What is premises

What is not making claims that are so strong or sweeping that you can’t really support them.

What is a valid cause will lead to more and more unreasonable results, incorrectly linking events that may never exist or occur.

The arguer claims that a sort of chain reaction, usually ending in some direct consequence, will take place, but there’s not enough evidence for that assumption. The arguer asserts that if we take even one step onto the “slippery slope,” we will end up sliding all the way to the bottom; he or she assumes we can’t stop partway down the hill.

Example: “Animal experimentation reduces our respect for life. If we don’t respect life, we are likely to be more and more tolerant of violent acts like war and murder. Soon our society will become a battlefield in which everyone constantly fears for their lives. It will be the end of civilization. To prevent this terrible consequence, we should make animal experimentation illegal right now.” Since animal experimentation has been legal for some time and civilization has not yet ended, it seems particularly clear that this chain of events won’t necessarily take place. Even if we believe that experimenting on animals reduces respect for life, and loss of respect for life makes us more tolerant of violence, that may be the spot on the hillside at which things stop— we may not slide all the way down to the end of civilization. And so we have not yet been given sufficient reason to accept the arguer’s conclusion that we must make animal experimentation illegal right now.

Like post hoc, slippery slope can be a tricky fallacy to identify, since sometimes a chain of events really can be predicted to follow from a certain action. Here’s an example that doesn’t seem fallacious: “If I fail English 101, I won’t be able to graduate. If I don’t graduate, I probably won’t be able to get a good job, and I may very well end up doing temp work or flipping burgers for the next year.”

What is attacking the speaker rather than the argument; also expressed as “kill the messenger” or a personal attack.

Example: Sally said that the speed limit on the interstate is 75 miles per hour. She got an F on her English paper and she is ugly, so how does she know what the speed limit is?

Translation: "against the person"

What is scare tactics, alarmist warnings, drastically over-emphasizing the probability of a terrible outcome.

What is in a logical way that supports your argument

What is defective logic that weaken arguments / a logically invalid statement

What is a comparison between two unrelated things.

Many arguments rely on an analogy between two or more objects, ideas, or situations. If the two things that are being compared aren’t really alike in the relevant respects, the analogy is a weak one, and the argument that relies on it commits the fallacy of weak analogy.
Example: “Guns are like hammers—they’re both tools with metal parts that could be used to kill someone. And yet it would be ridiculous to restrict the purchase of hammers—so restrictions on purchasing guns are equally ridiculous.” While guns and hammers do share certain features, these features (having metal parts, being tools, and being potentially useful for violence) are not the ones at stake in deciding whether to restrict guns. Rather, we restrict guns because they can easily be used to kill large numbers of people at a distance. This is a feature hammers do not share—it would be hard to kill a crowd with a hammer. Thus, the analogy is weak, and so is the argument based on it. If you think about it, you can make an analogy of som

What is attacking a distorted version of the arugment.

Example: Evolution is wrong because my grandfather was not a monkey.

What is “It doesn’t follow”; no logical relationship between two points.

What is using good premises (ones you have good reason to believe are both true and relevant to the issue at
hand)

What is ethos/credibility

What is an attempted appeal to logic

What is appealing to a supposed authority who isn't much of an expert. The assumption that we should accept a claim because a respected person says it.

Example: The president of the KaleIsGoodForYou Coalition says that kale is the only vegetable you need to eat, so I should be completely healthy if I eat nothing
but kale.

What is when the arguer goes on a tangent halfway through the argument, raising a side issue that distracts from what's really at stake.

What is Arbitrarily setting new standards that must be met to render a statement “true” or “valid.”

What is making sure your premises provide good support for your conclusion (and not some other conclusion, or no conclusion at all),

What is Making assumptions about a whole group or range of cases based on a sample that is inadequate
(usually because it is atypical or too small). Stereotypes about people (“librarians are shy and smart,” “wealthy people are snobs,” etc.) are a common example of the principle underlying hasty generalization.

Example: “My roommate said her philosophy class was hard, and the one I’m in is hard, too. All philosophy classes must be hard!” Two people’s experiences are, in this case, not enough on which to base a conclusion.

What is when the arguer tries to take advantage of the desire most people have to be liked and fit in with others. This appeal uses that desire to try to get the audience to accept his/her argument. Commonly appears in the bandwagon fallacy, or, when the aruguer tries to convince the audience to do something because everyone else supposedly does.

Example: “Gay marriages are just immoral. 70% of Americans think so!” While the opinion of most Americans
might be relevant in determining what laws we should have, it certainly doesn’t determine what is moral or immoral: there was a time where a substantial number of Americans were in favor of segregation, but their opinion was not evidence that segregation was moral. The arguer is trying to get us to agree with the conclusion by appealing to our desire to fit in with other Americans.

Translation: "To the people"

What is presenting an argument with only two options, where one option is appealing and the other is false and unreasonable.

What is the suggestion that no interpretation can be drawn if there is any missing data or information.

What is checking that you have addressed the most important or relevant aspects of the issue (that is, that your premises and conclusion focus on what is really important to the issue)

What is Example: “The seriousness of a punishment should match the seriousness of the crime. Right now, the punishment for drunk driving may simply be a fine. But drunk driving is a very serious crime that can kill innocent people. So the death penalty should be the punishment for drunk driving.” The argument actually supports several conclusions—the punishment for drunk driving should be very in particular—but it doesn’t support the claim that the death penalty, specifically, is warranted.

What is assuming that because B comes after A, A caused B. Argument after the fact, often (falsely) linking causation with some previous action.

Of course, sometimes one event really does cause another one that comes later—for example, if I register for a class, and my name later appears on the roll, it’s true that the first event caused the one that came later. But sometimes two events that seem related in time aren’t really related as cause and event.

That is, correlation isn’t the same thing as causation.

Examples: “President Jones raised taxes, and then the rate of violent crime went up. Jones is responsible for the rise in crime.” The increase in taxes might or might not be one factor in the rising crime rates, but the argument hasn’t shown us that one caused the other.

I had scrambled eggs for breakfast, and then I thought about killing my goldfish. I should have eaten cereal instead!

Premise: Classes go more smoothly when the students and the professor are getting along well.

Conclusion: Grading this exam on a curve would be the most fair thing to do.

When we lay it out this way, it’s pretty obvious that the arguer went off on a tangent—the fact that something helps people get along doesn’t necessarily make it more fair; fairness and justice sometimes require us to do things that cause conflict. But the audience may feel like the issue of teachers and students agreeing is
important and be distracted from the fact that the arguer has not given any evidence as to why a curve wouldbe fair.

What is This fallacy gets its name from the Latin phrase “post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” which translates as “after this, therefore because of this.”