I'm afraid that a resource like this will make internet debates even less
pleasant and productive than they already are.
To my experience, calling out an internet interlocutor for committing a formal
logic fallacy only serves the purpose of shutting down conversation.
After all, formal logic fallacies apply to formal logic statements- but
internet conversations are not carried out in the language of formal logic.
They are carried out in natural language (natural English, most often).
Therefore, formal logic rules do not apply. One might as well accuse an
interlocutor that they have miscalculated the gradient of their comment.
We comment on the internet. We say what we think makes sense in the way we
think it makes most sense to say it. We are not infallible logical machines
that calculate the truth or falsity of logical statements by rigorous
application of a set of rules of inference. We are not little lay philosophers
trained in formal logic, engaged in rigorous debate. We sound clueless and
pretentious when we try to sound as if we were.
We should learn to not take the name of logic in vain.
I disagree. Critical thinking using logic and sound reasoning should be taught and learned in an early age. Although it has been now discontinued, I had really liked in the past the specifications of the British AS/A Levels in Critical thinking.
> We say what we think makes sense in the way we think it makes most sense to say it. We are not infallible logical machines that calculate the truth or falsity of logical statements by rigorous application of a set of rules of inference.
Sure we aren't, but a mistake is a mistake, even if it's one that come from logic.
Wouldn't you correct me if I said that the sky is green? Why wouldn't you correct me if I made a formal logic error then? The funny thing is that unlike logic, my sentence could be actually true.
For sure there's ways to do it that's wrong, like doing it to feel superior, but it doesn't means that it's wrong to point out logical mistake altogether because of that.
I think fallacies should be taught earlier in life. When I learned them, I found out so many mistake I made regularly in my ways of thinking, and even from a quick glance of that website, I found many more of them that I clearly did from time to time.
It's okay to makes mistake, but the impact of the mistake I may have made in some case is certainly not okay.
Agreed that the formalism tends to be an appeal to authority or simply a way to appeal to a bias and shut down opposing views. I think more often than not, formal fallacies are misused and misapplied in informal debates, relying on over-generalizations and highly inferred arguments that can’t be supported by the literal facts of the debate and misread or outright mischaracterize the actual arguments. Often the person accusing another of a fallacy is in fact false and committing their own fallacy.
Maybe this could be useful resource to disprove and shut down attacks that misuse formal fallacies.
I don't understand what's supposed to be especially intuitive about this? It's an alphabetic list of fallacies - how do I "lookup" one if not by just scrolling down the list?
I have no idea what the symbols below the search bar mean and was surprised that the "i" button doesn't give me more information about the site or showed help but instead just apparently switched between descriptions and synonyms.
I strongly suggest using better sources for this. You should avoid using Wikipedia when things like the SEP[1] and IEP[2] are available. Also, "probabilistic" fallacies are not formal fallacies. E.g. something like the "gambler's fallacy" is not a de facto formal logical fallacy.
Further, the "Naturalistic Fallacy" isn't what you think it is. There's a difference between "argument from nature" or "the appeal to nature" (which is what you think it is), and G.E. Moore's Naturalistic Fallacy[3]. This is a pretty embarrassing mistake, especially if you'd like to be treated like an authority on the subject.
Noted. Thanks for taking the time to point this out. I totally agree that to create a tool like this the content must be accurate. I tried to avoid taking content from Wikipedia as much as possible as I'm also wary of its authenticity, so I've limited Wikipedia content to fallacy summaries only—as opposed to the detailed description (the panel that appears when you select a fallacy), in which case I used IEP and The Fallacy Files[1] as the major sources. Will certainly check out SEP.
I still need to do more homework regarding your claim regarding "probabilistic" fallacies, but you are correct about "Naturalistic Fallacy" so I have removed it as an alias of "Appeal to Nature". Thanks again for taking the time to point it out.
I've never found it well argued that appeals to nature are inherently fallacious to any good philosophical or logical standard. The common advice that they are fallacious has always struck me as ideological with explanations relying on tainted examples and suggestion that a common persons idea of nature is just too unique and incomprehensible to be useful.
