Fallacy
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Illustration: The Heart Has Its Reasons (c.1887) by Odilon Redon, a phrase from the Pensées by Blaise Pascal
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"The naturalistic fallacy has been quite as commonly committed with regard to beauty as with regard to good." --Principia Ethica (1903) by G. E. Moore |
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A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves" in the construction of an argument. A fallacious argument may be deceptive by appearing to be better than it really is. Some fallacies are committed intentionally to manipulate or persuade by deception, while others are committed unintentionally due to carelessness or ignorance. The soundness of legal arguments depends on the context in which the arguments are made.
Fallacies are commonly divided into "formal" and "informal". A formal fallacy can be expressed neatly in a standard system of logic, such as propositional logic, while an informal fallacy originates in an error in reasoning other than an improper logical form. Arguments containing informal fallacies may be formally valid, but still fallacious.
See also
Lists
Concepts
- Aporia
- Anti-pattern
- Argumentation theory
- Argument map
- Association fallacy
- Cognitive bias
- Cognitive distortion
- Critical thinking
- Demagogue
- Evidence
- Fallacies of definition
- False premise
- False statement
- Illusion
- Inference objection
- Inquiry
- Jumping to conclusions
- Lemma
- Mathematical fallacy
- Paradox
- Prosecutor's fallacy
- Sophist
- Soundness
- Lies, damned lies, and statistics
- Truth
- Validity
- Victim blaming
