Fallacy and Its Types

WHAT IS FALLACY?

The term fallacy is derived from the Latin word “fallo” which means “I deceive.” Originally, fallacy was regarded as a deceptive argument, that is, an argument that seems to be correct but is actually not correct or conclusive.

The antithesis of truth is error. Truth is the aim and goal of science and philosophy, and truth can be attained only by correct thinking. It is the particular purpose of logic to supply the mind with the knowledge of the laws of thought and the rules of correct thinking, so that it can proceed with safety and certainty in its pursuit of truth. These laws and rules have now been examined and established; familiarity with their technique should help the mind to avoid the more glaring errors which result from a violation of the fundamental forms in which the mind casts its thoughts in the formulation of arguments. In addition, fallacy is violation of one of the criteria of a good argument- structural, relevance, acceptability, sufficiency, and rebuttal criterion, which means that fallacies are flaws in arguments that stem from one or more of the following:

A structural flaw in the argument

The Structural Principle

The first criterion of a good argument requires that one who argues for or against a position should use an argument that meets the fundamental structural requirements of a well-formed argument, which is a conclusion with at least one reason in support of it; if it is a normative argument, it must have a normative premise. Also, a well-formed argument must use reasons that do not contradict each other, contradict the conclusion, or assume the truth of the conclusion. Neither can it draw any invalid deductive inference.

A premise that is irrelevant to the conclusion

The Relevance Principle

This second criterion of a good argument requires that one who presents an argument for or against a position should set forth only reasons whose truth provides some evidence for the truth of the conclusion.

A...