There is no spiritual gift called "the gift of tongues".

[The Learner]

• Bribery (also, Material Persuasion, Material Incentive, Financial Incentive). The fallacy of "persuasion" by bribery, gifts or favors is the reverse of the Argumentum ad Baculum. As is well known, someone who is persuaded by bribery rarely "stays persuaded" in the long term unless the bribes keep on coming in and increasing with time. See also Appeasement.
• Calling "Cards": A contemporary fallacy of logos, arbitrarily and falsely dismissing familiar or easily-anticipated but valid, reasoned objections to one's standpoint with a wave of the hand, as mere "cards" in some sort of "game" of rhetoric, e.g. "Don't try to play the 'Race Card' against me," or "She's playing the 'Woman Card' again," or "That 'Hitler Card' won't score with me in this argument." See also, The Taboo, and Political Correctness.
• Circular Reasoning (also, The Vicious Circle; Catch 22, Begging the Question, Circulus in Probando): A fallacy of logos where A is because of B, and B is because of A, e.g., "You can't get a job without experience, and you can't get experience without a job." Also refers to falsely arguing that something is true by repeating the same statement in different words. E.g., “The witchcraft problem is the most urgent spiritual crisis in the world today. Why? Because witches threaten our very eternal salvation.” A corrupt argument from logos. See also the "Big Lie technique."
• The Complex Question: The contemporary fallacy of demanding a direct answer to a question that cannot be answered without first analyzing or challenging the basis of the question itself. E.g., "Just answer me 'yes' or 'no': Did you think you could get away with plagiarism and not suffer the consequences?" Or, "Why did you rob that bank?" Also applies to situations where one is forced to either accept or reject complex standpoints or propositions containing both acceptable and unacceptable parts. A corruption of the argument from logos. A counterpart of Either/Or Reasoning.

 

[The Learner]

• Confirmation Bias: A fallacy of logos, the common tendency to notice, search out, select and share evidence that confirms one's own standpoint and beliefs, as opposed to contrary evidence. This fallacy is how "fortune tellers" work--If I am told I will meet a "tall, dark stranger" I will be on the lookout for a tall, dark stranger, and when I meet someone even marginally meeting that description I will marvel at the correctness of the "psychic's" prediction. In contemporary times Confirmation Bias is most often seen in the tendency of various audiences to "curate their political environments, subsisting on one-sided information diets and [even] selecting into politically homogeneous neighborhoods" (Michael A. Neblo et al., 2017, Science magazine). Confirmation Bias (also, Homophily) means that people tend to seek out and follow solely those media outlets that confirm their common ideological and cultural biases, sometimes to an degree that leads a the false (implicit or even explicit) conclusion that "everyone" agrees with that bias and that anyone who doesn't is "crazy," "looney," evil or even "radicalized." See also, "Half Truth," and "Defensiveness."
• Cost Bias: A fallacy of ethos (that of a product), the fact that something expensive (either in terms of money, or something that is "hard fought" or "hard won" or for which one "paid dearly") is generally valued more highly than something obtained free or cheaply, regardless of the item's real quality, utility or true value to the purchaser. E. g., "Hey, I worked hard to get this car! It may be nothing but a clunker that can't make it up a steep hill, but it's mine, and to me it's better than some millionaire's limo." Also applies to judging the quality of a consumer item (or even of its owner!) primarily by the item's brand, price, label or source, e.g., "Hey, you there in the Jay-Mart suit! Har-har!" or, "Ooh, she's driving a Mercedes!"
• Default Bias: (also, Normalization of Evil, "Deal with it;" "If it ain't broke, don't fix it;" Acquiescence; "Making one's peace with the situation;" "Get used to it;" "Whatever is, is right;" "It is what it is;" "Let it be, let it be;" "This is the best of all possible worlds [or, the only possible world];" "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't."): The logical fallacy of automatically favoring or accepting a situation simply because it exists right now, and arguing that any other alternative is mad, unthinkable, impossible, or at least would take too much effort, expense, stress or risk to change. The opposite of this fallacy is that of Nihilism ("Tear it all down!"), blindly rejecting what exists in favor of what could be, the adolescent fantasy of romanticizing anarchy, chaos (an ideology sometimes called political "Chaos Theory"), disorder, "permanent revolution," or change for change's sake.

 

[The Learner]

• Defensiveness (also, Choice-support Bias: Myside Bias): A fallacy of ethos (one's own), in which after one has taken a given decision, commitment or course of action, one automatically tends to defend that decision and to irrationally dismiss opposing options even when one's decision later on proves to be shaky or wrong. E.g., "Yeah, I voted for Snith. Sure, he turned out to be a crook and a liar and he got us into war, but I still say that at that time he was better than the available alternatives!" See also "Argument from Inertia" and "Confirmation Bias."
• Deliberate Ignorance: (also, Closed-mindedness; "I don't want to hear it!"; Motivated Ignorance; Tuning Out; Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil [The Three Monkeys' Fallacy]): As described by author and commentator Brian Resnik on Vox.com (2017), this is the fallacy of simply choosing not to listen, "tuning out" or turning off any information, evidence or arguments that challenge one's beliefs, ideology, standpoint, or peace of mind, following the popular humorous dictum: "Don't try to confuse me with the facts; my mind is made up!" This seemingly innocuous fallacy has enabled the most vicious tyrannies and abuses over history, and continues to do so today. See also Trust your Gut, Confirmation Bias, The Third Person Effect, "They're All Crooks," the Simpleton's Fallacy, and The Positive Thinking Fallacy.
• Diminished Responsibility: The common contemporary fallacy of applying a specialized judicial concept (that criminal punishment should be less if one's judgment was impaired) to reality in general. E.g., "You can't count me absent on Monday--I was hung over and couldn't come to class so it's not my fault." Or, "Yeah, I was speeding on the freeway and killed a guy, but I was buzzed out of my mind and didn't know what I was doing so it didn't matter that much." In reality the death does matter very much to the victim, to his family and friends and to society in general. Whether the perpetrator was high or not does not matter at all since the material results are the same. This also includes the fallacy of Panic, a very common contemporary fallacy that one's words or actions, no matter how damaging or evil, somehow don't "count" because "I panicked!" This fallacy is rooted in the confusion of "consequences" with "punishment." See also "Venting."

 

[The Learner]

