Hasty Generalization: Also known as over-generalization or leaping to conclusions, this fallacy occurs when a conclusion is drawn on based on a small or unrepresentative number of cases. This fallacy is the basis of racial, religious or political stereotypes. Note that this doesn't mean that no generalizations are valid or that we can't draw general conclusions based on a sufficient number of cases. When I was teaching about Islam in a Religions of the Middle East class, a student said, "They attacked us on 9/11."

Who attacked us?" I asked.
"The Muslims."
"All Muslims?"
"We should bomb them back to the Stone Age."
"There are over a billion Muslims who make up the majority population of about 50 countries. Which one should we start with?"

At this point the student realized she was over-generalizing. We went on to discuss that although Al-Quaeda was an Islamic terrorist organization, its members were a small and unrepresentative sample of a world-wide religion.

No True Scotsman: This fallacy is committed when an ad hoc defense of a generalization is given in order to retain it in the face of counter-examples. It was originally coined by British philosopher Anthony Flew:

"Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the "Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again". Hamish is shocked and declares that "No Scotsman would do such a thing." The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again; and, this time, finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion, but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says: 'No true Scotsman would do such a thing.'" - Antony Flew, Thinking About Thinking: Do I Sincerely Want to Be Right? (1975), p. 47.

Let's revisit our Islam example. When Islam scholar Carl Ernst came to LCC, I asked him in a meeting with faculty whether he thought our Islam Study Project should address issues the oppression of women in certain fundamentalist Islamic societies. He said that Islam had nothing to do with the oppression of women. When I mentioned that women weren't allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia, a theocratic Islamic state rooted in the teachings of the Wahabi sect, he said, "I have no explanation for psychotic behavior." The implication was that no true Muslim would ever treat women as second class citizens. These people just happened to be Muslims and were suffering from pathological sexism totally unrelated to Islam. If I were to bring up other examples of women being beaten in the streets or jailed for not wearing the hijab (headscarf) in Shi'a Iran, he would also say that these oppressors weren't true Muslims either, despite their being religiously motivated and following widespread normative institutionalized Islamic practices.

Similarly, suppose someone claims "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism." If you point to ISIS, Al-Quada, Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, Islamic Jihad, Ansar al-Sharia, Ansar al-Islam, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab or Hezbollah, whose ideologies are explicitly Islamic, or a terrorist shouting "Allahu Akbar!" while mowing down bicyclists in New York City and pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, the retort is usually, "Well, those aren't true Muslims." How do you know? Because no true Muslim would commit an act of terror! This form of circular reasoning is similar to the type employed in the fallacy of begging the question, below. It would probably be a surprise to all these people that they weren't "true" Muslims. Again, to say all Muslims support terrorism is to be guilty of the hasty generalization fallacy above, but to continue to maintain that no Muslims support these things when faced with empirical evidence to the contrary is to commit the no true Scotsman fallacy.

Another example: Suppose your political science professor claims that democracies don't start wars. Then you point out that the first democracy, the City State of Athens, was an imperial power, starting many wars with its neighbors, most notably Sparta. Then he replies, "Well, Athens wasn't a true democracy.

One more: Your gun enthusiast tells you that no supporter of the Second Amendment supports gun registration. Then you point out that the National Rifle Association supports it. "Well, no true Second Amendment supporter would ever support gun registration." The fallacious tactic is always to amend the category just enough to maintain the generalization while ignoring the contrary evidence, instead of admitting that the generalization does not hold.

Begging the Question: This fallacy is also known as circular reasoning. You commit it when you assume what you're supposedly trying to prove. Suppose someone is trying to convince you that the Bible is the Word of God. As evidence, he quotes 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness." Wait a minute - that's from the Bible! You can't quote the Bible to prove the Bible. That's circular reasoning.

Another example: "The supposition that human beings are mere pawns in a deterministic chess game ignores the fact of human agency. We are not rudderless ships tossed about on a sea of heredity and social conditioning. We have free will. Because of this, nature and nurture can only influence, but never determine, our actions."

In the above example, the conclusion is that determinism if false. The "proof" offered is that we have free will (though this is disguised in flowery language and metaphors). Obviously, if we have free will, then determinism is false, but in order to believe we have free will you would already have to believe determinism is false. Free will logically implies determinism is false. But whether or not determinism is false what is at issue. You can't prove determinism is false by assuming it's false.

A cute kid on the radio in a PSA on fatherhood: "There's no other love like a Dad's love because there's nothing comparable to it." Usually begging the question won't be as transparent as this. Ask yourself, "What's the evidence for the conclusion?" If that evidence looks very similar to the conclusion or wouldn't support the conclusion without already assuming the conclusion is true, arguing in a circle, it's probably a case of begging the question.

