Fallacies in Thinking

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There are many times in life people use fallacies but do not recognize it. Fallacies are arguments that use poor reasoning. Some fallacies are devoted deliberately to manipulate or persuade by deception. Then there are other fallacies that are unintentionally due to carelessness or obliviousness. “Strictly speaking, it refers only to the transition from a set of premises to a conclusion, and is distinguished from falsity, a value attributed to a single statement. (The Columbia Encyclopedia)” Three fallacies in thinking are hasty generalizations, post hoc, and contradictory premises.
To begin, hasty generalizations are generalizations that have too few instances to support a hasty conclusion. “Hasty generalization is the informal fallacy that occurs when one draws a general conclusion from a sample that is too small, biased, or otherwise unrepresentative. (A Dictionary of Philosophical Logic)” An example from “Love is a Fallacy” is, “You can’t speak French. I can’t speak French. I must therefore conclude that nobody at the University of Minnesota can speak French.” There is not a wa...

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