• Disciplinary Blinders: A very common contemporary scholarly or professional fallacy of ethos (that of one's discipline, profession or academic field), automatically disregarding, discounting or ignoring a priori otherwise-relevant research, arguments and evidence that come from outside one's own professional discipline, discourse community or academic area of study. E.g., "That might be relevant or not, but it's so not what we're doing in our field right now." See also, "Star Power" and "Two Truths." An analogous fallacy is that of Denominational Blinders, arbitrarily ignoring or waving aside without serious consideration any arguments or discussion about faith, morality, ethics, spirituality, the Divine or the afterlife that come from outside one's own specific religious denomination or faith tradition.
• Dog-Whistle Politics: An extreme version of reductionism and sloganeering in the public sphere, a contemporary fallacy of logos and pathos in which a brief phrase or slogan of the hour, e.g., "Abortion," "The 1%," "9/11," "Zionism,""Chain Migration," "Islamic Terrorism," "Fascism," "Communism," "Big government," "Taco trucks!", "Tax and tax and spend and spend," "Gun violence," "Gun control," "Freedom of choice," "Lock 'em up,", "Amnesty," etc. is flung out as "red meat" or "chum in the water" that reflexively sends one's audience into a snapping, foaming-at-the-mouth feeding-frenzy. Any reasoned attempt to more clearly identify, deconstruct or challenge an opponent's "dog whistle" appeal results in puzzled confusion at best and wild, irrational fury at worst. "Dog whistles" differ widely in different places, moments and cultural milieux, and they change and lose or gain power so quickly that even recent historic texts sometimes become extraordinarily difficult to interpret. A common but sad instance of the fallacy of Dog Whistle Politics is that of candidate "debaters" of differing political shades simply blowing a succession of discursive "dog whistles" at their audience instead of addressing, refuting or even bothering to listen to each other's arguments, a situation resulting in contemporary (2017) allegations that the political Right and Left in America are speaking "different languages" when they are simply blowing different "dog whistles." See also, Reductionism..
• The "Draw Your Own Conclusion" Fallacy (also the Non-argument Argument; Let the Facts Speak for Themselves). In this fallacy of logos an otherwise uninformed audience is presented with carefully selected and groomed, "shocking facts" and then prompted to immediately "draw their own conclusions." E.g., "Crime rates are more than twice as high among middle-class Patzinaks than among any other similar population group--draw your own conclusions." It is well known that those who are allowed to "come to their own conclusions" are generally much more strongly convinced than those who are given both evidence and conclusion up front. However, Dr. William Lorimer points out that "The only rational response to the non-argument is 'So what?' i.e. 'What do you think you've proved, and why/how do you think you've proved it?'" Closely related (if not identical) to this is the well-known "Leading the Witness" Fallacy, where a sham, sarcastic or biased question is asked solely in order to evoke a desired answer.

 

[The Learner]

• The Dunning-Kruger Effect: A cognitive bias that leads people of limited skills or knowledge to mistakenly believe their abilities are greater than they actually are. (Thanks to Teaching Tolerance for this definition!) E.g., "I know Washington was the Father of His Country and never told a lie, Pocahontas was the first Native American, Lincoln freed the slaves, Hitler murdered six million Jews, Susan B. Anthony won equal rights for women, and Martin Luther King said "I have a dream!" Moses parted the Red Sea, Caesar said "Et tu, Brute?" and the only reason America didn't win the Vietnam War hands-down like we always do was because they tied our generals' hands and the politicians cut and run. See? Why do I need to take a history course? I know everything about history!"
• E" for Effort. (also Noble Effort; I'm Trying My Best; The Lost Cause): The common contemporary fallacy of ethos that something must be right, true, valuable, or worthy of respect and honor solely because one (or someone else) has put so much sincere good-faith effort or even sacrifice and bloodshed into it. (See also Appeal to Pity; Argument from Inertia; Heroes All; or Sob Story). An extreme example of this fallacy is Waving the Bloody Shirt (also, the "Blood of the Martyrs" Fallacy), the fallacy that a cause or argument, no matter how questionable or reprehensible, cannot be questioned without dishonoring the blood and sacrifice of those who died so nobly for that cause. E.g., "Defend the patriotic gore / That flecked the streets of Baltimore..." (from the official Maryland State Song). See also Cost Bias, The Soldier's Honor Fallacy, and the Argument from Inertia.
• Either/Or Reasoning: (also False Dilemma, All or Nothing Thinking; False Dichotomy, Black/White Fallacy, False Binary): A fallacy of logos that falsely offers only two possible options even though a broad range of possible alternatives, variations and combinations are always readily available. E.g., "Either you are 100% Simon Straightarrow or you are as queer as a three dollar bill--it's as simple as that and there's no middle ground!" Or, “Either you’re in with us all the way or you’re a hostile and must be destroyed! What's it gonna be?" Or, if your performance is anything short of perfect, you consider yourself an abject failure. Also applies to falsely contrasting one option or case to another that is not really opposed, e.g., falsely opposing "Black Lives Matter" to "Blue Lives Matter" when in fact not a few police officers are themselves African American, and African Americans and police are not (or ought not to be!) natural enemies. Or, falsely posing a choice of either helping needy American veterans or helping needy foreign refugees, when in fact in today's United States there are ample resources available to easily do both should we care to do so. See also, Overgeneralization.

 

[The Learner]

• Equivocation: The fallacy of deliberately failing to define one's terms, or knowingly and deliberately using words in a different sense than the one the audience will understand. (E.g., President Bill Clinton stating that he did not have sexual relations with "that woman," meaning no sexual penetration, knowing full well that the audience will understand his statement as "I had no sexual contact of any kind with that woman.") This is a corruption of the argument from logos, and a tactic often used in American jurisprudence. Historically, this referred to a tactic used during the Reformation-era religious wars in Europe, when people were forced to swear loyalty to one or another side and did as demanded via "equivocation," i.e., "When I solemnly swore true faith and allegiance to the King I really meant to King Jesus, King of Kings, and not to the evil usurper squatting on the throne today." This latter form of fallacy is excessively rare today when the swearing of oaths has become effectively meaningless except as obscenity or as speech formally subject to perjury penalties in legal or judicial settings.
• The Eschatological Fallacy: The ancient fallacy of arguing, "This world is coming to an end, so..." Popularly refuted by the observation that "Since the world is coming to an end you won't need your life savings anyhow, so why not give it all to me?"
• Esoteric Knowledge (also Esoteric Wisdom; Gnosticism; Inner Truth; the Inner Sanctum; Need to Know): A fallacy from logos and ethos, that there is some knowledge reserved only for the Wise, the Holy or the Enlightened, (or those with proper Security Clearance), things that the masses cannot understand and do not deserve to know, at least not until they become wiser, more trusted or more "spiritually advanced." The counterpart of this fallacy is that of Obscurantism (also Obscurationism, or Willful Ignorance), that (almost always said in a basso profundo voice) "There are some things that we mere mortals must never seek to know!" E.g., "Scientific experiments that violate the privacy of the marital bed and expose the deep and private mysteries of human sexual behavior to the harsh light of science are obscene, sinful and morally evil. There are some things that we as humans are simply not meant to know!" For the opposite of this latter, see the "Plain Truth Fallacy." See also, Argumentum ad Mysteriam.

 

[The Learner]

• Essentializing: A fallacy of logos that proposes a person or thing “is what it is and that’s all that it is,” and at its core will always be the way it is right now (E.g., "All terrorists are monsters, and will still be terrorist monsters even if they live to be 100," or "'The poor you will always have with you,' so any effort to eliminate poverty is pointless."). Also refers to the fallacy of arguing that something is a certain way "by nature," an empty claim that no amount of proof can refute. (E.g., "Americans are cold and greedy by nature," or "Women are naturally better cooks than men.") See also "Default Bias." The opposite of this is Relativizing, the typically postmodern fallacy of blithely dismissing any and all arguments against one's standpoint by shrugging one's shoulders and responding " Whatever..., I don't feel like arguing about it;" "It all depends...;" "That's your opinion; everything's relative;" or falsely invoking Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Quantum Weirdness or the Theory of Multiple Universes in order to confuse, mystify or "refute" an opponent. See also, "Red Herring" and "Appeal to Nature."
• The Etymological Fallacy: (also, "The Underlying Meaning"): A fallacy of logos, drawing false conclusions from the (most often long-forgotten) linguistic origins of a current word, or the alleged meanings or associations of that word in another language. E.g., "As used in physics, electronics and electrical engineering the term 'hysteresis' is grossly sexist since it originally came from the Greek word for 'uterus' or 'womb.'" Or, "I refuse to eat fish! Don't you know that the French word for "fish" is 'poisson,' which looks just like the English word 'poison'? And doesn't that suggest something to you?" Famously, postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida played on this fallacy at great length in his (1968) "Plato's Pharmacy."
• The Excluded Middle: A corrupted argument from logos that proposes that since a little of something is good, more must be better (or that if less of something is good, none at all is even better). E.g., "If eating an apple a day is good for you, eating an all-apple diet is even better!" or "If a low fat diet prolongs your life, a no-fat diet should make you live forever!" An opposite of this fallacy is that of Excluded Outliers, where one arbitrarily discards evidence, examples or results that disprove one's standpoint by simply describing them as "Weird," "Outliers," or "Atypical." See also, "The Big 'But' Fallacy." Also opposite is the Middle of the Road Fallacy (also, Falacia ad Temperantiam; "The Politics of the Center;" Marginalization of the Adversary), where one demonstrates the "reasonableness" of one's own standpoint (no matter how extreme) not on its own merits, but solely or mainly by presenting it as the only "moderate" path among two or more obviously unacceptable extreme alternatives. E.g., anti-Communist scholar Charles Roig (1979) notes that Vladimir Lenin successfully argued for Bolshevism in Russia as the only available "moderate" middle path between bomb-throwing Nihilist terrorists on the ultra-left and a corrupt and hated Czarist autocracy on the right. As Texas politician and humorist Jim Hightower famously declares in an undated quote, "The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos."

