“Some say the sun rises in the east, some say it rises in the west; the truth probably lies somewhere in between.”
Fallacies are everywhere. Some are easier to spot than others. The fallacy above about the direction of the sunrise is clearly wrong. It’s logic is a victim of the fallacy of False Compromise. Television news often commits this fallacy in the name of “balanced” coverage.
Not all fallacies are so easy to spot. And though you might flunk a philosophy test if you commit a logical fallacy, it won’t happen in rhetoric. As Jay Heinrichs says:
In rhetoric, on the other hand, there really are no rules. You can commit fallacies to your heart’s content, as long as you get away with them. Your audience bears the responsibility to spot them; but if it does, there goes your ethos. Your audience will consider you either a crook or a fool. So before you commit a fallacy, learn your fallacies.
Logic in rhetoric consists of the proof and the conclusion. To find fallacies hidden in arguments, Heinrichs says to ask three questions:
- Does the proof hold up?
- Am I given the right number of choices?
- Does the proof lead to the conclusion?
Bad proofs occur when an argument includes a false comparison (grouping examples into incorrect categories), a bad example, or uses ignorance as proof (claiming that if it hasn’t been proven it must be false).
Bad conclusions mainly happen when we’re given the wrong number of choices, either too few (you must take the high road or the low road” when actually there are many roads plus planes and boats) or merging two or more issues into one (when you buy this refrigerator will you be wanting the 5-year or the 10 year maintenance agreement?” even though the decision to buy the refrigerator does not imply a decision to also buy either a 5-year or a 10-year maintenance agreement).
Disconnect between proof and conclusion produces arguments with sneaky distractions (the red herring), unlikely projections (the slippery slope and reductio ad absurdem) and correlation without proof of causation (post hoc ergo propter hoc).
If you are on the receiving end of a fallacy, gleefully drawing attention to their mistake is unlikely to win over your audience or your opponent. Instead, simply point out to the other person that their logical fallacy is not rhetorically persuasive.
If you’d like to see a list of rhetorical fallacies, you can find them here and here.
Some other related posts you might find useful:
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