Informal errors are a kind of false argument in natural language. The source of the error lies not only in the form of the argument, as is the case with formal errors, but can also be due to their content and context. Mistakes, while wrong, usually seem to be right and can therefore make people accept and use them. These misleading phenomena are often associated with various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions or the assumption of implicit premises rather than making them explicit. In order not to mislead, an argument must be able to answer all these questions positively. In this context, we do not need to try to establish an exhaustive list of all possible errors. All we have to do is learn how to determine when and how these criteria are not met so that we can understand when and how the arguments are not good. So let`s look at a taxonomy of errors, i.e. how they are classified, and then a list of some common errors. This is a very common mistake.
According to the principle of charity in the analysis of argumentation, the strongest interpretation of an argument should always be preferred. The straw man`s mistake is the categorical refusal to adhere to this principle, and consists in reducing an argument to a weaker version of it, only to overturn it. The original strength of the argument is missed and, reduced to a caricature, can easily be refuted. The name of the mistake comes from the fact that a straw man is easier to beat than a real man. Some vegan activists argue that their opponents often make this mistake by saying that if vegans have so much respect for animal life, they should also give the same respect to plant life. Vegans can rightly claim that this is a misrepresentation of their own position and therefore do not diminish their legitimacy. The straw man error differs from the ad hominem error in that it does not try to undermine the argument by directly attacking the person. Errors in division and composition are due to the ambiguity of the term “all” and similar expressions. [12] [8] [3] This term has both a collective and a distributive meaning. For example, the phrase “all citizens are strong enough to resist a tyrant” can mean either that all together are strong enough (collective) or that everyone is strong enough (distributive).
[12] The divisive error is committed when one concludes from the sentence in the collective sense that a particular individual is strong enough. [12] [24] Compositional error is made when it is inferred from the fact that each member of a group has a property that the group as a whole has that property. [24] For example: “Each member of the investigation team was an excellent researcher,” so “it was an excellent investigative team.” [3] Any form of misleading transfer of a property at all to its parts, or vice versa, belongs to the category of errors of division and composition, even if linguistic ambiguity is not the cause. The purpose of the error investigation is to provide a report for the evaluation and criticism of arguments. This includes both a descriptive representation of what constitutes an argument and a normative representation of good or bad arguments. [1] [2] In philosophy, errors are generally considered a form of bad argument and discussed as such in this article. Another view, more common in unscientific discourse, considers errors not as arguments, but as false but popular beliefs. [3] Now try to find your own mistakes, both discussed and new.
Here are some other types of misconceptions to get you started. First, identify the error and then identify the cases of it: ad hominem arguments represent an important class among relevance errors. In these, the combatant attempts to attack a thesis by attacking the person expressing that thesis, rather than attacking the thesis itself. [26] [12] [8] [20] [1] The rejection of a theory in physics because its author is Jewish, which was common in the German physics community in the early 1930s, is an example of the ad homin error. But not all ad hominem arguments are fallacies. It is common and reasonable practice in court, for example, to defend oneself against a charge by questioning the reliability of witnesses. The difference between false ad hominem arguments and justified ad hominem arguments depends on the relevance of the contested person`s personality to the thesis in question. The author`s cultural heritage appears to have very little relevance to theories of physics in most cases, but the reliability of a witness in court is very relevant to whether one has the right to believe his testimony.
Whataboutism is a particular form of ad hominem error that seeks to discredit an opponent`s position by accusing him of hypocrisy without directly refuting or refuting his argument. [27] [28] [29] It is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda. [30] [31] [32] Informal errors are so called because their errors do not lie in their logical form. Instead, in order to understand what is wrong with them, we need to look at the content of the argument and therefore consider whether the reasoning in the argument meets our other criteria set out above – relevant information and acceptable premises. These informal errors are generally divided into the following three general categories (Kahane and Tidman 2002, 349): Our error taxonomy aims to categorize errors into different groups and highlight the problems characteristic of the members of each group. Our most general distinction is the distinction between the formal and informal errors mentioned above. Since errors in the form of deductive arguments have already been dealt with in Chapter 3, we will focus in this chapter on errors of the second type: informal errors. For generalization errors, the false premise is due to a false generalization. In the case of the general generalization error, a general rule is wrongly applied to an exceptional case.
For example: “Everyone has the right to his property. Even though Jones had been declared insane, you were not allowed to take the gun away from him. [16]: 147 The generalization in this case ignores the fact that insanity is an exceptional case to which general property rights do not apply without restriction. A hasty generalization, on the other hand, implies the opposite error of drawing a universal conclusion based on a small number of cases. [16] [8] [20] For example: “I have met two people in Nicaragua so far, and they have both been nice to me. So all the people I`m going to meet in Nicaragua will be nice to me. [4] Errors of presumption imply a false or unjustified premise, but are often valid elsewhere. [16] [8] This problematic premise can take different forms and belief in it can be caused in different ways, depending on the different subcategories in this area. Many well-known (presumed) errors in the field of philosophy fall into this category, for example the naturalistic error, the moralistic error, or the intentional error. [12] [18] The content of an argument is found in its statements: this is what is expressed. The source of many informal errors lies in a false premise.
For example, a false dilemma is an error based on a false disjunctive claim that oversimplifies reality by excluding viable alternatives. [12] [4] [16] This perspective is well suited to explain why some slippery slope arguments are errors but others are not.