We’ve already discussed, in part, the infinite annoyance of rage bait. No one loves the emotional pull of social media posts that make you mad, and angrier when you dare gander at the comment section. In this article, we spoke a little about the ad hominem fallacy, where you insult someone else in your argument, to make your argument. Not to be dismissive, but it’s pretty lame.

Philosophy has thousands of years of debates and arguments up its flowing sleeves. As such, after a while, philosophers decided to come up with rules of engagement for making arguments. People got sick of the sophistry of some, who would argue just to argue, and not care why, just so they won.

In philosophy, arguments are not easily won or lost, but we do have rules in place, where you can call out your interlocutors (people you’re arguing against), and say that they are not acting in accord with the rules. Since Aristotle, logical fallacies have been a part of learning the basics of philosophy and how to make (or not make) a philosophical argument.

Note well that there are two types of fallacies: formal and informal. The formal show how an argument’s form, or setup, has an error that is nonsensical. For an argument to work, you need to have at least one premise, and a conclusion. For instance:

All humans are mammals.
All mammals are animals.
Therefore all humans are animals.

The above is a simplified argument that we might use in your Logic 101 class, but all arguments you make that are logical will follow a similar form. We are going to skip those for now and consider informal fallacies, in which the conclusion is not supported by the premises. We are choosing to focus on these because they are frankly fun, and because it’s been a while since your writer took Logic 101.

Without further ado, allow us to introduce five logical fallacies you can call out to frustrate your friends.

1. The Slippery Slope

You have that one family member, very close to you, who is a sweet person on the daily. They might have very cute pets, knit you scarves for holidays, or make the best desserts in the world. They might even work doing something genuinely good. Volunteer work in the community, a job in making ecofriendly diapers. But there is something very annoying about them.

You never, ever discuss politics with them.

At family gatherings, if someone dares present a view counter to their very narrow viewpoint, they immediately try tearing it apart.

Meet Auntie Ellen, who has an actually sweet chihuahua she dresses up and brings with her everywhere, who always brings the best dessert, and who makes you a scarf for winter, and puts a little money in your birthday cards.

Auntie Ellen loves everyone, but what she doesn’t love is when people challenge the ideology she learned from the TV 20 years ago. You tell her, tentatively, that maybe the government should offer assistance to poor people (insert the type here). Immediately, she flails into a counter argument.

“No, no! You can’t do that because if you do, they will take the money/funds and use it to buy drugs, and then their kids will be criminals and buy and sell drugs and it will be awful and they will try to eat Sweetie here!” She clutches the absurdly-dressed canine, eyes wide.

She just gave you a slippery slope fallacy to counter your suggestion. In a slippery slope fallacy, the interlocutor starts off with your premise: “If we let the government feed poor people” and then runs all the way down the hill with it. Instead of some people abusing the system, it’s all the poor people abusing the system, then becoming criminals. 

This fallacy doesn’t allow for a counter argument, because they’ve already supposedly destroyed your argument in an anxiety-ridden landslide. It doesn’t offer anything other than anxious fortunetelling not at all based in fact, and doesn’t actually address your own argument. If you want this thing, it says, then this awful thing will follow. Therefore don’t do that thing.

2. The Strawman

Meet your cousin, Franz. He’s a good guy, usually. Sometimes you wonder what he does for a living, and sometimes you question his bad taste in music and oddly slicked back hair. But he helps you out when your computer is malfunctioning, and gets on great with your kids. You just don’t like to argue really anything with him, even stuff you could think is fun.

One day, you and Franz, after a few beers, are feeling your deep thoughts. Buzzed and feeling OK to opening up, you mention that you have a very clear idea of why you are choosing to have a vasectomy. You note that you and your partner no longer want to have kids, that you think it would be better to limit the number of children in the current world, etc. Franz is not having it.

“People who get vasectomies don’t care about their own bodies. They want to mutilate themselves, and for what? Men should be giving women all the children, not cutting that off forever! You don’t want to be like one of those people, do you?” Franz burps unappealingly and you try hard not to roll your eyes.

The strawman argument takes your argument in support of a vasectomy, and misrepresents it, quickly tearing it apart by questioning your motives, and the motivations of others who might choose to get a vasectomy. In essence, he destroyed any fruitful communication about this by virtue of turning your words into a little man made of straw, that he can push down easily or set afire.

