Examples of The Five Common Thinking Errors

by Steve Portnoy

Non Sequitur

News Hounds

On June 28, 2004, during an interview with Cass Sunstein on the subject of dissent in America, Bill O'Reily quoted Michael Moore. Notice the non-sequiturs in his thinking:

(Quoting Moore:) "We, the United States of America, are culpable of committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants."

O'REILLY: "Moore obviously feels the USA is a bad place and that was right after the attack [9/11]".
,
Here, O'Reilly draws the false conclusion that Moore thinks the USA is a bad place from the true premise that Moore believes that we "better get a clue about the culture of violence."



False or Vague Premises
The Age

We went to war on a false premise!

The current Iraqi war has been justified to the public by links between Saddam and al-Qaeda and also due to the fact that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. Evidence has shown that both of these statements are untrue.

False Premise: Suddam is linked to al-Qaeda and the September 11, 2001 attacks. Also, Iraq possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Premise: It is the United State's responsibility to seize these Weapons of Mass destruction and to prevent further terrorist attacks.
Misled Conclusion: The United States should go to war with Iraq.

While the second premise may be opinionated, the first premise is false and leads to the misled conclusion.




Ad Hominem
Coyote Blog

This article describes the conservative attacks on Robert Byrd's defense of allowing filibusters for judicial nominees. Almost every response to Byrd's defense "was careful to remind readers that Bird was a KKK leader forty plus years ago." This claim is irrelevant to the argument and does not make his argument less valid but merely attacks Byrd himself and his past.

Premise: Byrd has a defese against allowing filibusters for judicial nominees.
Premise(Ad Hominem): Byrd previously participated in the KKK.
Conclusion: Byrd's argument is not valid.

Begging the Question

Fallacy Files

"To cast abortion as a solely private moral question,…is to lose touch with common sense: How human beings treat one another is practically the definition of a public moral matter. Of course, there are many private aspects of human relations, but the question whether one human being should be allowed fatally to harm another is not one of them. Abortion is an inescapably public matter."

--Helen M. Avare

In the debate regarding abortion, this is a circular argument. We must remember that many who support abortion do not consider the fetus to be "human," and therefore, do not consider abortion as harming another human. In fact, several people who are Pro-Choice support their decision on the simple argument that the fetus is not a human being. So here, the speaker assumes that her belief that the fetus is human is true and continues to use this implied statement to support her argument that it is a public affair.

Red Herrings
Fallacy Files

"The operation cost just under $500, and no one was killed, or even hurt. In that same time the Pentagon spent tens of millions of dollars and dropped tens of thousands of pounds of explosives on Vietnam, killing or wounding thousands of human beings, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. Because nothing justified their actions in our calculus, nothing could contradict the merit of ours."

--Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, from his memoir Fugitive Days, defending a bombing attack by the Weathermen on the Pentagon.

Suggesting that "two wrongs make a right," Ayers states the fact that the Pentagon bombed Vietnam to justify a totally different event. This red herring is used to persuade that the bombing by the Weathermen was justified, although the arguments evidence lacks a true connection and merely distracts the reader from the true question/topic.