Critical Thinking Assignment Paper: Identifying Fallacies

Identifying fallacies
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Identifying fallacies
A fallacy is simply a logical error in reasoning. It occurs when a person takes a position based on false reasoning as he/ she tries to persuade others to agree with him/her. There are different kinds of fallacies with some being committed more often than others (Stanford, 2015). Good orators can sometimes persuade people and manipulate them with fallacies hence the need for everyone to be able to identify such fallacies. I have always encountered a number of fallacies in reasoning from various people, including friends, but I have tried to stick to my position of the truth and critical thinking thanks to my awareness of this problem. There are formal and informal fallacies which take the form of deductive reasoning. A deductive reasoning can only be valid if both its premises and conclusions are true; otherwise it is a fallacy because the truth in the premise determines the truth in the deduction (OWL, 2013). An error in reasoning that I encountered on a deductive argument with one of my friends that all men are unfaithful to their romantic friends, hence any man cannot be trusted. This argument can only be valid if it is true that all men are unfaithful to their romantic friends and that any man stands the chance of being unfaithful hence all cannot be trusted. However, it is not true that all men are so thus annulling the first statement. A correct deductive argument would such as all men are mortal. John is a man. It therefore follows that John is mortal. If both the first and second statements are true, then the conclusion would be true.
Another form of fallacy is the informal fallacy, which takes the form of inductive argument. In this case, the premises may be true, but do not necessarily determine the truth in the conclusion (Stanford, 2015). It is worth noting that even a good inductive reasoning with valid premises may have a false conclusion. An example of an inductive argument would be such as: The law of gravity has been constant to...