Association Fallacy July 11, 2007
Posted by deltawing in Language, Literacy and Critical Thinking.add a comment
An association fallacy is a inductive formal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. The two types are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association. Association fallacies are a special case of red herring, and can be based on an appeal to emotion.
-WIKIPEDIA
Poisoning the Well July 11, 2007
Posted by deltawing in Language, Literacy and Critical Thinking.add a comment
Poisoning the well is a logical fallacy where adverse information about someone is pre-emptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that person is about to say. Poisoning the well is a special case of argumentum ad hominem. The term was first used with this sense [1] by John Henry Newman in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua [2].
-WIKIPEDIA
Equivocation July 11, 2007
Posted by deltawing in Language, Literacy and Critical Thinking.add a comment
Equivocation, also known as Amphibology is classified as both a formal and informal fallacy. It is the misleading use of a word with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time).
Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:
- A feather is light.
- What is light cannot be dark.
- Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.
-WIKIPEDIA
