An informal fallacy is an argument whose stated premises fail to support its proposed conclusion. The problem with an informal fallacy often stems from a flaw in reasoning that render the conclusion unpersuasive. In contrast to a formal fallacy of deduction, the error is not merely a flaw in logic.
Read more about Informal Fallacy: Formal Deductive Fallacies and Informal Fallacies
Famous quotes containing the words informal and/or fallacy:
“We are now a nation of people in daily contact with strangers. Thanks to mass transportation, school administrators and teachers often live many miles from the neighborhood schoolhouse. They are no longer in daily informal contact with parents, ministers, and other institution leaders . . . [and are] no longer a natural extension of parental authority.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)
“I’m not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called “scientific” mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)