If you've ever stopped to think about philosophy and psychology, they are different from each other but they are also related in many ways. One way of relating is that they address topics of ideas and thoughts. The types of fallacies also unite them.
We find the logical and argumentative fallacies, concepts that are used to give validity or take it away from conclusions that are reached in a conversation or debate. Next we are going to talk more about this type of concept.
What are fallacies?
A fallacy is a reasoning that although it sounds like a valid argument, it is not. It is a faulty reasoning and the inferences that are presented cannot be accepted because they are not valid.
Regardless of whether the conclusion of the fallacy is true or not (it may be true by chance), the process by which you have arrived at that reasoning is not correct because it does not follow logical rules. It is important recognize such invalid arguments in everyday relationships to find out what are not absolute truths.
Fallacies and psychology
People have always had a certain tendency throughout history to overestimate their own capacity for rational thought, being subject to logical rules to act and argue coherently.
It is understood that a mentally healthy adult acts according to motives and reasoning that can be expressed easily and that usually fall within the framework of rationality. When a being behaved irrationally, it was thought that it was due to weakness or because the person does not know how to value the coherence of their actions.
It has been in recent years when it has begun to accept that irrational behavior is within our lives as something habitual, that rationality is the exception and not the other way around. People move by impulses and emotions that are not always rational.
Because of this, fallacies have begun to be known that are in our day to day but that must be known so that they have little weight. Philosophy studies the fallacies themselves and psychology investigates how they are used. They are false arguments present in society.
The main types of fallacies
There are an infinity of types of fallacies so we are going to focus on the most common ones. Anyway, knowing the ones that we are going to detail, they will serve as a reference to be able to detect them in the reasoning. To organize them so that you can understand them well, we are going to put them into two categories: the formal and non-formal fallacies.
Non-formal fallacies
These types of fallacies are those that the reasoning error has to do with the content of the argument. They are arguments that do not allow to reach conclusions, whether the premises are true or if they are not. This means that irrational ideas are used are the operation of things to give the feeling of what is said is true, but it is not.
- Fallacy ad ignorantiam. An idea is taken for granted just because it cannot be shown to be false.
- Fallacy ad verecundiam or fallacy of authority. If someone in authority says a premise it has to be true.
- Argument ad consequentiam. The veracity of a premise depends on whether it is desirable or not.
- Hasty generalization. Unsubstantiated generalization.
- Straw man fallacy. The opponent's ideas are not criticized but rather manipulated.
- Post hoc ergopropter hoc. If something happens after something else, it is because it is caused by the first thing that happened, with no other evidence to indicate otherwise.
- Ad hominem fallacy. The veracity of ideas is denied just because the negative parts of the ideas are highlighted. They can also be distorted.
Formal fallacies
In this type of fallacy they are because the content of the ideas does not allow to reach the conclusion that has been reached, if not that the relationship between arguments makes the inference invalid. The failures do not depend on the content but on the linking of the ideas. They are not false by reasoning of irrelevant ideas, if not because there is no coherence in the argument used.
When this type of fallacy occurs, it is detected by seeing if the argument conforms to the logical rules or not. Next we are going to see some types:
- Denial of antecedent. It is a fallacy that starts from a conditional. For example: "If I give him a rose, he will fall in love with me." When the first element is denied, it is incorrectly inferred in the second that it is denied: "If I don't give him a rose he will never fall in love with me."
- Affirmation of the consequent. It is also part of a conditional with the previous example, but the second element incorrectly infers although the first is true. For example: "If I approve, we have a beer" / "We have a beer, so I approve."
- Undistributed middle term. It is a syllogism that connects two proportions but has no conclusion so it does not have coherence as a whole. For example: “Every Greek is European”, “Some German is European”, “Therefore some German is Greek”.
Conclusion
As you have seen, especially if you did not know what the fallacies were before reading this article, they are phrases and arguments that are used daily in people's lives. In any social sphere, even in politics.a you can find yourself with fallacies constantly.
It is important to know how to recognize and analyze them so that in this way, even if you detect them, they do not cloud your criteria or your critical thinking. In the same way, once you know them you will not fall into them And if you have to argue something, you will always do it looking for absolute truthfulness and not just partial.
From now on, you can be more insightful and find those fallacies that might previously go unnoticed but now, you know what they are, what they mean and why exactly they occur. Even if the person who is saying them is not even aware what he is saying is a fallacy.