Question

Explain what a fallacy is. What kind of mistake is someone making when they commit an informal fallacy in an argument?

Answer 1

Answer- A fallacy refers to the use of invalid reasoning while constructing an argument. It is a type of error in reasoning. Fallacies are sometimes created unintentionally but sometimes they may be created intentionally to deceive people. Majority of the fallacies involves arguments but some of them may also involve explanation, definitions or other products of reasoning. When we describe fallacy in a broader way, it refers to a false belief or the cause of a false belief. Most of the fallacies are the errored arguments in natural language.

Fallacies are divided into two types- formal and informal. Formal fallacies occur in an argument as a standard system of logic. Formal fallacies appear as a pattern of logical reasoning but are always wrong. For example- 1- All humans have ears. 2- Jack is a human. 3- Jack has ears.

Informal fallacy refers to an argument that is formally valid but unreliable because of the irrelevance of one or more of its premises. It refers to a substantive error in an inductive argument. The common mistakes that someone makes while committing an informal fallacy in an argument are the common mistakes related to the relevance, sufficiency and clarity of the evidence. So, informal fallacies are commonly described in these three forms which are the fallacies of relevance, fallacies of sufficiency and fallacies of clarity or ambiguity.

For example-

Half of the adult human wear skirts.

Jack is an adult human male.

There is a 50% chance Jack can wear a skirt.

This is not a logical argument because the first premise is irrelevant. Jack is a man, so he belongs to the population that can not wear a skirt. The fact that half of the population can wear skirt has no logic because we already know which half Jack belongs in.