 

[The Learner]

• Salacious Fallacy, falsely attracting attention to and thus potential agreement with one's argument by inappropriately sexualizing it, particularly connecting it to some form of sex that is perceived as deviant, perverted or prohibited (E.g., Arguing against Bill Clinton's presidential legacy by continuing to wave Monica's Blue Dress, or against Donald Trump's presidency by obsessively highlighting his past boasting about genital groping). Historically, this dangerous fallacy was deeply implicated with the crime of lynching, in which false, racist accusations against a Black or minority victim were almost always salacious in nature and the sensation involved was successfully used to whip up public emotion to a murderous pitch. See also, Red Herring.
• The False Analogy: The fallacy of incorrectly comparing one thing to another in order to draw a false conclusion. E.g., "Just like an alley cat needs to prowl, a normal adult can’t be tied down to one single lover." The opposite of this fallacy is the Sui Generis Fallacy (also, Differance), a postmodern stance that rejects the validity of analogy and of inductive reasoning altogether because any given person, place, thing or idea under consideration is "sui generis" i.e., different and unique, in a class unto itself.
• Finish the Job: The dangerous contemporary fallacy, often aimed at a lesser-educated or working class audience, that an action or standpoint (or the continuation of that action or standpoint) may not be questioned or discussed because there is "a job to be done" or finished, falsely assuming "jobs" are meaningless but never to be questioned. Sometimes those involved internalize ("buy into") the "job" and make the task a part of their own ethos. (E.g., "Ours is not to reason why / Ours is but to do or die.") Related to this is the "Just a Job" fallacy. (E.g., "How can torturers stand to look at themselves in the mirror? But I guess it's OK because for them it's just a job like any other, the job that they get paid to do.") See also "Blind Loyalty," "The Soldiers' Honor Fallacy" and the "Argument from Inertia."
• The Fundamental Attribution Error (also, Self Justification): A corrupt argument from ethos, this fallacy occurs as a result of observing and comparing behavior. "You assume that the bad behavior of others is caused by character flaws and foul dispositions while your behavior is explained by the environment. So, for example, I get up in the morning at 10 a.m. I say it is because my neighbors party until 2 in the morning (situation) but I say that the reason why you do it is that you are lazy. Interestingly, it is more common in individualistic societies where we value self volition. Collectivist societies tend to look at the environment more. (It happens there, too, but it is much less common.)" [Thanks to scholar Joel Sax for this!] The obverse of this fallacy is Self Deprecation (also Self Debasement), where, out of either a false humility or a genuine lack of self-esteem, one deliberately puts oneself down, most often in hopes of attracting denials, gratifying compliments and praise.

 

[The Learner]

• Gaslighting: A recently-prominent, vicious fallacy of logic, denying or invalidating a person's own knowledge and experiences by deliberately twisting or distorting known facts, memories, scenes, events and evidence in order to disorient a vulnerable opponent and to make him or her doubt his/her sanity. E.g., "Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?" Or, "You claim you found me in bed with her? Think again! You're crazy! You seriously need to see a shrink." A very common, though cruel instance of Gaslighting that seems to have been particularly familiar among mid-20th century generations is the fallacy of Emotional Invalidation, questioning, after the fact, the reality or "validity" of affective states, either another's or one's own. E.g., "Sure, I made it happen from beginning to end, but but it wasn't me doing it, it was just my stupid hormones betraying me." Or, "You didn't really mean it when you said you 'hate' Mommy. Now take a time-out and you'll feel better." Or, "No, you're not really in love; it's just infatuation or 'puppy love.'" The fallacy of "Gaslighting" is named after British playwright Patrick Hamilton's 1938 stage play "Gas Light," also known as "Angel Street." See also, Blind Loyalty, "The Big Brain/Little Brain Fallacy," The Affective Fallacy, and "Alternative Truth."
• Guilt by Association: The fallacy of trying to refute or condemn someone's standpoint, arguments or actions by evoking the negative ethos of those with whom the speaker is identified or of a group, party, religion or race to which he or she belongs or was once associated with. A form of Ad Hominem Argument, e.g., "Don't listen to her. She's a Republican so you can't trust anything she says," or "Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" An extreme instance of this is the Machiavellian "For my enemies, nothing" Fallacy, where real or perceived "enemies" are by definition always wrong and must be conceded nothing, not even the time of day, e.g., "He's a Republican, so even if he said the sky is blue I wouldn't believe him."
• The Half Truth (also Card Stacking, Stacking the Deck, Incomplete Information): A corrupt argument from logos, the fallacy of consciously selecting, collecting and sharing only that evidence that supports one's own standpoint, telling the strict truth but deliberately minimizing or omitting important key details in order to falsify the larger picture and support a false conclusion.(E.g. “The truth is that Bangladesh is one of the world's fastest-growing countries and can boast of a young, ambitious and hard-working population, a family-positive culture, a delightful, warm climate of tropical beaches and swaying palms where it never snows, low cost medical and dental care, a vibrant faith tradition and a multitude of places of worship, an exquisite, world-class spicy local curry cuisine and a swinging entertainment scene. Taken together, all these solid facts clearly prove that Bangladesh is one of the world’s most desirable places for young families to live, work and raise a family.”) See also, Confirmation Bias.
• Hero-Busting (also, "The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good"): A postmodern fallacy of ethos under which, since nothing and nobody in this world is perfect there are not and have never been any heroes: Washington and Jefferson held slaves, Lincoln was (by our contemporary standards) a racist, Karl Marx sexually exploited his family's own young live-in domestic worker and got her pregnant, Martin Luther King Jr. had an eye for women too, Lenin condemned feminism, the Mahatma drank his own urine (ugh!), Pope Francis is wrong on abortion, capitalism, same-sex marriage and women's ordination, Mother Teresa loved suffering and was wrong on just about everything else too, etc., etc Also applies to the now near-universal political tactic of ransacking everything an opponent has said, written or done since infancy in order to find something to misinterpret or condemn (and we all have something!). An early example of this latter tactic is deftly described in Robert Penn Warren's classic (1946) novel, All the King's Men. This is the opposite of the "Heroes All" fallacy, below. The "Hero Busting" fallacy has also been selectively employed at the service of the Identity Fallacy (see below) to falsely "prove" that "you cannot trust anyone" but a member of "our" identity-group since everyone else, even the so-called "heroes" or "allies" of other groups, are all racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or hate "us." E.g., In 1862 Abraham Lincoln said he was willing to settle the U.S. Civil War either with or without freeing the slaves if it would preserve the Union, thus "conclusively proving" that all whites are viciously racist at heart and that African Americans must do for self and never trust any of "them," not even those who claim to be allies.

