, gambler's fallacy, ignoring prior probabilities and erroneous inductive transposition.