In our time of increasing environmental tragedy, yet with some hope springing that we shall be able to make changes en mass to redeem the future, some appeals to nature seem very valid and perhaps essential to culturally appreciating our technologically precarious situation. For instance that which is more natural is more sustainable to nature. Microplastics are less natural than sand. A possible caveat - electric cars are somewhat more sustainable than combustion. But the presence of caveats does not make the appeal a fallacy - if by fallacy we mean something with no merit for consideration.
Natural processes are studied - and need to be studied to be of use and be used sustainably. They are numerous, interconnected, complex, mature, essential to human life and all the life which humans value. The concept of biophilia itself appeals to nature.
Appeals to nature should simply not be listed as an inherently wrong pattern of thought, fair to rule out of bounds. That message is a bad, hopefully retreating ideological position.
The appeal to nature fallacy means: A is natural, and B is not, therefore A is better.
You example is somewhat orthogonal, I think. You argue for sustainability as an axiomatic value (and I agree) - but sustainability is not an automatic consequence of something being natural!
Asbestos is natural, but using asbestos is not sustainable (for humans). Arsene is naturally occuring in ground water, yet we don't want to have it there and meticulous measure its presence. Mercury is natural, yet unsustainable when in contact with living beings. Predators overhunting prey in year 1, then starving to death in year 2 is natural. Disabled humans dying as children is natural and so on.
> A is natural, and B is not, therefore A is better
I'll just add since my reply was a bit short - that if not for the danger of losing sight of the point here, I could continue your deductive argument with a list of examples which seem to support the rule and could criticize your chosen examples, but the important point is that statements of these kinds are not philosophically known to be false in most given contexts. The naturalistic fallacy is actually a strong case that they are false in philosophy of ethics, and this has been ideologically amplified to teach that they are false in all contexts. Its terrible education, not fallacious at all to say: "my cats natural diet is small mammals, so its probably better if I dont feed it too much bread and mayo." etc.
I think we mostly agree - the deduction is not the problem of the naturalistic argument, the axiom that natural equals good is. We can neither infer deontological conclusions ("it is natural that some offspring dies before sexural maturity, therefore we don't have to change the system"), nor consequentialist ones ("this material is natural, therefore not harmful to me").
Because of this I think the naturalistic fallacy is indeed a fallacy. Instead of the appeal to nature, I propose sustainability as an ethical core value. One can infer arguments for both human and environmental wellbeing from sustainability, achieving what I think your (and my) goal is. (Sorry if I misunderstood - philosophy is a topic where me not being a native speaker can severly hamper mutual understanding..)
> the deduction is not the problem of the naturalistic argument, the axiom that natural equals good is
In philosophy deduction is a problem, but there are innumerable well reasoned positions which people take that are totally reliant on deduction so it cannot be claimed to identify generally false reasoning (fallacy).
It is incorrect to interchange the concepts of "appeal to nature", "naturalistic argument" and "naturalistic fallacy" and presuppose the strength of an axiom of "natural equals good" in different contexts (except perhaps theories of ethics).
Notice that you have accepted yourself a universal axiom of "natural has no valid appeal in any context". That is an incredible position to have accepted. If it is argued "natural building materials are better for ecological concerns",or "natural foods are better for health concerns" regard what is intelligibly meant by the statement. Regard what "better" and "natural" and "concerns" mean in each statements context.
An appeal to nature in a discussion is an invitation to examine in good faith what is natural to articles under discussion. A reply "arsenic is natural and bad food" is surely not in good faith, surely it can be understood that arsenic is not natural to mammals diet? (except in accidental and rare amounts). Such pontifications should go without saying in good faith discussion, or at least not be offered to claim a perspective is fallacious (invalid).
> You argue for sustainability as an axiomatic value (and I agree) - but sustainability is not an automatic consequence of something being natural
Yes but that simply means it is not a deductive argument [1]. This is very far from being fallacious. It would be quite disastrous to regard all deductive arguments as false at least in everyday life. "the weather report is for snow - wrap up well"
"Probabilistic fallacies" aren't "formal fallacies" because formal fallacies have a very narrow definition: they are fallacies of formal logic -- be it FOL, SOL, infinitary logics, modal logics, etc. -- e.g. illegal "moves" that break particular rule-sets.