 

[The Learner]

• Heroes All (also, "Everybody's a Winner"): The contemporary fallacy that everyone is above average or extraordinary. A corrupted argument from pathos (not wanting anyone to lose or to feel bad). Thus, every member of the Armed Services, past or present, who serves honorably is a national hero, every student who competes in the Science Fair wins a ribbon or trophy, and every racer is awarded a winner's yellow jersey. This corruption of the argument from pathos, much ridiculed by disgraced American humorist Garrison Keeler, ignores the fact that if everybody wins nobody wins, and if everyone's a hero no one's a hero. The logical result of this fallacy is that, as children's author Alice Childress writes (1973), "A hero ain't nothing but a sandwich." See also the "Soldiers' Honor Fallacy."
• Hoyle's Fallacy: A fallacy of logos, falsely assuming that a possible event of low (even vanishingly low) probability can never have happened and/or would never happen in real life. E.g., "The probability of something as complex as human DNA emerging by purely random evolution in the time the earth has existed is so negligible that it is for all practical purposes impossible and must have required divine intervention." Or, "The chance of a casual, Saturday-night poker player being dealt four aces off an honest, shuffled deck is so infinitesimal that it would never occur even once in a normal lifetime! That proves you cheated!" See also, Argument from Incredulity. An obverse of Hoyle's Fallacy is "You Can't Win if You Don't Play," (also, "Someone's gonna win and it might as well be YOU!") a common and cruel contemporary fallacy used to persuade vulnerable audiences, particularly the poor, the mathematically illiterate and gambling addicts to throw their money away on lotteries, horse races, casinos and other long-shot gambling schemes.
• I Wish I Had a Magic Wand: The fallacy of regretfully (and falsely) proclaiming oneself powerless to change a bad or objectionable situation over which one has power. E.g., "What can we do about gas prices? As Secretary of Energy I wish I had a magic wand, but I don't" [shrug] . Or, "No, you can't quit piano lessons. I wish I had a magic wand and could teach you piano overnight, but I don't, so like it or not, you have to keep on practicing." The parent, of course, ignores the possibility that the child may not want or need to learn piano. See also, TINA.
• The Identity Fallacy (also Identity Politics; "Die away, ye old forms and logic!"): A corrupt postmodern argument from ethos, a variant on the Argumentum ad Hominem in which the validity of one's logic, evidence, experience or arguments depends not on their own strength but rather on whether the one arguing is a member of a given social class, generation, nationality, religious or ethnic group, color, gender or sexual orientation, profession, occupation or subgroup. In this fallacy, valid opposing evidence and arguments are brushed aside or "othered" without comment or consideration, as simply not worth arguing about solely because of the lack of proper background or ethos of the person making the argument, or because the one arguing does not self-identify as a member of the "in-group." E.g., "You'd understand me right away if you were Burmese but since you're not there's no way I can explain it to you," or "Nobody but another nurse can know what a nurse has to go through." Identity fallacies are reinforced by common ritual, language, and discourse. However, these fallacies are occasionally self-interested, driven by the egotistical ambitions of academics, politicians and would-be group leaders anxious to build their own careers by carving out a special identity group constituency to the exclusion of existing broader-based identities and leadership. An Identity Fallacy may lead to scorn or rejection of potentially useful allies, real or prospective, because they are not of one's own identity. The Identity Fallacy promotes an exclusivist, sometimes cultish "do for self" philosophy which in today's world virtually guarantees self-marginalization and ultimate defeat. A recent application of the Identity Fallacy is the fallacious accusation of "Cultural Appropriation," in which those who are not of the right Identity are condemned for "appropriating" the cuisine, clothing, language or music of a marginalized group, forgetting the old axiom that "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." Accusations of Cultural Appropriation very often stem from competing selfish economic interests (E.g., "What right do those p*nche Gringos have to set up a taco place right here on Guadalupe Drive to take away business from Doña Teresa's Taquería? They even dare to play Mexican music in their dining room! That's cultural appropriation!"). See also, Othering.

 

[The Learner]

• Infotainment (also Infortainment; Fake News; InfoWars); A very corrupt and dangerous modern media-driven fallacy that deliberately and knowingly stirs in facts, news, falsities and outright lies with entertainment, a mixture usually concocted for specific, base ideological and profit-making motives. Origins of this fallacy predate the current era in the form of "Yellow" or "Tabloid" Journalism. This deadly fallacy has caused endless social unrest, discontent and even shooting wars (e.g., the Spanish American War) over the course of modern history. Practitioners of this fallacy sometimes hypocritically justify its use on the basis that their readers/listeners/viewers "know beforehand" (or should know) that the content offered is not intended as real news and is offered for entertainment purposes only, but in fact this caveat is rarely observed by uncritical audiences who eagerly swallow what the purveyors put forth. See also Dog-Whistle Politics.
• The Job's Comforter Fallacy (also, "Karma is a bi**h;" "What goes around comes around."): The fallacy that since there is no such thing as random chance and we (I, my group, or my country) are under special protection of heaven, any misfortune or natural disaster that we suffer must be a punishment for our own or someone else's secret sin or open wickedness. The opposite of the Appeal to Heaven, this is the fallacy employed by the Westboro Baptist Church members who protest fallen service members' funerals all around the United States. See also, Magical Thinking.
• Just Do it. (also, "Find a way;" "I don't care how you do it;" "Accomplish the mission;" "By Any Means Necessary." ): A pure, abusive Argumentum ad Baculum (argument from force), in which someone in power arbitrarily waves aside or overrules the moral objections of subordinates or followers and orders them to accomplish a goal by any means required, fair or foul The clear implication is that unethical or immoral methods should be used. E.g., "You say there's no way you can finish the dig on schedule because you found an old pioneer gravesite with a fancy tombstone on the excavation site? Well, find a way! Make it disappear! Just do it! I don't want to know how you do it, just do it! This is a million dollar contract and we need it done by Tuesday." See also, Plausible Deniability.
• Just Plain Folks (also, "Values"): This corrupt modern argument from ethos argues to a less-educated or rural audience that the one arguing is "just plain folks" who is a "plain talker," "says what s/he is thinking," "scorns political correctness," someone who "you don't need a dictionary to understand" and who thinks like the audience and is thus worthy of belief, unlike some member of the fancy-talking, latte-sipping Left Coast Political Elite, some "double-domed professor," "inside-the-beltway Washington bureaucrat," "tree-hugger" or other despised outsider who "doesn't think like we do" or "doesn't share our values." This is a counterpart to the Ad Hominem Fallacy and most often carries a distinct reek of xenophobia or racism as well. See also the Plain Truth Fallacy and the Simpleton's Fallacy.

