Fleeing From Fallacies

Our English class has continued analyzing rhetorical moves with another persuasive article. As we've been breaking down how the author uses rhetorical moves to further their claim, it led me to think about how an author might unintentionally use invalid reasoning to support their claim. Majority of these reasonings stem from logical fallacies. Just to establish a baseline of what a logical fallacy is:

"Fallacies are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim." - Purdue Online Writing Lab

"Not good. Makes argument bad. Deceptive. Flawed." - Whittle (probably)

Just a quick note, if you have no idea what Whittles are: https://mario.fandom.com/wiki/Whittle.

Now that we've established what logical fallacies are, let's take 2 common fallacies.

• Circular Argument - As the name suggests, following this argument leads to a circular loop. Each part of the argument is dependent on a different part. This leads to no part of the argument being independent and established in facts.

• Post Hoc (Ergo Propter Hoc)- If you don't know Latin, this one probably isn't as obvious directly from the name. In short, this fallacy usually refers to the incorrect assumption about event order that if Event B happens after Event A, then Event A caused Event B.

If you're interested in learning about logical fallacies, take a look at https://thebestschools.org/magazine/15-logical-fallacies-know/ that does a great job breaking down 15 logical fallacies. Now that we know what can make our arguments invalid, let's flee from using any fallacies in our own arguments, but continue making ours as strong as ever.