Self-portrait by a true Scottish painter, John Runciman, 1767, courtesy of Wikipedia.

3. The No True Scotsman

You often talk to Julia. She’s a work colleague. She seems decent enough, and you both like to complain about work to each other between tasks, but you would never meet her outside of work. You don’t really have conversations with her outside of the ordinary, so you are surprised when the following happens.

“You know,” Julia tells you one day, sidling up to your desk. “No woman would dare read those Dungeon Crawler Carl books. They are so geared toward men. I have never met any woman who would do that.”

“Oh, my sister does,” you admit, not looking up from your laptop. You hear Julia scoff.

“Well, no real woman would read that trash. You should tell your sister to get into romantasy, like proper people. Or, oooh! Dark romance!” She proceeds to gush about these genres, while you clench your teeth, giving your screen a death scowl.

Instead of admitting that her premise was too broad and general, Julia instead decided to dig a deeper hole, by asserting that, though you provided a counter example, a purity test. You see this often online, when people shrug and suggest they don’t do a thing considered universal. For instance, if you were to tell your writer all goths love taxidermy, she would shake her head and say, “Not this goth.”

4. The Tu Quoque

Your friend has a friend. Carlos is a blokey sort of guy. He likes football/soccer, but has a degree in engineering. You find it interesting that he has such a high-paying job but no really expensive hobbies, other than attending a game on occasion, or hosting a party to watch one. You don’t know him well, until this party.

Somehow, between the sports and the snacks, you end up watching Carlos and your mutual friend battle it out over, of all things, library fines. The mutual makes an argument why it’s important to pay library fines, or return books on time to avoid it. Carlos smirks, shaking his head.

“Dude, when have you paid your library fines? Come on! You have, maybe, ten books on pasta that you still have checked out. I know, because I saw them next to your bed. You can’t even make that argument because you don’t qualify with the ridiculous amount of fines you have!”

You edge away as Carlos and your friend get a little too animated. Hiding in the bathroom for a moment, you know that Carlos used a tu quoque fallacy on your friend. From Latin, the words translate to, “But you! Ho ho ho!” Meme-level stuff. In this fallacy, you are attacking the interlocutor by saying they can’t even make that argument because they do the thing they are arguing against.

5. The Appeal to Emotion (Pity)

Usually, you appreciate your mother. Like, a lot. She made you, she raised you, she fed and housed you for many years. You can’t say no to that. And she’s usually the best. You got the beginnings of your awesome board game collection from her, after all.

But she does this thing. Usually, you can talk to her about anything. But sometimes it’s a bit too much. Tonight, you help her with her luggage as she visits you for the weekend. You smile and nod as she admires the cleanliness you manufactured in your apartment. But then, she starts talking about the starving children in Africa. Not the starving children in Africa.

“You know, you really shouldn’t waste all of that food. There are starving children in Africa. They would be so, so happy to have something–anything–in their bellies. Have you seen the commercials? They look so starved and sad.” And while she can’t tell you where in Africa this is happening, she points to moldy leftovers you missed in your fridge and continues.

She’s committing the appeal to emotion fallacy here, where she tries to command her audience with an emotional plea, eliciting a feeling response, be it sadness, shame, anger, etc. It’s kind of like pumping up an argument on steroids, but if the steroids were tears. You quickly show her to her room.

Just a Summer Sample

These are just a few of the delicious informal fallacies you can discover for yourself. Your writer would not recommend calling them out to people, even if you might have the urge to. Instead, it can be helpful to see them in the way people make their arguments, and can help you distance yourself from engaging with them in a meaningful way. Sometimes, being able to distance yourself is the most helpful tool.

In philosophy, of course, a philosopher would call out these fallacies if they saw them in another philosopher’s argument, but in daily life, while knowledge of fallacies in itself can be helpful to understand rhetoric and what can be wrong with things people argue about all the time, casually calling out a fallacy, especially with intent to escalate things, may not be a good thing.

For me, learning about fallacies has been a comfort, because I know there are rules of engagement that we, as writers and students of rhetoric and philosophy in general, should use. It’s not about one-upping someone so much as realizing, even, where we ourselves can do better in our own arguments, where we can clean them up, and how we can be kinder (and less annoying) people in our engagements with others.

At the end of the day, civility is the point of using fallacies to call out these errors within arguments. Trust me, civility and compassion are essential when it comes to the people you know.