Argument by Adjective

Wizard
[Web]

A speaker may pepper his argument with adjectives (or adverb), adding unproved assertions. This tactic draws attention away from the main argument, and as such is a form of red herring. Since the assertions have not been developed, refuting them may be difficult as well. Even if the speaker using them has not met his burden of proof, the emotional content of the adjective.

For instance, an activist or lobbyist may say, "There will be serious repercussions from this illegal bill, and I don't just mean to the political fortunes of those who hypocritically voted for it."

What "serious" means in this context is left veiled, but the real gem is "illegal", which presupposes a number of conditions. Illegality implies some (higher) authority whose precepts have been countermanded, but the bare adjective doesn't specify who that authority is, or in what way the law violates those (higher) precepts. Again, that those who voted for some law professed not to want it is left undeveloped, but the charge of "hypocrisy" raises distrust.

I'll look for other examples and update them here.

The Golden Mean

Wizard [Web]

The Golden Mean fallacy says that the truth is somewhere between the extremes, especially right in the middle. Rather, the truth is the truth, extreme or not; "yes" and "no" are two extremes, but very often one is correct and the other incorrect.

Non Causa Pro Causa

This is the generalized 'cause and effect' error. A good explanation is provided at Fallacy Files, which separates Non Causa Pro Causa into two classes of errors, based on events and types.

We can and often do mistake coincidence for cause and effect when looking at events. However, two events happening even repeatedly in the same relation to one another in time or space may be caused by some third event of which we aren't aware. We can also get the cause and effect reversed. The cause we identify may be only the end of a domino chain of causes and effects. And the events actually may be totally unrelated except in the way we observe them.

We can also mistakenly assume that because one event of type C generally causes another event of type E, that a particular event c caused a given event e. For instance, we know that shooting a gun can cause a wound, but that doesn't mean that Johnny shooting his gun caused Freddy's wound, even if they were in the same vicinity at the time of Johnny's gunshot. Someone else could have shot Freddy, Johnny may have been shooting at Freddy's assailant (so that Freddy's wound was the cause of Johnny's shot), or Freddy's wound may not even be a gunshot wound.

Related:
Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc - "with this, therefore because of this"
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc - "after this, therefore because of this"
Texas Sharpshooter - assuming a cluster of data points must have a cause

Shifting the Burden of Proof

Shifting the Burden of Proof is employed in two ways: by an arguer, to more easily establish a claim, and by an audience, to make it more difficult.

When employed by an arguer, too much of the conclusion is assumed, rather than being established. A special case is when (all or part of) the conclusion itself is assumed and used as a premise in the argument, which is called circular reasoning or Begging the Question.

When employed by an audience, the burden is set impossibly high. An arguer may be told that he must have a solid case proved before he can plead it.

Questions over where the burden of proof belongs (outside the legal system, which has explicit rules about it) can be easily answered with the question, "Who needs to be convinced?"

Complex Question

Wizard, Web

Latin: Plurium Interrogationum

Philosophy Pages

The fallacy of complex question presupposes the truth of its own conclusion by including it implicitly in the statement of the issue to be considered...

Fallacy Files picks apart a Mark Crispin Miller use of the complex question, in which he makes several charges in the form of questions, each of which presupposes a damning premise.

No evidence is given in the article for any of these claims. Loaded questions are used in this way to slip claims into rhetoric without the burden of proving them, or the necessity of taking responsibility for unproven assertions.

Accident

The fallacy of accident / Sweeping generalization / Dicto simpliciter

Google

Bruce Thompson:

The argument draws a conclusion from an over-simplistic statement of a rule. This takes two forms:

Destroying the Exception by insisting on the rule, which is called Accident, and

Destroying the Rule by insisting on the exception, which is called Reverse Accident (or in Latin, Secundum Quid).

In either case, the exception falls outside the scope of the rule--or would, if the rule were stated more accurately.

Fallacy Files:

Example:

Birds normally can fly.
Tweety the Penguin is a bird.
Therefore, Tweety can fly.

Exposition:

The fallacy of Accident, one of Aristotle's thirteen fallacies, has been interpreted in various ways by subsequent logicians, perhaps because of the obscurity of The Philosopher's account. I will discuss only one of these interpretations here, due to its relation to recent developments in logic.

Consider the generalization "birds can fly" from the example. Now, it isn't true that all birds can fly, since there are flightless birds. "Some birds can fly" and "many birds can fly" are too weak. "Most birds can fly" is closer to what we mean, but in this case "birds can fly" is a "rule of thumb", and the fallacy of Accident is a fallacy involving reasoning with rules of thumb.

Argument to Tradition

Argumentum ad antiquitatem (the argument to antiquity or tradition). Humans generally accept their environment. The "way it's done" may or may not be the best way, even if it were the best way when it became the common practice.

Appeals to tradition are an attempt to set the burden of proof. They can thus be proper or improper, but when the goal of the argument is to show that a practice is reasonable or good, its current state of popularity may be irrelevant.