 

[The Learner]

• The Law of Unintended Consequences (also, "Every Revolution Ends up Eating its own Young:" Grit; Resilience Doctrine): In this very dangerous, archly pessimistic postmodern fallacy the bogus "Law of Unintended Consequences," once a semi-humorous satirical corollary of "Murphy's Law," is elevated to to the status of an iron law of history. This fallacy arbitrarily proclaims a priori that since we can never know everything or securely foresee anything, sooner or later in today's "complex world" unforeseeable adverse consequences and negative side effects (so-called "unknown unknowns") will always end up blindsiding and overwhelming, defeating and vitiating any and all naive "do-gooder" efforts to improve our world. Instead, one must always expect defeat and be ready to roll with the punches by developing "grit" or "resilience" as a primary survival skill. This nihilist fallacy is a practical negation of the the possibility of any valid argument from logos. See also, TINA.
• Lying with Statistics: The contemporary fallacy of misusing true figures and numbers to “prove” unrelated claims. (e.g. "In real terms, attending college has never been cheaper than it is now. When expressed as a percentage of the national debt, the cost of getting a college education is actually far less today than it was back in 1965!"). A corrupted argument from logos, often preying on the public's perceived or actual mathematical ignorance. This includes the Tiny Percentage Fallacy, that an amount or action that is quite significant in and of itself somehow becomes insignificant simply because it's a tiny percentage of something much larger. E.g., the arbitrary arrest, detention or interception of "only" a few hundred legally-boarded international travelers as a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands who normally arrive. Under this same fallacy a consumer who would choke on spending an extra dollar for two cans of peas will typically ignore $50 extra on the price of a car or $1000 extra on the price of a house simply because these differences are "only" a tiny percentage of the much larger amount being spent. Historically, sales taxes or value-added taxes (VAT) have successfully gained public acceptance and remain "under the radar" because of this latter fallacy, even though amounting to hundreds or thousands of dollars a year in extra tax burden. See also Half-truth, the Snow Job, and the Red Herring.
• Magical Thinking (also, the Sin of Presumption; Expect a Miracle!): An ancient but deluded fallacy of logos, arguing that when it comes to "crunch time," provided one has enough faith, prays hard enough, says the right words, does the right rituals, "names it and claims it," or "claims the Promise," God will always suspend the laws of the universe and work a miracle at the request of or for the benefit of the True Believer. In practice this nihilist fallacy denies the existence of a rational or predictable universe and thus the possibility of any valid argument from logic. See also, Positive Thinking, the Appeal to Heaven, and the Job's Comforter fallacy.

 

[The Learner]

• Mala Fides (Arguing in Bad Faith; also Sophism): Using an argument that the arguer himself or herself knows is not valid. E.g., An unbeliever attacking believers by throwing verses from their own Holy Scriptures at them, or a lawyer arguing for the innocence of someone whom s/he knows full well to be guilty. This latter is a common practice in American jurisprudence, and is sometimes portrayed as the worst face of "Sophism." [Special thanks to Bradley Steffens for pointing out this fallacy!] Included under this fallacy is the fallacy of Motivational Truth (also, Demagogy, or Campaign Promises), deliberately lying to "the people" to gain their support or motivate them toward some action the rhetor perceives to be desirable (using evil discursive means toward a "good" material end). A particularly bizarre and corrupt form of this latter fallacy is Self Deception (also, Whistling by the Graveyard). in which one deliberately and knowingly deludes oneself in order to achieve a goal, or perhaps simply to suppress anxiety and maintain one's energy level, enthusiasm, morale, peace of mind or sanity in moments of adversity.
• Measurability: A corrupt argument from logos and ethos (that of science and mathematics), the modern Fallacy of Measurability proposes that if something cannot be measured, quantified and replicated it does not exist, or is "nothing but anecdotal, touchy-feely stuff" unworthy of serious consideration, i.e., mere gossip or subjective opinion. Often, achieving "Measurability" necessarily demands preselecting, "fiddling" or "massaging" the available data simply in order to make it statistically tractable, or in order to support a desired conclusion. Scholar Thomas Persing thus describes "The modernist fallacy of falsely and inappropriately applying norms, standardizations, and data point requirements to quantify productivity or success. This is similar to complex question, measurability, and oversimplification fallacies where the user attempts to categorize complicated / diverse topics into terms that when measured, suit their position. For example, the calculation of inflation in the United States doesn't include the changes in the price to gasoline, because the price of gasoline is too volatile, despite the fact gasoline is necessary for most people to live their lives in the United States." See also, "A Priori Argument," "Lying with Statistics," and the "Procrustean Fallacy."
• Mind-reading (Also, "The Fallacy of Speculation;" "I can read you like a book"): An ancient fallacy, a corruption of stasis theory, speculating about someone else's thoughts, emotions, motivations and "body language" and then claiming to understand these clearly, sometimes more accurately than the person in question knows themselves. The rhetor deploys this phony "knowledge" as a fallacious warrant for or against a given standpoint. Scholar Myron Peto offers as an example the baseless claim that “Obama doesn’t a da** [sic] for human rights.” Assertions that "call for speculation" are rightly rejected as fallacious in U.S. judicial proceedings but far too often pass uncontested in public discourse. The opposite of this fallacy is the postmodern fallacy of Mind Blindness (also, the Autist's Fallacy), a complete denial of any normal human capacity for "Theory of Mind," postulating the utter incommensurability and privacy of minds and thus the impossibility of ever knowing or truly understanding another's thoughts, emotions, motivations or intents. This fallacy, much promoted by the late postmodernist guru Jacques Derrida, necessarily vitiates any form of Stasis Theory. However, the Fallacy of Mind Blindness has been decisively refuted in several studies, including recent (2017) research published by the Association for Psychological Science, and a (2017) Derxel University study indicating how "our minds align when we communicate."

 

[The Learner]

• Moral Licensing: The contemporary ethical fallacy that one's consistently moral life, good behavior or recent extreme suffering or sacrifice earns him/her the right to commit an immoral act without repercussions, consequences or punishment. E.g., "I've been good all year, so one bad won't matter," or "After what I've been through, God knows I need this." The fallacy of Moral Licensing is also sometimes applied to nations, e.g., "Those who criticize repression and the Gulag in the former USSR forget what extraordinary suffering the Russians went through in World War II and the millions upon millions who died." See also Argument from Motives. The opposite of this fallacy is the (excessively rare in our times) ethical fallacy of Scruples, in which one obsesses to pathological excess about one's accidental, forgotten, unconfessed or unforgiven sins and because of them, the seemingly inevitable prospect of eternal damnation.
• Moral Superiority (also, Self Righteousness; the Moral High Ground): An ancient, immoral and extremely dangerous fallacy, enunciated in Thomistic / Scholastic philosophy in the late Middle Ages, arguing that Evil has no rights that the Good and the Righteous are bound to respect. That way lies torture, heretic-burning, and the Spanish Inquisition. Those who practice this vicious fallacy reject any "moral equivalency" (i.e., even-handed treatment) between themselves (the Righteous) and their enemies (the Wicked), against whom anything is fair, and to whom nothing must be conceded, not even the right to life. This fallacy is a specific denial of the ancient "Golden Rule," and has been the cause of endless intractable conflict, since if one is Righteous no negotiation with Evil and its minions is possible; The only imaginable road to a "just" peace is through total victory, i.e., the absolute defeat and liquidation of one's Wicked enemies. American folk singer and Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan expertly demolishes this fallacy in his 1963 protest song, "With God on Our Side." See also the Appeal to Heaven, and Moving the Goalposts.
• Mortification (also, Live as Though You're Dying; Pleasure-hating; No Pain No Gain): An ancient fallacy of logos, trying to "beat the flesh into submission" by extreme exercise or ascetic practices, deliberate starvation or infliction of pain, denying the undeniable fact that discomfort and pain exist for the purpose of warning of lasting damage to the body. Extreme examples of this fallacy are various forms of self-flagellation such as practiced by the New Mexico "Penitentes" during Holy Week or by Shia devotees during Muharram. More familiar contemporary manifestations of this fallacy are extreme "insanity" exercise regimes not intended for normal health, fitness or competitive purposes but just to "toughen" or "punish" the body. Certain pop-nutritional theories and diets seem based on this fallacy as well. Some contemporary experts suggest that self-mortification (an English word related to the Latinate French root "mort," or "death.") is in fact "suicide on the installment plan." Others suggest that it involves a narcotic-like addiction to the body's natural endorphins. The opposite of this fallacy is the ancient fallacy of Hedonism, seeking and valuing physical pleasure as a good in itself, simply for its own sake.

