Many people are liberal with their logic. If you only knew where they went wrong you could refute them. Well now you can!
Presenting the Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies!
This fully clickable and navigable outline gives you ability to learn about any logical fallacy, where it comes from, and how to spot it. Spice up your arguments with the power of Aristotle himself!
Much of pseudoscience is driven by faulty reasoning, so take a look at the chart and get out there to fight it!
[What did you think? Did I sound like a science-pitchman?]
What`s a straw-man anyway?! And what does smoked herring have to do with anything? Band wagons, slippery slopes, what gives?!
If you’ve been asking yourself any of the above questions, you might find the following link pretty useful. It lists and explains some of the most common errors in argumentation, most of which are often times found in theist discourse. Without further ado, I give you Logical Fallacies:
The website gives you all the tools you need to successfully detect and counter your opponent’s false argument using logic and reason.
In closing, inquiring minds want to know: when is the last time someone used a fallacy to try and win an argument with you? Share your stories in the comment section below.
Later edit: Romanian readers can find a comprehensive list of logical fallacies in Romanian here
Denying someone access to other relationships. Taunting on the playground. Yelling degrading remarks. Downplaying accomplishments. Threatening to take the children away.
From bullying and manipulative mind games to sexual harassment and elder care neglect, emotional and verbal abuse is rampant in our society. No one is immune from encountering abusive people, but everyone can make healthy choices to end destructive relationship patterns.
Emotional abuse
Emotional abuse is difficult to define and many cases are never reported; nevertheless, it’s clear that this form of destructive behavior is based on power and control. An emotionally abusive person may dismiss your feelings and needs, expect you to perform humiliating or unpleasant tasks, manipulate you into feeling guilty for trivial things, belittle your outside support system or blame you for unfortunate circumstances in his or her life. Jealousy, possessiveness and mistrust characterize an emotionally abusive person…
In Part Three’s video, Associate Professor of Philosophy Kevin deLaplante talked about the abusive Ad Hominem fallacy. This is the fallacy of rejecting a claim or an argument given by someone because we don’t like something about the person, and we mistake criticism of a person for criticism of his or her claim or argument.
Professor deLapante’s most blatant example was, “Your argument is bad because YOU SUCKI!” — The problem isn’t with criticism or praise, it is with confusing the judging of a person with the judging of an argument.
Several examples of Ad Hominem attacks that Sid used on this Blog are listed here. However, you may discover that Sid did not use the Ad Hominem fallacy during the debate, which ended on December 8, 2011. The reason may be because he was getting away with his intellectual dishonesty since no one was stopping him. Sid’s use of the Ad Hominem fallacy comes afterwards.
On January 2, 2012, Sid said, “You’re a mythomaniac, a propagandist, and endorser of one of the most repressive regimes in the world. And your website is a series of disconnected nonsense decorated by retarded videos. You can’t construct an argument to save your life, and the sycophants who show up here saying, ‘Yes, Lloyd, I agree with you,’ belong in Sgt. McGillicuty’s Travelling Nutbar Show.
“Your ideas are an advertisement for how whacky you are, and you’re so whacky, you don’t even realize it. Ever wonder why no one except other crazies post comments here? I’ll tell you: those thousands of viewers read your posts and think, ‘Good god!’”
Note – I should have started deleting Sid’s comments when his use of Ad Hominem occurred.
However, I started deleting them on January 11, 2012
Here are a few examples of Sid’s ad hominem fallacies from the Deleted Comment File —
On January 11 at 14:17, Sid said, “There is no such thing as weasal [Note: proper spelling is weasel] words. Again, that’s teenagese [Note: no such word]. You could never use the term weasal words in academic discourse, just like you could never use dude, LMAO, bittersweet, etc. There are proper – adult – terms for such things. That you used the phrase weasal words underscores a dearth of knowledge, juvenility, or both.
“You can quote or copy-and-paste all the fallacy definitions you wish, but you’ll never be able to employ them in argument or rebuttal. You lack the wherewithal.”
On January 11 at 19:21, Sid said, “You lack the intelligence to argue, so you ban. What do all those books you’ve discovered say about that?” [Note: This was after he claimed there were no books on the topic, and I proved him wrong.]
On January 12 at 09:21, Sid said, “You delete the posts because you’re a propagandist and by extension a censor. You don’t have the intellectual wherewithall to debate, so you ban.”
On January 12 at 09:24, Sid said, “Banning my comments only makes you look like a bad sport. You can’t argue – you don’t know how – so you delete.”
On January 12 at 17:22, Sid said, “You just don’t know how to debate, so you cheat by deleting your opponents’ remarks.”
On January 14 at 20:19, Sid said, “You’re an imbecile Lloyd, a soft headed moron.”
In the Ad Hominem video in Part 3, Professor deLaplante says an argument is a collection of claims linked by relations of logical entailment or support. The plausibility or implausibility of those claims and their validity or invalidity of the argument given isn’t determined by facts about the moral character of the person asserting the argument… Facts about someone’s moral character by themselves don’t make it anymore less likely that their arguments are good or bad.
Ad hominem arguments rely on the following types of premises:
(Almost) any claim that P makes about X is (probably) false, because of some feature of P. Meaning, (Almost) any claim Lloyd makes about China or the Chinese is (probably) false, because of some feature of Lloyd’s moral character as defined by Sid.
or
(Almost) any argument that P gives about X is (probably bad, because of some feature of P. Meaning, (Almost) any argument that Lloyd gives about China and the Chinese is (probably) bad, because of some feature of Lloyd’s moral character as defined by Sid.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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