Logic: Informal Fallacies, Logic And Language, Definitions

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An informal fallacy committed when the support offered for some conclusion is an inappropriate appeal to the emotions--patriotism, pity or the like--of the listeners.

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Relevance: The Appeal to Emotion (ad populum)

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An informal fallacy committed when some distraction is used to mislead and confuse.

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Relevance: The Red Herring

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An informal fallacy committed when some the position of one's opponent is misrepresented and that distorted position is made the object of attack.

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Relevance: The Straw Man

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An informal fallacy committed when, rather than attacking the substance of some position, one attacks the person of its advocate, either abusively or as a consequence of his or her special circumstances.

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Relevance: Argument Against the Person (ad hominem)

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An informal fallacy committed when force, or the threat of force, is relied on to win consent.

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Relevance: Appeal to Force (ad baculum)

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An informal fallacy committed when one refutes, not the thesis one's interlocutor is advancing, but some different thesis that one mistakenly imputes to him or her.

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Relevance: Missing the Point (ignoratio elenchi)

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An informal fallacy in which a conclusion is supported by an illegitimate appeal to ignorance, as when it is supposed that something is likely to be true because we cannot prove that it is false.

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Defective Induction: The Argument from Ignorance (ad ignoratiam)

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An informal fallacy in which the appeal to authority is illegitimate because the authority appealed to has no special claim to expertise on the matter in question.

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Defective Induction: Appeal to Inappropriate Authority (ad verecundiam)

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An informal fallacy in which the mistake arises from accepting as the cause of an event what is not really its cause.

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Defective Induction: False Cause

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An informal fallacy in which a principle that is true of a particular case is applied, carelessly or deliberately, to the great run of cases.

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Defective Induction: Hasty Generalization

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An informal fallacy in which a generalization is applies to individual cases that it does not govern.

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Presumption: Accident

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An informal fallacy in which a question is asked in such a way as to presuppose the truth of some proposition buried in the question.

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Presumption: Complex Question

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An informal fallacy in which the conclusion of an argument is stated or assumed in one of the premises.

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Presumption: Begging the Question (petitio principii)

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A function of language that attempts to convey information.

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Informative

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A function of language that communicates feelings from the speaker to the listener.

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Expressive

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A function of language that attempts to make someone behave in a certain way.

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Directive

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A function of language that is used for ritualistic interaction.

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Ceremonial

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A function of language that serves to carry out the function it announces.

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Performative

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A structure of definitions that correctly applies several objects to a term.

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Intension

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A structure of definition that shares attributes to all and only the objects in the class that term denotes.

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Extension

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A definition that states the conventional connotation, or intension, of the term to be defined; usually a definition by genus and difference.

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Connotative Definition

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A definition that identifies the extension of a term, by (for example) listing the members of the class of objects to which the term refers; the members of that class are thus denoted.

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Denotative Definition

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An informal fallacy in which two or more meaning of the same word or phrases have been confused.

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Ambiguity: Equivocation

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An informal fallacy arising from the loose, awkward, or mistaken way in which words are combined, leading to alternative possible meanings of a statement.

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Ambiguity: Amphiboly

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An informal fallacy committed when a term or phrase had a meaning in the conclusion of an argument different from its meaning in one of the premises, the difference arising chiefly from a change in emphasis given to the words used.

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Ambiguity: Accent

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An informal fallacy in which an inference is mistakenly drawn from the attributes of the parts of a whole to the attributes of the whole itself.

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Ambiguity: Composition

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An informal fallacy in which a mistaken inference is drawn from the attributes of a while to the attributes of the parts of the whole.

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Ambiguity: Division