 

[The Learner]

• Moving the Goalposts (also, Changing the Rules; All's Fair in Love and War; The Nuclear Option; "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing"): A fallacy of logos, demanding certain proof or evidence, a certain degree of support or a certain number of votes to decide an issue, and then when this is offered, demanding even more, different or better support in order to deny victory to an opponent. For those who practice the fallacy of Moral Superiority (above), Moving the Goalposts is often perceived as perfectly good and permissible if necessary to prevent the victory of Wickedness and ensure the triumph of one's own side, i.e, the Righteous.
• MYOB (Mind Your Own Business; also You're Not the Boss of Me; "None of yer beeswax," "So What?", The Appeal to Privacy): The contemporary fallacy of arbitrarily prohibiting or terminating any discussion of one's own standpoints or behavior, no matter how absurd, dangerous, evil or offensive, by drawing a phony curtain of privacy around oneself and one's actions. A corrupt argument from ethos (one's own). E.g., "Sure, I was doing eighty and weaving between lanes on Mesa Street--what's it to you? You're not a cop, you're not my nanny. It's my business if I want to speed, and your business to get the hell out of my way. Mind your own damn business!" Or, "Yeah, I killed my baby. So what? Butt out! It wasn't your brat, so it's none of your damn business!" Rational discussion is cut off because "it is none of your business!" See also, "Taboo." The counterpart of this is "Nobody Will Ever Know," (also "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas;" "I Think We're Alone Now," or the Heart of Darkness Syndrome) the fallacy that just because nobody important is looking (or because one is on vacation, or away in college, or overseas) one may freely commit immoral, selfish, negative or evil acts at will without expecting any of the normal consequences or punishment . Author Joseph Conrad graphically describes this sort of moral degradation in the character of Kurtz in his classic novel, Heart of Darkness.
• Name-Calling: A variety of the "Ad Hominem" argument. The dangerous fallacy that, simply because of who one is or is alleged to be, any and all arguments, disagreements or objections against one's standpoint or actions are automatically racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, bigoted, discriminatory or hateful. E.g., "My stand on abortion is the only correct one. To disagree with me, argue with me or question my judgment in any way would only show what a pig you really are." Also applies to refuting an argument by simply calling it a "fallacy," or declaring it invalid without proving why it is invalid, or summarily dismissing arguments or opponents by labeling them "racist," "communist," "fascist," "moron," any name followed by the suffix "tard" (short for the highly offensive "retard") or some other negative name without further explanation. E.g., "He's an a**hole, end of story" or "I'm a loser." A subset of this is the Newspeak fallacy, creating identification with a certain kind of audience by inventing or using racist or offensive, sometimes military-sounding nicknames for opponents or enemies, e.g., "The damned DINO's are even worse than the Repugs and the Neocons." Or, "In the Big One it took us only five years to beat both the J*ps and the Jerries, so more than a decade and a half after niner-eleven why is it so hard for us to beat a raggedy bunch of Hajjis and Towel-heads?" Note that originally the word "Nazi" belonged in this category, but this term has long come into use as a proper English noun. See also, "Reductionism," "Ad Hominem Argument," and "Alphabet Soup."

 

[The Learner]

• The Narrative Fallacy (also, the Fable; the Poster Child) The ancient fallacy of persuasion by telling a "heartwarming" or horrifying story or fable, particularly to less-educated or uncritical audiences who are less likely to grasp purely logical arguments or general principles. E.g., Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." Narratives and fables, particularly those that name names and personalize arguments, tend to be far more persuasive at a popular level than other forms of argument and are virtually irrefutable, even when the story in question is well known to be entirely fictional. This fallacy is found even in the field of science, as noted by a recent (2017) scientific study.
• The NIMBY Fallacy (Not in My Back Yard; also "Build a Wall!"; "Lock'em up and throw away the key;" The Ostrich Strategy; The Gitmo Solution.). The infantile fallacy that a problem, challenge or threat that is not physically nearby or to which I am not directly exposed has for all practical purposes "gone away" and ceased to exist. Thus, a problem can be permanently and definitively solved by "making it go away," preferably to someplace "out of sight," a walled-off ghetto or a distant isle where there is no news coverage, and where nobody important stays. Lacking that, it can be made to go away by simply eliminating, censoring or ignoring "negative" media coverage and public discussion of the problem and focusing on "positive, encouraging" things instead.
• No Discussion (also No Negotiation; the Control Voice; Peace through Strength; a Muscular Foreign Policy; Fascism): A pure Argumentum ad Baculum that rejects reasoned dialogue, offering either instant, unconditional compliance/surrender or defeat/death as the only two options for settling even minor differences, e.g., screaming "Get down on the ground, now!" or declaring "We don't talk to terrorists." This deadly fallacy falsely paints real or potential "hostiles" as monsters devoid of all reason, and far too often contains a very strong element of "machismo" as well. I.e. "A real, muscular leader never resorts to pantywaist pleading, apologies, excuses, fancy talk or argument. That's for lawyers, liars and pansies and is nothing but a delaying tactic. A real man stands tall, says what he thinks, draws fast and shoots to kill." The late actor John Wayne frequently portrayed this fallacy in his movie roles. See also, The Pout.
• Non-recognition: A deluded fallacy in which one deliberately chooses not to publicly "recognize" ground truth, usually on the theory that this would somehow reward evil-doers if we recognize their deeds as real or consequential. Often the underlying theory is that the situation is "temporary" and will soon be reversed. E.g., In the decades from 1949 until Richard Nixon's presidency the United States officially refused to recognize the existence of the most populous nation on earth, the People's Republic of China, because America supported the U.S.-friendly Republic of China government on Taiwan instead and hoped they might somehow return to power on the mainland. Perversely, in 2016 the U.S. President-Elect caused a significant international flap by chatting with the President of the government on Taiwan, a de facto violation of long-standing American non-recognition of that same regime. More than half a century after the Korean War the U.S. still refuses to pronounce the name of, or recognize (much less conduct normal, peaceful negotiations with) a nuclear-armed DPRK (North Korea). An individual who practices this fallacy risks institutionalization (e.g., "I refuse to recognize Mom's murder, 'cuz that'd give the victory to the murderer! I refuse to watch you bury her! Stop! Stop!") but tragically, such behavior is only too common in international relations. See also the State Actor Fallacy, Political Correctness, and The Pout.

 

[The Learner]

• The Non Sequitur: The deluded fallacy of offering evidence, reasons or conclusions that have no logical connection to the argument at hand (e.g. “The reason I flunked your course is because the U. S. government is now putting out purple five-dollar bills! Purple!”). (See also Red Herring.)
• Occasionally involves the breathtaking arrogance of claiming to have special knowledge of why God, fate, karma or the Universe is doing certain things. E.g., "This week's earthquake was obviously meant to punish those people for their great wickedness." See also, Magical Thinking, and the Appeal to Heaven.
• Nothing New Under the Sun (also, Uniformitarianism, “Seen it all before;” "Surprise, surprise;" "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."): Fairly rare in contemporary discourse, this deeply cynical fallacy, a corruption of the argument from logos, falsely proposes that there is not and will never be any real novelty in this world. Any argument that there are truly “new” ideas or phenomena is judged a priori to be unworthy of serious discussion and dismissed with a jaded sigh and a wave of the hand as "the same old same old." E.g., “[Sigh!] Idiots! Don't you see that the current influx of refugees from the Mideast is just the same old Muslim invasion of Christendom that’s been going on for 1,400 years?” Or, “Libertarianism is nothing but re-warmed anarchism, which, in turn, is nothing but the ancient Antinomian Heresy. Like I told you before, there's nothing new under the sun!”
• Olfactory Rhetoric (also, "The Nose Knows"): A vicious, zoological-level fallacy of pathos in which opponents are marginalized, dehumanized or hated primarily based on their supposed odor, lack of personal cleanliness, imagined diseases or filth. E. g., "Those demonstrators are demanding something or another but I'll only talk to them if first they go home and take a bath!" Or, "I can smell a Jew a block away!" Also applies to demeaning other cultures or nationalities based on their differing cuisines, e.g., "I don't care what they say or do, their breath always stinks of garlic. And have you ever smelled their kitchens?" Olfactory Rhetoric straddles the borderline between a fallacy and a psychopathology. A 2017 study by Ruhr University Bochum suggests that olfactory rhetoric does not arise from a simple, automatic physiological reaction to an actual odor, but in fact, strongly depends on one's predetermined reaction or prejudices toward another, and one's olfactory center "is activated even before we perceive an odour." See also, Othering.
  
