Page 134 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
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What Do We Know about the World?
their popular textbook, write that some “arguments are sound and con-
vincing but many are fallacious. An argument is fallacious when it con-
tains one or more logical fallacies. A logical fallacy – or fallacy, for short
– is an argument that contains a mistake in reasoning” (Bassham et al,
2011: 119, emphasis in original).5 So a fallacy is a mistake in reasoning
– not just the acceptance of a false premise – and a mistake that is un-
likely to be noticed and hence is likely to be convincing. Joseph Heath
puts the same point as follows: “Strictly speaking, a fallacy is simply an
argument that takes you from true premises to a false conclusion. What
makes it a fallacy, though, as opposed to simply a mistake is that a fallacy
sounds right when you first hear it. In fact, it often requires considerable
subtlety to see why a fallacious inference is, in fact, invalid” (2009: 309).
Unfortunately, Heath’s way of putting it obscures the fact that even an
argument with false premises may be fallacious. What he should have
claimed – and from the context it is clear that this was his intention – is
that a fallacious argument is one such that, were the premises true, it still
could lead you to a false conclusion, and where, despite this fatal flaw,
the argument seems to be a good one.6 So, we may say that an argument
is fallacious when it is invalid but appears to be valid. And the better the
fallacy (qua fallacy), the more difficult it is to see that the appearance of
validity does not correspond to the invalidity of the argument.
Trudy Govier adds another feature, saying that a fallacy is “a com-
mon mistake in arguing. It is a mistake in the reasoning that underlies an
argument. The mistake can be quite deceptive by seeming to many peo-
ple to be just like correct reasoning” (105, emphasis added). So fallacious
arguments that are common are called fallacies.
We now have three conditions for an argument being an instance of
a fallacy: it must be invalid, it must appear to be valid, and it must occur
frequently. But not every type of common, deceptive, invalid argument
becomes a named fallacy. For that to occur, the type of argument has to
be plausible enough to appear to not be fallacious; it has to be plausible
enough that it can pass as an instance of some type of good argument.
An argument that is so obviously bad that no sane person would accept
it does not get to be called an instance of a fallacy. Second, the argument
has to be one that is used sufficiently often that it is worthwhile nam-
ing it as a fallacy. This seems to be the standard used by the authors of
5 Galileo’s position remains attractive. In a note to the above, the authors describe this as a “narrow
definition” because it excludes arguments with false premises.
6 Heath rightly ignores cases such as begging the question that are both fallacious and logically valid.
their popular textbook, write that some “arguments are sound and con-
vincing but many are fallacious. An argument is fallacious when it con-
tains one or more logical fallacies. A logical fallacy – or fallacy, for short
– is an argument that contains a mistake in reasoning” (Bassham et al,
2011: 119, emphasis in original).5 So a fallacy is a mistake in reasoning
– not just the acceptance of a false premise – and a mistake that is un-
likely to be noticed and hence is likely to be convincing. Joseph Heath
puts the same point as follows: “Strictly speaking, a fallacy is simply an
argument that takes you from true premises to a false conclusion. What
makes it a fallacy, though, as opposed to simply a mistake is that a fallacy
sounds right when you first hear it. In fact, it often requires considerable
subtlety to see why a fallacious inference is, in fact, invalid” (2009: 309).
Unfortunately, Heath’s way of putting it obscures the fact that even an
argument with false premises may be fallacious. What he should have
claimed – and from the context it is clear that this was his intention – is
that a fallacious argument is one such that, were the premises true, it still
could lead you to a false conclusion, and where, despite this fatal flaw,
the argument seems to be a good one.6 So, we may say that an argument
is fallacious when it is invalid but appears to be valid. And the better the
fallacy (qua fallacy), the more difficult it is to see that the appearance of
validity does not correspond to the invalidity of the argument.
Trudy Govier adds another feature, saying that a fallacy is “a com-
mon mistake in arguing. It is a mistake in the reasoning that underlies an
argument. The mistake can be quite deceptive by seeming to many peo-
ple to be just like correct reasoning” (105, emphasis added). So fallacious
arguments that are common are called fallacies.
We now have three conditions for an argument being an instance of
a fallacy: it must be invalid, it must appear to be valid, and it must occur
frequently. But not every type of common, deceptive, invalid argument
becomes a named fallacy. For that to occur, the type of argument has to
be plausible enough to appear to not be fallacious; it has to be plausible
enough that it can pass as an instance of some type of good argument.
An argument that is so obviously bad that no sane person would accept
it does not get to be called an instance of a fallacy. Second, the argument
has to be one that is used sufficiently often that it is worthwhile nam-
ing it as a fallacy. This seems to be the standard used by the authors of
5 Galileo’s position remains attractive. In a note to the above, the authors describe this as a “narrow
definition” because it excludes arguments with false premises.
6 Heath rightly ignores cases such as begging the question that are both fallacious and logically valid.
