For all of our talk about critical thinking, how many of the following do you think our average graduate would be able to describe or recognize? How many come up in any of YOUR classes? I could imagine a general education program and assessment based only on these. Probably more productive of that elusive “responsible citizen” than all of the ideological tripe we try to wedge into GE. Can I fantasize about a curriculum built around these and some affirmative evidentiary and analytical skills? One where we start with a framework of such and design our courses to resonate with it (wouldn’t have to change a lot – just reference these as touchstones and cultivate styles of thinking that recognize bad arguments and can generate good ones.
It might help to develop the critical thinking skills of the faculty and administration, too, and make for big improvements in how those two polities perform.
From “A List Of Fallacious Arguments” by Don Lindsay (h/t Victoria Stodden)
- Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man)
- Affirming The Consequent
- Amazing Familiarity
- Ambiguous Assertion
- Appeal To Anonymous Authority
- Appeal To Authority
- Appeal To Coincidence
- Appeal To Complexity
- Appeal To False Authority
- Appeal To Force
- Appeal To Pity (Appeal to Sympathy, The Galileo Argument)
- Appeal To Widespread Belief (Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal To Common Practice)
- Argument By Dismissal
- Argument By Emotive Language (Appeal To The People)
- Argument By Fast Talking
- Argument By Generalization
- Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement)
- Argument By Half Truth (Suppressed Evidence)
- Argument By Laziness (Argument By Uninformed Opinion)
- Argument By Personal Charm
- Argument By Pigheadedness (Doggedness)
- Argument By Poetic Language
- Argument By Prestigious Jargon
- Argument By Question
- Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam)
- Argument by Rhetorical Question
- Argument By Scenario
- Argument By Selective Observation
- Argument By Selective Reading
- Argument By Slogan
- Argument By Vehemence
- Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics)
- Argument From Age (Wisdom of the Ancients)
- Argument From Authority
- Argument From False Authority
- Argument From Personal Astonishment
- Argument From Small Numbers
- Argument From Spurious Similarity
- Argument Of The Beard
- Argument To The Future
- Bad Analogy
- Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology)
- Burden Of Proof
- Causal Reductionism (Complex Cause)
- Contrarian Argument
- Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection, False Emphasis)
- Cliche Thinking
- Common Sense
- Complex Question (Tying)
- Confusing Correlation And Causation
- Disproof By Fallacy
- Equivocation
- Error Of Fact
- Euphemism
- Exception That Proves The Rule
- Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation)
- Extended Analogy
- Failure To State
- Fallacy Of Composition
- Fallacy Of Division
- Fallacy Of The General Rule
- Fallacy Of The Crucial Experiment
- False Cause
- False Compromise
- Genetic Fallacy (Fallacy of Origins, Fallacy of Virtue)
- Having Your Cake (Failure To Assert, or Diminished Claim)
- Hypothesis Contrary To Fact
- Inconsistency
- Inflation Of Conflict
- Internal Contradiction
- Least Plausible Hypothesis
- Lies
- Meaningless Questions
- Misunderstanding The Nature Of Statistics (Innumeracy)
- Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection)
- Needling
- Non Sequitur
- Not Invented Here
- Outdated Information
- Pious Fraud
- Poisoning The Wells
- Psychogenetic Fallacy
- Reductio Ad Absurdum
- Reductive Fallacy (Oversimplification)
- Reifying
- Short Term Versus Long Term
- Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel’s Nose)
- Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck)
- Statement Of Conversion
- Stolen Concept
- Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension)
- Two Wrongs Make A Right (Tu Quoque, You Too)
- Weasel Wording