The Little Blue Reasoning Book - Brandon Royal [47]
Fallacy of Composition
The fallacy of composition consists in believing that what is true for the parts must therefore be true for the whole.
“Brad is a fine young man. Janet is a fine young woman. They’ll make a wonderful couple.”
As marriage is deemed to be more than the sum of its parts by virtue of the couple’s relationship in the marital whole, the result might be something more or less than the “parts” added together.
Fallacy of Division
The fallacy of division involves believing that what is true for the whole is also true for the individual parts. For example, just because the New Zealand rugby team is a great team, this does not mean all players on the New Zealand rugby team are great players.
“Because a car is a heavy object, all components that go into making a car are heavy in weight.”
Fallacy of the Continuum
The fallacy of the continuum is the result of believing that small or incremental differences can be ignored because they are inconsequential on a larger scale.
“Try building your vocabulary by studying one new word each day. Take a medium-sized dictionary and start at the beginning. Learn one word one day and another the next. Eventually, you will have gone cover to cover, and, more importantly, you will have learned almost every important word in the English language. How many people can boast of that?”
Incorrect Attack on a Generalization
The fallacy of incorrect attack on a generalization consists in believing that a generalization is open to attack because a single exception can be cited. For example, a theatre sign stating that those under eighteen years of age should not enter a theatre does not mean that parents carrying their seven-month-old baby should not be permitted to enter.
Student #1: “It is a well-known fact that smoking shortens your life expectancy.”
Student #2: “Yeah, well then how do you explain the fact that my great grandfather smokes a pack a day and he’s rockin’ into his nineties?”
Finding an exception to a generalization does not undermine the generalization — a generalization is merely a generalization.
Distortion
The fallacy of distortion consists in twisting an opponent’s point of view or claim, thereby making it easier to attack.
Proponent: “The only way to increase education in developing countries is to have materials, and this means textbooks.”
Opponent: “What you’re saying is that you couldn’t care less about depleting our forests to provide paper for, God knows, how many more textbooks.”
Faulty Analogy
The fallacy of faulty analogy consists in believing that because two things are alike (or unlike) in one or more aspects they are alike (or unlike) in one or more other aspects.
“When it comes to artificial lures, the Rappala artificial minnow has worked like a charm for me. I’ve used it every day this summer to catch small mouth bass and can’t wait to try it when going trout fishing in the fall.”
Cause and Effect (Causal Oversimplification)
The fallacy of causal oversimplification occurs when one assumes that a particular cause is responsible for a given effect.
“I have heard that rich people work hard. I am going to work hard and get rich.”
Hard work will contribute to someone’s becoming rich, but it is probably only one of several contributing factors. It is wrong to assume that hard work alone is a sufficient condition for becoming rich.
Domino Fallacy
The domino fallacy consists in assuming that because one event may cause another to occur it will also cause a series of future events to occur. This fallacy is also referred to as the chain reaction fallacy.
“I don’t see a problem with giving the homeless a free meal, but a free meal leads to free clothing, and if we’re not careful, free accommodation. Pretty soon we’ll be giving them a guaranteed annual salary as well.”
Gambler’s Fallacy
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