Good Essay About Fallacy Summaries With Examples

Fallacy is defined as a misconception that is based on unsound argument. It is a misleading, false and deceptive notion and argument that does not have a rationale to be termed as a truth. The most common and popular fallacy of the past was the world is round and flat. In this essay, five fallacies shall be discussed along with the two examples each. These fallacies include, the slippery slope fallacy, fallacy of appeal to fear, straw man fallacy, fallacy of hasty generalization and the fallacy of false cause.
Slippery Slope Fallacy. The slippery slope fallacy believes that one thing leads to another thing. If a person does one thing, it will lead to the doing of another thing and the chain reaction, thus, starts. It will lead to something which was not intended to be done. Therefore, people believe that they should not do the first thing so that it does not trigger the other happenings and they avoid the wrong thing that was not intended to happen. The argument that counters this fallacy is that it is possible to do the first thing and then do not let the other things happen by exercising restraint and not allowing the chain reaction. The two examples of the slippery slope fallacy are as under:-
- First Example: If someone buys a green day album, he will buy a buzzcocks album the next day. Before the person can realize, he will be a punk with green hair and other funky things. Because, one does not want to be a punk, therefore, one should not buy the green day album. The example refutes the slippery slope fallacy as one can buy a green day album and stop there. He does not need to buy the buzzcocks album and become the punk. He can simply stop after buying the green day album.
- Second Example: If same sex marriage is allowed, it will lead to a situation where people will be arranging marriages for their parents, their vehicles and even their dogs. The fallacy is not true as same sex marriages are allowed in some countries and no such thing has happened. After the two individuals marry, they can stop there and do not need to arrange the marriages of their parents and other things.
The Fallacy of Appeal to Fear. The fallacy of appeal to fear is a pattern where something that frightens someone is projected as a truth without a sound background and rationale. Someone narrates a story that is intended to create fear in the heart of someone else, the story not necessarily to be true but related to the person intended to be frightened. This is fallacious as creating fear in the minds of people does not provide the evidence for the story to be true.
- First Example: Right Professor Charles, I want to get an A+ in this class. I would visit your office after the class to discuss about my grade. Otherwise I will be around in the building with my father. You know he is your Dean, by the way. Here the boy tries to create fear in the heart of the professor with the position of his father for getting a good grade. He tries to achieve a good grade by using the fallacy of appeal to fear.
- Second Example: I do not want to gift you a submachine gun as it is dangerous. It can create a hole between your two eyes. Now don’t you think I should buy you something else? Here the father tries to create the fear of the gun in the mind of his son in order to avoid giving him the gun as a gift. By creating fear of gun, he would give him some other gift by using the fallacy of appeal to fear.
The Straw Man Fallacy. The straw man fallacy is done when a person’s actual position is simply ignored and a different, distorted, misrepresented and exaggerated view of the position is presented. If a person has a higher position but another person presents him as a person of lower grade and attacks the lower position of the person. This is fallacious as the person has a higher grade and the position being attacked is false. And attacking a distorted version of the position is not an attack on the actual position.
- First Example: Two professors talking about the cut in their yearly budget. First professor suggest the doing away with one of the professor whereas another one suggests reducing the scheduled raises in the expenditures. The first professor tells the other one, “I do not understand why you want us to suffer like that.” Here the first professor is suggesting someone to be thrown out of the job and he feels that reducing the scheduled raises will make him suffer. He is not concerned with the livelihood of another professor whom he is suggesting to b thrown out of service.
- Second Example: A senator suggests not funding the program of nuclear submarine. Another senator disagrees by saying, “I don’t know why he wants the country not to be defended. This is fallacious as the senator not funding the nuclear submarine program will not make the country defenseless. Senator’s effort to raise the level of the issue at the national level by giving he argument of making the country’s defenses pregnable is the straw man fallacy.
Fallacy of Hasty Generalization. The fallacy of hasty generalization happens when a person takes a very small sample from a huge population and announces the results basing the very minute sample from the population. It becomes fallacious as the very small portion of the population does not give the true reflection of the whole population. The person committing the fallacy of hasty generalization misuses the reasoning of generalization, inductive generalization and statistical generalization. Small samples takes are not the true representatives of the factual state.
- First Example: Taking opinion of one person about gun control does not give you an idea of what the whole American population thinks about the gun control. The small numbers are not proportionate to the size of population being determined. Gun control has advantages and disadvantages and every one does not understand the reasons and consequences of the gun control. Asking a layman about the issue and declaring it as the public opinion is the fallacy of hasty generalization. In such a case, viewpoint of people from different walks of life will give the right public opinion.
- Second Example: If a jar of glass contains the small stones of different colors, picking up three stones will not indicate the varsity of population of different stones in the jar. However, if more numbers of stones are picked, the representation of a particular color may increase and give an idea of the overall population of the particular color in the jar. The example holds true for the people also and their political views and general opinion on different subjects. Hasty generalization is committed when the size of the sample is too small; therefore, it is more practical to take as large a sample as possible. There is no laid down number that should count as a large sample; rather it is a relative term and varies according to the size of the whole population. A very small population cannot support a huge sample, and similarly, a huge population does not give away the correct response with a small sample.
The Fallacy of False Cause. The fallacy of false cause is traditionally derived from the words like, “After this, therefore, because of this.” The fallacy is committed when there is one event that has caused another event. The fallacy occurs when someone mistakenly attempts to establish a casual connection between two different incidents. The cause happened before the effect. In simple words, something A occurred because of B, because A occurs before B; it does not warrant a claim such as A caused B. There is no relationship between A and B therefore the fallacy of false cause occurs. There is generally no connection between the two events taking place in the same location or at different locations, however, there fallacy of false cause prevails in most of the cases where there is even a small link between the two incidents. Many superstitions are based on false cause fallacy, however, not all the superstitions are false and some folk might have worked. the fallacy committed when an argument mistakenly attempt to establish a causal connection. There are two basic interrelated kinds.
- First Example: If a person in California sneezes at the exact time when earthquake started in Hawaii, there is clearly no relationship between the two incidents occurring at the same time. Person in California cannot be arrested on the charges of initiating the natural calamity, as there is no link between the two incidents at different places.
- Second Example: If a person installs software on his computer, and his computer crashed immediately after the installation of software, he would blame the newly installed software as the computer crashed after the software was installed. The person would commit the false cause fallacy as the evidence fails to justify the claim. May be it was not the software he installed and his computer was already about to crash. May be some other software caused the crash. But because the software was installed before the crash, so the software is blamed for the crash. It is the false cause fallacy