Conditional or Questionable Fallacies
- Black swan blindness – the argument that ignores low probability, high impact events, thus down playing the role of chance and under-representing known risks
- Broken window fallacy – an argument which disregards lost opportunity costs (typically non-obvious, difficult to determine or otherwise hidden) associated with destroying property of others, or other ways of externalizing costs onto others. For example, an argument that states breaking a window generates income for a window fitter, but disregards the fact that the money spent on the new window cannot now be spent on new shoes.
- Definist fallacy – involves the confusion between two notions by defining one in terms of the other.
- Naturalistic fallacy – attempts to prove a claim about ethics by appealing to a definition of the term "good" in terms of either one or more claims about natural properties (sometimes also taken to mean the appeal to nature) or God's will.
- Slippery slope (thin edge of the wedge, camel's nose) – asserting that a relatively small first step inevitably leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant impact/event that should not happen, thus the first step should not happen. While this fallacy is a popular one, the it is, in its essence, an appeal to probability fallacy. (e.g if person x does y then z would (probably) occur, leading to q, leading to w, leading to e.)
Read more about this topic: List Of Fallacies
Famous quotes containing the words conditional and/or questionable:
“The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comst in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)