A logical fallacy is the use of faulty reasoning with unlikely logic applied to it, to present an argument stronger than it really is. These arguments are flawed, deceptive, or false and can be proven wrong with logical reasoning. All forms of communication can contain logical fallacies and are often used to mislead people. Logical Fallacies seem like tricks or illusions for thought processes and are often used sneakily by politicians and media to fool people.
There are many kinds of Logical fallacies, but in this blog post we are going to discuss only two such logical fallacies, which are:
- Post Hoc Fallacy
- Hasty Generalization Fallacy
Post Hoc Fallacy
The definition of this fallacy is “Assuming that due to the occurring of an event a future event must have been caused because the first event happened earlier”. In this fallacy, a causal connection between two situations is made which are not related. For example, if a person who drank water 5 mins ago died, then the fallacy here can be that he died because he drank the water. The summary for this Post hoc fallacy can be that “After this, therefore because of this.”
We can also understand this from a real-world example, while interpreting the supply and demand data, it can be assumed that an increase in price will lead to a decrease in demanded quantity. Here, the assumption is ignoring other factors such as changes in income or taste.
Hasty Generalization Fallacy
The definition of this fallacy is “This logical fallacy occurs when a conclusion is made using a small sample and has insufficient evidence.” In this fallacy, a generalized statement is made about the whole population based on a small sample and doesn’t have enough evidence to back up the statement. For example, if a supercar driver passes by recklessly and the statement is made that all supercar drivers are reckless, here this statement will be a hasty generalization fallacy because the person who made this statement doesn’t have enough evidence to back this statement up for the whole population.
We can also understand this from a real-world example when the coronavirus was spread in 2020 people were not believing in the actual facts, because people were surfing the internet for answers and were convinced by counterarguments provided by alternative facts and withheld truths that were based on fallacies, or errors of logic or reasoning. And here the people were using the hasty generalization fallacy to make people jump to conclusions without them reviewing all available evidence and create panic or chaos.
How do we avoid Logical Fallacies?
- First, we need to have a basic understanding of how an argument works.
- An argument is a set of statements where one statement is inferred from the other.
- There are two types of statements:
-
- Premises: It is a statement that provides reason or support for the conclusion.
- Conclusions: It is a statement that indicates what the arguer is trying to convince the reader/listener for.