Epistemic Logical Fallacies: Definitions and Examples

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Epistemic

Failures in belief management, confidence calibration, or standards for responsible belief.

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10 fallacies in this category.

Diagnostic prompt

Is the speaker calibrating confidence to the strength of the evidence?

Category vs. family

A category is a diagnostic lens, so a fallacy may appear in more than one category. A family is the broader umbrella that gives the fallacy its single main home.

All or nothing fallacy

Occurs when support for part of a view, or problems with part of a view, are treated as if they force total acceptance or total rejection of the whole package.

EpistemicEvidential

Intermediate High school

Appeal to emotion

Occurs when a conclusion is pushed mainly by triggering fear, pity, outrage, pride, or hope rather than by showing that the conclusion follows from the evidence.

TacticalEmotionalEpistemic

Foundational Middle school+

Argument from incredulity

Occurs when someone treats their inability to imagine, explain, or believe a claim as evidence that the claim must be false, or conversely true.

EpistemicEvidential

Intermediate High school

Argumentum ad populum

Occurs when a claim is treated as true, reasonable, or justified mainly because many people believe it, share it, or act on it.

EvidentialConceptualEpistemic

Advanced Advanced undergraduate

Artificial negation

Occurs when the wording of a negative position is manipulated so that mere non-belief is treated as if it were the same thing as a strong positive denial.

EpistemicEvidential

Intermediate High school

Confidence as a validator

Occurs when a speaker's certainty, intensity, or felt conviction is treated as if it were evidence that the claim is true.

EpistemicEvidentialEmotional

Intermediate High school

Denial of the epistemic gradient

Occurs when belief is forced into crude either-or boxes even though the evidence supports a range of confidence levels rather than a single sharp threshold.

EpistemicEvidential

Intermediate High school

Epistemic/ontological conflation

Occurs when the psychological or social effects of believing something are treated as evidence that the thing believed in actually exists or is true.

ConceptualEvidentialEpistemic

Intermediate High school

For the sake of argument denial

Occurs when a hypothetical premise is rejected simply because the speaker does not actually believe it.

ConceptualEpistemic

Intermediate High school

Wishful thinking

Occurs when a belief or decision is driven mainly by what would be pleasing, hopeful, or comforting if true rather than by what the evidence supports.

EmotionalEpistemicEvidential

Foundational Middle school+