Shotgun Argumentation - Conditional or Questionable Fallacies

Conditional or Questionable Fallacies

• 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, 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.)