Note: Sometimes people will say that a certain set of facts "begs the question" when what they really mean is raises or calls to mind a particular question. For example, "The idea that we need government because people are selfish, greedy and violent begs the question, "Aren't the politicians who run the government human, too?'" This way of using the phrase "begging the question" is unrelated to this fallacy and is improper usage. Avoid it in academic papers, especially in philosophy.

Appeal to ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam). In this fallacy, a person argues that a proposition is true because there’s no evidence that it’s not true. This is an attempt to avoid providing evidence that a claim is true by shifting the burden to the other party. The burden of proof is always on the person making the positive claim. In the absence of sufficient evidence, the proper attitude toward a claim skepticism.

Non sequitur: From his Latin for "it does not follow," this is a fallacy in which an irrelevant reason is given for the conclusion. You will recall that the conclusion not following from the premises is the definition of a fallacious argument, whether formal or informal, but, in this particular fallacy, the problem is with the relevance of the (usually single) premise. This irrelevancy is sometimes used as a source of humor. For example, in a "Mama" comic, Francis asks his mother why she has just bought a loads of junk food after constantly nagging him about his diet. Her reply? "It was on sale." The fact that was on sale is irrelevant to whether it is unhealthy or inconsistent with her nagging her son about her health. Before April 2020, the Surgeon General told people masks weren't effective against the coronavirus because there was a shortage and front line medical workers needed them more. Whether there is a shortage of masks is irrelevant to whether they are effective in protecting against the virus. The fact that the Surgeon General wanted them reserved for front-line workers because they were at greater risk implies that they are effective. This seems to have been a cynical ploy to discourage average people from buying masks to protect themselves to ensure a sufficient number of hem for medical workers.

Equivocation: Equivocation occurs when someone making an argument changes the meaning of a key term in the middle of their argument. To take another religious example, someone might argue, "The son of God is without sin. Now the Bible says we're all children of God, so I'm a son of God. So I can be without sin, too!" In the first premise, the term "son of God" refers to Jesus Christ, who in Christian theology is the one and only son of God who died for the sins of humanity. Jesus is supposed to have lived a perfect life in order to be a morally pure and blameless blood atonement for our sins. The sense in which the Bible says we are children of God is very different. We children of God in the sense that we're all made in God's image, descendants of Adam; there's only one sinless savior of mankind. In the first premise, the term "son of God" refers specifically to Jesus, "the one and only Son of God." In the second premise, "son of God" refers to all human beings, descended from Adam, carrying within them the stain of Adam's Original Sin in the Garden of Eden. That's a very different meaning of "son of God." The argument only works logically if the term means the same thing both places. Obviously, you couldn't argue from "I am a descendant of Adam, who was created by God but sinned and passed down his predisposition towards sin to all future generations" to "I can be sinless."

Suppose someone says that slavery is an important issue which deserves more public discussion. You object that slavery happened a long time ago and its effects have attenuated with the generations. If that person replies, "If working for minimum wage for the white man isn't slavery, I don't know what is!" he would be guilty of equivocation. He has switched the meaning of slavery from being the property of another person with no rights and being forced to work for no pay with working for low pay, which may be bad but is not slavery. Being a "wage-slave" is not the same as being a literal slave. Instead of withdrawing or modifying his original claim, he changes the meaning of a key term mid-stream in an attempt to patch up a weakness. We would say he is "equivocating on" the term "slavery." Often the switch is from a literal to a more metaphorical meaning, which makes the conclusion weaker and more plausible. Note that if the person making the argument were to say "You're right that we don't have literal slavery in the U.S., but the results of slavery are still with us in the form of income inequality between blacks and whites," that would not be equivocation. That would directly address the counter-argument that the effects of slavery had "attenuated" by claiming current income inequality was the result of slavery.

The Goldilocks Fallacy: This fallacy holds that whatever the issue, one need only identify the two extremes and stake out the middle position as the correct one. The metaphor is from a fairy tale about the little girl who burgled the house of three bears. While there, she sampled three bowls of porridge waiting on the table. One was "too hot," another was "too cold" but the third was "just right." People who are politically uninformed will often mouth platitudes about wanting "both sides" to "work together" and "stop the partisan bickering," or will pride themselves on voting on "issues" (which they often know nothing about) and always stake out a moderate position. They have no allegiance to party or principle, except the principle that extremes and conflict are to be avoided at all cost and compromise is the height of virtue. But to quote Barry Goldwater, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the defense of liberty is no virtue." What's the middle-of-the-road position on genocide, rape, sexism, racism or free speech? The Separate but Equal Supreme Court ruling supporting racial segregation is a good example of where the "in all things, moderation" approach fails.

