67 Logical Fallacies Explained in 11 Minutes

Fallacies—notes Pur­due’s Writ­ing Lab—“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. Avoid these com­mon fal­lac­i­es in your own argu­ments and watch for them in the argu­ments of oth­ers.” Pur­due’s web­site then high­lights a num­ber of the men­tal traps that stu­dents often fall into—for exam­ple, the slip­pery slope, beg­ging the claim, cir­cu­lar argu­ments, the red her­ring, and more. But if you want a rapid-fire intro­duc­tion to many more log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es, look no fur­ther than the video above. In 11 min­utes, you will come across ones you may not have known about before—from the No True Scots­man and the Texas Sharp­shoot­er, to the Tu QuoQue and the Igno­ra­tio Elenchi. But it also has some time­less ones we see every day. Indeed who among us has­n’t expe­ri­enced the Sunk Cost Fal­la­cy at work, or the Ad Hominem attack on TV?

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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