Probabilistic fallacies deal with incorrect conclusions drawn from looking at data. Or, in other cases, misapplications (or misunderstandings) of mathematical laws. These kinds of mistakes have nothing to do with "formal logic."
Sure, but if we're going to have a list of fallacies to help people identify fallacious thinking (and use it as a blunt weapon in internet slagging matches) then we might as well include probabilistic fallacies in that list. They are basic mistakes in reasoning just as formal logic fallacies are. They can always be listed under their own category.
Anyway the calculus of probabilities is a logic. It's only for historical reasons that this is not more widely recognised (and its unfortunate association with statistics).
Edit: the website itself doesn't say anything about "formal fallacies", just "logical fallacies". Which seems to be used in an loose manner that should admit probabilistic fallacies in the set of "logic fallacies".
One thing the site could do is extend the "periodic table" metaphor to at least "color" the differences between the types of fallacies involved and give slightly different styling to formal debate fallacies versus probability fallacies.
I appreciate the effort you put in for designing the site but as a user it’s confusing for me. Before using the content i have to learn how to use your site ? Why not keep the basic layout with labels. For example i which is on top of the page toggles the description of each fallacy, that was hard to detect on my phone screen.
It's not obvious to me that this is a good thing to have. I predict that its primary usage will be as a generator of fully-general counterarguments: people will use it to look up how best to defeat their opponents without having to exercise any thought at all. There's a reason that the "fallacy fallacy" is on the list.
Ya, a reply with a pure "that's F(4)" makes the same mistake (sidestepping the subject) it's pointing out.
Some rely on hijacking common sense. The slippery slope for example, I'm 95% sure it's the most common "pretend it's fallacious" reply, even though it's actually "by no means invariably fallacious" because it is a physics problem, and the grey area between it and political incrementalism (for example) starts with true, not the opposite.
Motivation: We live in a digital world full of (m/d)isinformation. On one end we should fight to eradicate the source, but on the other end we should exercise strong critical thinking skills so we don’t fall victim to false narratives. I created this tool to help people easily look up 100 common logical fallacies.
I wonder if anyone has ever said, sincerely, "sir, I believe you are committing an Argumentum ad Baculum," let alone had this produce a useful result.
Discussion is subject to an information problem when we're trying to strike a balance between underexplaining and overexplaining.
I have a mental catalog of things A, B, C, D, E. You have a mental catalog of things C, D, E, F, G. Neither of us is aware of the other's catalog.
So we have to guess. Say I argue X -> B -> Y, but I assumed you already knew B and glossed over it. That's going to look like X -> ?? -> Y, and you'll likely percieve that as a non sequitur because you can't follow how I got from X to Y.
Your best recourse is to say, "hold on, I don't follow how you get from X to Y," whereupon I can guess you don't know B and explain it.
Even if you're sure someone is committing a fallacy, it's not reliable to cite the name of the fallacy. As fallacies have entered general usage, they've taken on a much broader meaning than what references cite.
A useful (intuitive even!) reference would include plain English explanations. Instead of saying something is a strawman, "I think you're exaggerating my position here because I don't believe X, Y or Z," makes clear what the problem is.
> I wonder if anyone has ever said, sincerely, "sir, I believe you are committing an Argumentum ad Baculum," let alone had this produce a useful result.
Formal debate structures go all the way back to the time of Aristotle and there certainly have existed places where bringing up a fallacy directly was meant to encourage an interlocutor to explain how the fallacy doesn't apply or take the time to restructure their argument to not rely on a fallacy.
Most formal debate has fallen out of fashion. About the last place you may see it is "Debate Clubs" and (sometimes) Law practice.
Certainly the internet has pushed things almost extremely informal with respect to debate. Indeed a reference to a formal fallacy can derail an internet discussion because few internet interlocutors understand or care if they make a fallacy in their arguments, and sometimes things like cognitive dissonance seems to implore them to hold fast and tight to their fallacies rather engage in eliminating them. But that's not necessarily an argument against bringing up fallacies when you see them. Illiteracy of formal debate logic [1] might be a problem on the modern internet.
