Table 2-1 Summary Table of Fallacies

 

Fallacies of Relevance

Fallacies of Presumption

Fallacies of Ambiguity

Appeal to force or
argumentum ad baculum

Hasty generalization (insufficient induction)

Equivocation (+)

Appeals to people or
argumentum ad populum
Bandwagon appeal
Snob appeal

False cause (non-cause as cause?)

Amphiboly (+)

Appeal to pity
Appeal to desire

Appeal to ignorance (?)

Accent (?)

Arguments ad hominem (contra negantes princia?)
Abusive ad hominem
Circumstantial ad hominem
Tu quoque

Begging the question (+)
Complex question (many questions as one)

Division (loci from whole to part?)

Red herring

Accident or sweeping generalization (?)

Composition (loci from part to whole?)

Appeal to unqualified authority (locus ab auctoritate)

Slippery slope

 

 

Weak or false analogy

 

 

False dichotomy

 

 

Suppressed evidence

 

 

In contrast to the above-listed informal fallacies, formal fallacies in the modern interpretation are formally invalid arguments that people tend to mistake for valid arguments.

Example: Every man is an animal, a donkey is an animal; therefore, a donkey is a man.

This would be regarded as a case of the “fallacy of undistributed middle” in the modern textbook, whereas Buridan treats it as a case of the “fallacy of accident” (which he obviously interprets differently than the modern author, who talks about “fallacy of accident” among informal fallacies).

Question: does the modern division between formal and informal fallacies coincide with the Aristotelian division between fallacies of words (in dictione) and fallacies apart from words (extra dictionem), despite the obvious discrepancies between their subdivisions?