  
• Oops! (also, "Oh, I forgot...," "The Judicial Surprise," "The October Surprise,"): A corrupt argument from logos in which toward the decisive end of a discussion, debate, trial, electoral campaign period, or decision-making process an opponent suddenly, elaborately and usually sarcastically shams having just remembered or uncovered some salient fact, argument or evidence. E.g., "Oops, I forgot to ask you: You were convicted of this same offense twice before, weren't you?!" Banned in American judicial argument, this fallacy is only too common in public discourse. Also applies to supposedly "discovering" and sensationally reporting some potentially damning information or evidence and then, after the damage has been done or the decision has been made, quietly declaring, "Oops, I guess that really wasn't that significant after all. Ignore what I said. Sorry 'bout that!"

 

[The Learner]

• Othering (also Otherizing, "They're Not Like Us," Stereotyping, Xenophobia, Racism, Prejudice): A badly corrupted, discriminatory argument from ethos where facts, arguments, experiences or objections are arbitrarily disregarded, ignored or put down without serious consideration because those involved "are not like us," or "don't think like us." E.g., "It's OK for Mexicans to earn a buck an hour in the maquiladoras [Mexico-based "Twin Plants" run by American or other foreign corporations]. If it happened here I'd call it brutal exploitation and daylight robbery but south of the border, down Mexico way the economy is different and they're not like us." Or, "You claim that life must be really terrible over there for terrorists to ever think of blowing themselves up with suicide vests just to make a point, but always remember that they're different from us. They don't think about life and death the same way we do." A vicious variety of the Ad Hominem Fallacy, most often applied to non-white or non-Christian populations. A variation on this fallacy is the "Speakee" Fallacy ("You speakee da English?"; also the Shibboleth), in which an opponent's arguments are mocked, ridiculed and dismissed solely because of the speaker's alleged or real accent, dialect, or lack of fluency in standard English, e.g., "He told me 'Vee vorkers need to form a younion!' but I told him I'm not a 'vorker,' and to come back when he learns to speak proper English." A very dangerous, extreme example of Othering is Dehumanization, a fallacy of faulty analogy where opponents are dismissed as mere cockroaches, lice, apes, monkeys, rats, weasels or bloodsucking parasites who have no right to speak or to live at all, and probably should be "squashed like bugs." This fallacy is ultimately the "logic" behind ethnic cleansing, genocide and gas ovens. See also the Identity Fallacy, "Name Calling" and "Olfactory Rhetoric." The opposite of this fallacy is the "Pollyanna Principle" below.
• Overexplanation: A fallacy of logos stemming from the real paradox that beyond a certain point, more explanation, instructions, data, discussion, evidence or proof inevitably results in less, not more, understanding. Contemporary urban mythology holds that this fallacy is typically male ("Mansplaining"), while barely half a century ago the prevailing myth was that it was men who were naturally monosyllabic, grunting or non-verbal while women would typically overexplain (e.g., the 1960 hit song by Joe Jones, "You Talk Too Much"). "Mansplaining" is, according to scholar Danelle Pecht, "the infuriating tendency of many men to always have to be the smartest person in the room, regardless of the topic of discussion and how much they actually know!" See also The Snow Job, and the "Plain Truth" fallacy.
• Overgeneralization (also Hasty Generalization; Totus pro Partes Fallacy; the Merological Fallacy): A fallacy of logos where a broad generalization that is agreed to be true is offered as overriding all particular cases, particularly special cases requiring immediate attention. E.g., "Doctor, you say that this time of year a flu vaccination is essential. but I would counter that ALL vaccinations are essential" (implying that I'm not going to give special attention to getting the flu shot). Or, attempting to refute "Black Lives Matter" by replying, "All Lives Matter," the latter undeniably true but still a fallacious overgeneralization in that specific and urgent context. " Overgeneralization can also mean one sees a single negative outcome as an eternal pattern of defeat. Overgeneralization may also include the the Pars pro Toto Fallacy, the stupid but common fallacy of incorrectly applying one or two true examples to all cases. E.g., a minority person who commits a particularly horrifying crime, and whose example is then used to smear the reputation of the entire group, or when a government publishes special lists of crimes committed by groups who are supposed to be hated, e.g., Jews, or undocumented immigrants. Famously, the case of one Willie Horton was successfully used in this manner in the 1988 American presidential election to smear African Americans, Liberals, and by extension, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. See also the fallacy of "Zero Tolerance" below.
• The Paralysis of Analysis (also, Procrastination; the Nirvana Fallacy): A postmodern fallacy that since all data is never in, any conclusion is always provisional, no legitimate decision can ever be made and any action should always be delayed until forced by circumstances. A corruption of the argument from logos. (See also the "Law of Unintended Consequences.")
• The Passive Voice Fallacy (also, the Bureaucratic Passive): A fallacy from ethos, concealing active human agency behind the curtain of the grammatical passive voice, e.g., "It has been decided that you are to be let go," arrogating an ethos of cosmic infallibility and inevitability to a very fallible conscious decision made by identifiable, fallible and potentially culpable human beings. Scholar Jackson Katz notes (2017): "We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many boys harassed girls. We talk about how many teenage girls in the state of Vermont got pregnant last year, rather than how many men and boys impregnated teenage girls. ... So you can see how the use of the passive voice has a political effect. [It] shifts the focus off of men and boys and onto girls and women. Even the term 'Violence against women' is problematic. It's a passive construction; there's no active agent in the sentence. It's a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at the term 'violence against women' nobody is doing it to them, it just happens to them... Men aren't even a part of it." See also, Political Correctness. An obverse of the Passive Voice Fallacy is the Be-verb Fallacy, a cultish linguistic theory and the bane of many a first-year composition student's life, alleging that an extraordinary degree of "clarity," "sanity," or textual "liveliness" can be reached by strictly eliminating all passive verb forms and all forms of the verb "to be" from English-language writing. This odd but unproven contention, dating back to Alfred Korzybski's "General Semantics" self-improvement movement of the 1920's and '30's via S. I. Hayakawa, blithely ignores the fact that although numerous major world languages lack a ubiquitous "be-verb," e.g., Russian, Hindi and Arabic, speakers of these languages, like English-speaking General Semantics devotees themselves, have never been proven to enjoy any particular cognitive advantage over ordinary everyday users of the passive voice and the verb "to be." Nor have writers of the curiously stilted English that results from applying this fallacy achieved any special success in academia, professional or technical writing, or in the popular domain.