(Arguably it's a large part of why the modern US "Presidential Candidate Debates" are similarly so terrible, because they aren't formal debates, fallacies are never challenged, nor allowed to be challenged, and the average amount of debate literacy has just been tossed out the window for extremely informal dog and pony shows that fail to be useful debates in terms of what debates were intended to do: debate.)
> A useful (intuitive even!) reference would include plain English explanations.
The [I] button in the corner of this particular reference site shows the English explanations in the "periodic table" directly. (The site also shows the English explanations for them in details popups.) That this is not the default or that most of buttons are not well explained (and there's no differentiation between buttons, text, and links in the stylesheet) certainly does leave the reference site a long ways from intuitive (or accessible for that matter), but it does have the useful tools even if they are hard to find at least.
[1] Which is not far from Logic/Programming, as indeed a lot of Boolean Logic isn't far removed. It's almost a wonder there aren't more Programmers extremely passionate about Debate Fallacies.
In a similar vein https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com was put together back in early 2012. Not quite exhaustive, but meant to cover off the big hitters. Main benefit was that it allowed for linking to specific fallacies through comments, etc. "Your logical fallacy is Strawman" kind of thing. The site's dated for sure (hasn't been touched in many years), but it still pops up every now and then! [edit / disclaimer - I helped out on the first few versions of ylfi, really enjoy seeing how people re-envision these kind of things]
I really loved the site, great work. My only feedback is to make the pagination more apparent...I at first thought it was a work in progress and you only had the first 20 until I searched around and noticed the pagination boxes... I think clearer pagination or pagination that beckons you to click will reduce your bounce rate
I think understanding logical fallacies is wonderful, especially if you seek to understand why they are fallacies and improve your own thinking and arguing to avoid them.
However, people that pull logical fallacies out in an argument are probably not arguing in a convincing way! Either the person they are arguing against is actually succumbing to the fallacy, and in that case they would rarely even know what is going on when you name it, or they totally understand it and were using shorthand or just phrasing it in a way that opened them up to that attack, but a less intentionally close reading would reveal a deeper argument.
I think this is an awesome project. Any effort facilitating the understanding/recognition of common fallacies leads to a better world.
After "name", "description" and "example" should be right next. "Alias", "Type", "Inheritance", "SUBYPE" should be much lower, as they make the user scroll to read those 2 which imo, are the most important.
In terms of design, I wonder why you didn't go for a full-screen modal, I'm using a laptop and only 40% of the screen to the right is used. Maybe use a modal that utilize 90%, or 80% when a fallacy is clicked upon.
I liked the style of the site and the clear presentation (I've bookmarked it, you have repeat business:) but I'd appreciate it if there was a fallback for those without javascript enabled.
If I could recommend something: the ability to share a specific fallacy to social media in response to a comment or tweet will bring you a lot of traffic.
Would appreciate a similar one for "laws" and "adages", I can never find a decent resource that makes them easy to find the name when you already know the concept (recorded as an idea here[0]).
it should. in the real world and online, logic is useless at convincing people. probably because empiricism is more effective at discovering useful knowledge epistemologically speaking
Seems like a good collection of various logical constructs. I wonder if the authors have any plans to program it into something that could identify or use these same patterns in text.
i prefer the original site because i can use ctrl + F to search, vs their weird async flashy search. since the content seems largely the same, there's no value added in this site.
To my experience, calling out an internet interlocutor for committing a formal logic fallacy only serves the purpose of shutting down conversation.
After all, formal logic fallacies apply to formal logic statements- but internet conversations are not carried out in the language of formal logic. They are carried out in natural language (natural English, most often). Therefore, formal logic rules do not apply. One might as well accuse an interlocutor that they have miscalculated the gradient of their comment.
We comment on the internet. We say what we think makes sense in the way we think it makes most sense to say it. We are not infallible logical machines that calculate the truth or falsity of logical statements by rigorous application of a set of rules of inference. We are not little lay philosophers trained in formal logic, engaged in rigorous debate. We sound clueless and pretentious when we try to sound as if we were.
We should learn to not take the name of logic in vain.