Furthermore, how do you identify the extremes - or the middle? Thorny social and political issues require both conceptual and ideological thinking about the proper size, scope and role of government as well as a careful look at the empirical evidence for the effectiveness of particular policies. Similarly, there's no reason to suppose that such a strategy will give you accurate answers to questions about free will, the existence of God, the foundation of ethics, whether religion is a positive or negative force in the world, whether gender is biologically based or socially constructed, whether capitalism or socialism are better economic systems and so on. It may be in some of these cases that a middle position is warranted, but that view needs to be supported by evidence, not assumed, because there are many cases where such a position is doubtful.

Post hoc/False Cause: The full name of this fallacy is post hoc ergo proctor hoc, which is Latin for "because of this, that." This fallacy confuses correlation with causation. Just because one thing happened before another thing, you can't assume that the first thing caused the second thing. You need an explanation in terms of a causal mechanism. If you're cursed by a Gypsy fortune-teller for making light of her powers and get lung cancer, it would be questionable to attribute the lung cancer to the curse. A much more likely cause would be your habit of chain-smoking for the last 30 years. If my mother is thinking about my father and he calls asking what's for dinner, she may be tempted to believe they have a "psychic connection" and that her thoughts sent out "vibrations" which caused him to call. However, since such "psychic vibes" have never been detected or measured, it's more likely that it's just a coincidence. If it happens with regularity, it is likely that there is some other cause at work. It may be that they both begin thinking about plans for the evening at the same time, near the end of his work day, the logical time to be thinking of such things and making plans. Most superstitions are due to such fallacious thinking. A black cat crosses someone's path and something bad happens to that person. They conclude that the black cat caused the calamity and spread the story around. Or a person may win a game of golf wearing a particular shirt and then lose the next game without it. He puts it back on and wins again, concluding that wearing his "lucky shirt" improves his game when it's just a coincidence or the benefit is entirely in the increased self-confidence and reduced anxiety from believing his shift gives him an edge.

To take another example, you can't necessarily give credit to or blame the current President for the economy. For example, people often credit Bill Clinton with the economic boom in the 90s, ignoring the fact that he expended all his political capital on gays in the military, increased taxes to support new government programs, and a failed government health care initiative, paving the way for the Republicans to get control of Congress for the first time in 40 years in 1994. There was also the rise of the commercial internet and spread of automation and portable computers, the expansion of global trade and many other factors to consider. You'd have to look at his particular policies and see whether they were his or whether he was politically forced into signing on to a Republican idea, as was the case with welfare reform in 1996. It may be that the economy expanded in spite of his policy initiatives, such as tax increases on the investor class, not because of them. Or perhaps his policies had little effect either way and the economy would have expanded as it did anyway.

Note that the post hoc fallacy is when you assume, without evidence, that one thing caused another. If someone were to argue on basis of supply side economic principles that tax cuts under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan led to subsequent economic booms, that would not be the post hoc fallacy. If you pointed to President Trump loosening the previous administration's regulations on energy production or Trump's efforts to keep American companies from relocating overseas and to equalize tariffs as a reason for record low unemployment, robust growth in manufacturing jobs and 4.2% GDP (after an average of 1.5% throughout the 8 years of the Obama Administration), that also would not be the post hoc fallacy. You might disagree with the theoretical explanation connecting these presidents' policies with subsequent economic growth, but that's different than offering no explanation at all. The post hoc fallacy is to merely point to the correlation and assume causation.

Ice cream consumption is correlated with drownings, but you wouldn't conclude that they caused drownings. Warm summer temperatures the cause of both, of course, and are responsible for the correlation. Similarly, it is important to look deeply into causal explanations and determine what's causing what and whether some third factor may be responsible for he correlation. Suppose skiers live longer than non-skiers. It simply may be that skiing is expensive, and more affluent people smoke and drink less, have healthier eating habits and can afford better medical care.

The Composition Fallacy: This fallacy occurs when you attempt to say that because something is true of the parts, it must also be true of the whole. This is not always the case. For example, it may be that the payments (parts) on my student loan are low, but that does mean that the total amount (whole) I owe is low. To take another example, each student in the class (parts) has a brain, but that doesn't mean that the class itself (whole) has a brain. There is no "class brain" even though each individual student has a brain and the class is made up of nothing but students.

It is alleged that this fallacy is committed in the cosmological argument for the existence of God. It claims that everything which exists has a cause, therefore the universe itself must have a cause. But just because each and every thing in the universe comes from something else doesn't mean that the universe itself, e.g. the collection of existing things, must have a cause outside itself. It could be that things are created and destroyed within the universe and that matter and energy are conserved in accordance with the laws of physics. Even if every individual thing (the parts) comes from something else doesn't mean the collection of things (the whole) came from something else.

The Division Fallacy: This is the opposite of the composition fallacy, when you say that just because something is true of the whole, it must be true of the parts. For example, my brain has the quality of consciousness. It's composed of billions of nerve cells. But that doesn't mean the individual nerve cells are conscious. They're just little switches for complex patterns of electrons and don't possess the same qualities that my brain as a whole possesses.