In these notes, I will discuss some of the most common types of informal fallacies. These include:
1) Appeal to Authority (Argumentum ad Verecundiam)
2) Appeal to People (Argumentum ad Populum).
3) Appeal to Force (Argumentum ad Baculum)
4) Appeal to Pity (Argumentum ad Misericordiam)
5) Appeal to Ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam)
6) Argument against the Man (Argumentum ad Hominem)
7) False Cause
8) Slippery Slope
9) Either/Or Fallacy or False Dichotomy
10) Fallacy of Equivocation
11) Hasty Generalization
12) Fallacy of Composition
13) Fallacy of Division
14) We will update this page for more types of informal fallacies.
But before we discuss these common types of fallacious arguments, let us first briefly define the term fallacy.
A fallacy is generally understood as a kind of error in reasoning. Both deductive and inductive arguments can be fallacious. Some fallacious arguments are detectable by an examination of the form of the argument. Hence, they are called formal fallacies.
The techniques that logicians used in determining the validity of arguments in traditional and symbolic (or advanced) logic, such as the 8 rules of syllogism, and the truth table and partial truth table methods, enable them to recognize inconsistencies or errors in reasoning. These are called formal fallacies. All other types of fallacies are called informal fallacies, and they can be detected by an examination of the content of the argument itself.