Fallacies

There are many different types of fallacies; three of them are the personal attack, attacking the motive and the red herring. While these fallacies can be committed in any type of circumstance they are usually rooted in anger or self-defense. A personal attack is attacking someone based on his or her personal merits. Attacking a persons motive is saying that they have other reasons for wanting to do something. Finally the red herring attack is an attack of allusion, you bring up other issues to distract from the original issue and try to say that the effect of those issues resolve the problem even though they have no barring.

Fallacies can be further categorized into two groups: fallacies of relevance and fallacies of insufficient evidence. Relevance fallacies are ones that occur on the premise that they are logically irrelevant to the conclusion. For example: I drink coffee, coffee is made from beans, I therefor must like beans. This is not necessarily true but a (however impractical) string of logical thoughts led to its conclusion. A fallacy of insufficient evidence occurs when nothing in the argument is even remotely tied together. For example: I like to take walks in the morning, this must mean that my boss is a nice guy. Nothing is related and yet a conclusion was drawn.

The fallacy of personal attack carries no validity for the person making the attack. This is often heard of in personal arguments between a couple. They may be discussing something about finances and all of a sudden one of them is yelling that the other never finished college and is lazy and that’s why they spent so much on dinner. This obviously has nothing to do with the how much money was spent on dinner and explains nothing. For it to be a true fallacy of personal attack the statement must not be relevant to the argument. According to Intrepidsoftware.com:

There are three major forms of attacking the Person:

1. ad hominem (abusive): instead of attacking an assertion, the argument attacks the person who made the assertion.

2. ad hominem (circumstantial): instead of attacking an assertion the author points to the relationship between the person
making the assertion and the person’s circumstances.

1. ad hominem (tu quoque): this form of attack on the person notes that a person does not practice what he
preaches.

In regards to critical thinking and decision making attacking the person in regards to their appearance or their situation is not overly effective in the sense that it does not result in closure of the problem. If, however, the person’s goal is to rattle or simply aggravate the intended party then attacking the person is a very effective and possibly enjoyable way to argue.

Attacking a person’s motive for something is a critical way of handling an argument. For example if a husband suggests to a wife that they invite a foreign exchange student to live with them to assist them with school and she in turn accuses him of wanting to sleep with a foreign student. She takes this attack because of her own insecurities.

“The red herring fallacy is committed when an arguer tries to sidetrack his or her audience by raising an irrelevant issue and then claims that the original issue has effectively been settled by the irrelevant diversion.” (Bassham pg. 151) The red herring term came from an old fox hunting tradition of dragging a smoked herring along the fox’s trail to throw the hounds of its scent. (Fallacy Files.com). The trick here is diversion. When a magician does a card trick he usually has one hand doing something to move your eyes visually towards it, either waving a wand or waving it around while the other hand is trying to find your hidden card. This can be said of political campaigns, yelling that someone was a dairy farmer their whole life and therefore is not fit to hold office truly holds no water, however these types of statements are constantly made to undermine the opponents and put them on the defense. The person being attacked will then defend their upbringing rather than spend the necessary time proving why they are capable of holding office.

There are many types of fallacies and the three discussed here when viewed by a large audience make the person using them seem foolish and unknowledgeable. Saying someone had a bad toupee does not mean that they don’t know how to train a seal. The two are not related but tactics like this are often used to distract, frustrate and ultimately win arguments and campaigns.