 

[The Learner]

• Paternalism: A serious fallacy of ethos, arbitrarily tut-tutting, dismissing or ignoring another's arguments or concerns as "childish" or "immature;" taking a condescending attitude of superiority toward opposing standpoints or toward opponents themselves. E.g., "Your argument against the war is so infantile. Try approaching the issue like an adult for a change," "I don't argue with children," or "Somebody has to be the grownup in the room, and it might as well be me. Here's why you're wrong..." Also refers to the sexist fallacy of dismissing a woman's argument because she is a woman, e.g., "Oh, it must be that time of the month, eh?" See also "Ad Hominem Argument" and "Tone Policing."
• Personalizaion: A deluded fallacy of ethos, seeing yourself or someone else as the essential cause of some external event for which you or the other person had no responsibility. E.g., "Never fails! It had to happen! It's my usual rotten luck that the biggest blizzard of the year had to occur just on the day of our winter festival. If it wasn't for ME being involved I'm sure the blizzard wouldn't have happened!" This fallacy can also be taken in a positive sense, e.g. Hitler evidently believed that simply because he was Hitler every bullet would miss him and no explosive could touch him. "Personalization" straddles the borderline between a fallacy and a psychopathology. See also, "The Job's Comforter Fallacy," and "Magical Thinking."
• The Plain Truth Fallacy; (also, the Simple Truth fallacy, Salience Bias, the KISS Principle [Keep it Short and Simple / Keep it Simple, Stupid], the Monocausal Fallacy; the Executive Summary): A fallacy of logos favoring familiar, singular, summarized or easily comprehensible data, examples, explanations and evidence over those that are more complex and unfamiliar but much closer to the truth. E.g., "Ooooh, look at all those equations and formulas! Just boil it down to the Simple Truth," or "I don't want your damned philosophy lesson! Just tell me the Plain Truth about why this is happening." A more sophisticated version of this fallacy arbitrarily proposes, as did 18th century Scottish rhetorician John Campbell, that the Truth is always simple by nature and only malicious enemies of Truth would ever seek to make it complicated. (See also, The Snow Job, and Overexplanation.) The opposite of this is the postmodern fallacy of Ineffability or Complexity (also, Truthiness; Post-Truth),, arbitrarily declaring that today's world is so complex that there is no truth, or that Truth (capital-T), if indeed such a thing exists, is unknowable except perhaps by God or the Messiah and is thus forever inaccessible and irrelevant to us mere mortals, making any cogent argument from logos impossible. See also the Big Lie, and Paralysis of Analysis.
• Plausible Deniability: A vicious fallacy of ethos under which someone in power forces those under his or her control to do some questionable or evil act and to then falsely assume or conceal responsibility for that act in order to protect the ethos of the one in command. E.g., "Arrange a fatal accident but make sure I know nothing about it!"
• Playing on Emotion (also, the Sob Story; the Pathetic Fallacy; the "Bleeding Heart" fallacy, the Drama Queen / Drama King Fallacy): The classic fallacy of pure argument from pathos, ignoring facts and evoking emotion alone. E.g., “If you don’t agree that witchcraft is a major problem just shut up, close your eyes for a moment and picture in your mind all those poor moms crying bitter tears for their innocent tiny children whose cozy little beds and happy tricycles lie all cold and abandoned, just because of those wicked old witches! Let's string’em all up!” The opposite of this is the Apathetic Fallacy (also, Cynicism; Burnout; Compassion Fatigue), where any and all legitimate arguments from pathos are brushed aside because, as noted country music artist Jo Dee Messina sang (2005), "My give-a-damn's busted." Obverse to Playing on Emotion is the ancient fallacy of Refinement ("Real Feelings"), where certain classes of living beings such as plants and non-domesticated animals, infants, babies and minor children, barbarians, slaves, deep-sea sailors, farmworkers, criminals and convicts, refugees, addicts, terrorists, Catholics, Jews, foreigners, the poor, people of color, "Hillbillies," "Hobos," homeless or undocumented people, or "the lower classes" in general are deemed incapable of experiencing real pain like we do, or of having any "real feelings" at all, only brutish appetites, vile lusts, evil drives, filthy cravings, biological instincts, psychological reflexes and automatic tropisms. Noted rhetorician Kenneth Burke falls into this last, behaviorist fallacy in his otherwise brilliant (1966) Language as Symbolic Action, in his discussion of a bird trapped in a lecture room. See also, Othering.

 

[The Learner]

• The Pollyanna Principle (also, "The Projection Bias," "They're Just Like Us," "Singing 'Kumbaya.'"): A traditional, often tragic fallacy of ethos, that of automatically (and falsely) assuming that everyone else in any given place, time and circumstance had or has basically the same (positive) wishes, desires, interests, concerns, ethics and moral code as "we" do. This fallacy practically if not theoretically denies both the reality of difference and the human capacity to chose radical evil. E.g., arguing that "The only thing most Nazi Storm Troopers wanted was the same thing we do, to live in peace and prosperity and to have a good family life," when the reality was radically otherwise. Dr. William Lorimer offers this explanation: "The Projection Bias is the flip side of the 'They're Not Like Us' [Othering] fallacy. The Projection bias (fallacy) is 'They're just people like me, therefore they must be motivated by the same things that motivate me.' For example: 'I would never pull a gun and shoot a police officer unless I was convinced he was trying to murder me; therefore, when Joe Smith shot a police officer, he must have been in genuine fear for his life.' I see the same fallacy with regard to Israel: 'The people of Gaza just want to be left in peace; therefore, if Israel would just lift the blockade and allow Hamas to import anything they want, without restriction, they would stop firing rockets at Israel.' That may or may not be true - I personally don't believe it - but the argument clearly presumes that the people of Gaza, or at least their leaders, are motivated by a desire for peaceful co-existence." The Pollyanna Principle was gently but expertly demolished in the classic twentieth-century American animated cartoon series, "The Flintstones," in which the humor lay in the absurdity of picturing "Stone Age" characters having the same concerns, values and lifestyles as mid-twentieth century white working class Americans. This is the opposite of the Othering fallacy. (Note: The Pollyanna Principle fallacy should not be confused with a psychological principle of the same name which observes that positive memories are usually retained more strongly than negative ones. )
• The Positive Thinking Fallacy: An immensely popular but deluded modern fallacy of logos, that because we are "thinking positively" that in itself somehow biases external, objective reality in our favor even before we lift a finger to act. See also, Magical Thinking. Note that this particular fallacy is often part of a much wider closed-minded, somewhat cultish ideology where the practitioner is warned against paying attention to to or even acknowledging the reality of evil, or of "negative" evidence or counter-arguments against his/her standpoints. In the latter case rational discussion, argument or refutation is most often futile. See also, Deliberate Ignorance.
• The Post Hoc Argument: (also, "Post Hoc Propter Hoc;" "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc;" "Too much of a coincidence," the "Clustering Illusion"): The classic paranoiac fallacy of attributing an imaginary causality to random coincidences, concluding that just because something happens close to, at the same time as, or just after something else, the first thing is caused by the second. E.g., "AIDS first emerged as a epidemic back in the very same era when Disco music was becoming popular--that's too much of a coincidence: It proves that Disco caused AIDS!" Correlation does not equal causation.
• The Pout (also The Silent Treatment; Nonviolent Civil Disobedience; Noncooperation): An often-infantile Argumentum ad Baculum that arbitrarily rejects or gives up on dialogue before it is concluded. The most benign nonviolent form of this fallacy is found in passive-aggressive tactics such as slowdowns, boycotts, lockouts, sitdowns and strikes. Under President Barack Obama the United States finally ended a half-century long political Pout with Cuba. See also "No Discussion" and "Nonrecognition."