Let's talk about Logical Fallacies (Part-1)

Debate or argument is our day to day event. We do it most often formally or informally. When you are debating with someone, you want to use all of the resources in your disposal to convince the other person that you are right, That’s pretty good until you are not ending up with logical fallacies to just establish your point whereas your point is becoming invalid.

Logical fallacies mean a malfunctioned logic or an error in reasoning. The logic which is just used to attack or defeat the opposition but the logic really doesn’t makes sense. Perhaps politicians are the people who more often utilize the logical fallacies. Let’s talk about it in details.

Straw man Argument:

What things come into your mind when you hear the word ‘Straw man’ ? A man made of straw or something like scarecrow, right? A thing which is made of straw is definitely very weak and a little amount of force can collapse it. Same thing goes with straw man argument. The logic is very weak and void.

For example, a reporter asked one of the ministers of the leading political party during a press conference that why their prime minister give scripted speeches and there is no chance of countering or questioning government steps or decisions? Is prime minister afraid of answering us?

Then the minister oversimplified the argument and started to tell that their PM is not afraid at all. He had done these and these things, he was successful in these and these things etc etc.

So here the point is the reporter asked whether the PM is afraid or not. But the minister took it that the PM was afraid and tried to prove that he was not. This type of oversimplifying or exaggerating the topic or taking the topic out of the context to counter it is called straw man argument. You will see in most TV debates people use this logical fallacy.

False Dichotomy:

Have you ever argued with someone and they only give you two options when you feel like there are many more? Chances are they were falling into the trap of the false dichotomy.

Using false dichotomy means oversimplifying the argument and focusing on only two outcomes or solutions where there are more solutions than that.

For example, maybe you are in a political debate and one asserts that either you are with the leading party or with the opposition party. But there are not only 2 parties in the country rather there are more than that. Not necessary that you will choose only from those two.

Again, either you are in support of death penalty of terrorists or you are with the terrorists. Things seems to be very clear here. But the thing can be also like this that maybe you don’t support the death penalty of them and also you are against of terrorists. So not necessary the options will be just two.

Slippery Slope:

Our third logical fallacy is slippery slope. Literally it means that, if you take a wrong step gradually you will fall down a deep ditch. A wrong incident gives birth to chain of incidents which cause a huge negative impact. This fallacy is used in fear mongering.

For example, one says, ‘School is killing us. Textbooks are made of papers. Papers are made of trees. So trees are being cut down and environment is dying’. Here you can see there are no proofs that the key events will actually happen.

Similarly another example is , you will fail in tomorrow’s exam. So you will not get chance in college. Then you can’t get admitted in university. So you will remain unemployed.

There are no proofs that one event will actually lead to multiple key events. So the logic is void.

Ad hominem:

Ad hominem means "against the person" in Latin. So the ad hominem fallacy happens when you attack a person's character, appearance, personality, or other irrelevant aspects in an argument instead of attacking what they're saying.

For example, arguments are going on about something. If candidate A attacked candidate B saying that his dress up is not so good or he is not that much cool, is it related with the argument? No, of course. Again, you are saying that the people of Dhaka need a good life that’s why we are arranging tree plantations. And now if another person says, “People of Dhaka are not friendly or their rude”. This doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes ad hominem are not even considered a logic. Because a debate is based on a topic and you have to express our opinions upon that. We can’t personally attack a person or go for physical conflict. That’s wrong.

The post hoc fallacy:

You might have heard the phrase "post hoc ergo propter hoc" This Latin phrase translates to "After this, therefore because of this." Now that might sound like a jumble of conjunctions and such, but it basically means that if event B happened after event A, that must mean that event A caused event B. But this is not always true.

This becomes a fallacy when people make up logics assuming the previous event must caused the later event. Like someone asserts something based purely on the order that things happened. This means they're not taking into account other factors that affected or caused the event to happen.

Maybe there was an earthquake during which a building fell down. That's a pretty clear example of causality – the earthquake (event A) caused the building to fall down (event B).

But what if, after that same earthquake, a lot of people moved away from the city? Now, some of them might have moved because the earthquake was the last straw. But many might have fled because of rising housing costs, pollution, over-crowding, poor infrastructure, poor schools, or a bunch of other factors.

In other words, the earthquake likely wasn't the only direct cause of people moving away.

So far we have discussed 5 logical fallacies. There are lot more. I’ll come up with those in the next part. Question may arise how I can avoid those fallacies? Yah some are very confusing and we can easily fall into it. Don't just try to deceive the listener. Use relevant information from relevant sources. long you stick to the principles and practice more and more you can do better in arguments. Best of luck!!!