Ad hominem
Occurs when someone treats an attack on a person's character, motives, class, or biography as if it were a refutation of that person's argument.
TacticalEmotional
Foundational
Middle school+
Category
Tactical
Debate maneuvers that distract, derail, pressure, or strategically reroute the exchange.
Appeal to accomplishment
Occurs when a claim is treated as true or weighty mainly because the person promoting it has impressive accomplishments in some other domain.
TacticalEvidential
Foundational
Middle 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+
Appeal to poverty
Occurs when a claim is treated as more trustworthy, virtuous, or true mainly because its proponent is poor, ordinary, or from humble circumstances.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Appeal to wealth
Occurs when a claim is treated as more credible or correct mainly because it comes from a rich, famous, or financially successful person.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Argument from repetition
Occurs when repetition is treated as if it adds evidence, wearing down doubt or making a claim seem true through familiarity.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Argumentum ad baculum
Occurs when agreement is extracted by threat, intimidation, or coercive pressure rather than by showing that the claim is true.
TacticalEmotional
Foundational
Middle school+
Association fallacy
Occurs when a claim is accepted or dismissed because of some irrelevant association rather than because of the merits of the claim itself.
TacticalEvidential
Foundational
Middle school+
Bare assertion fallacy
Occurs when a contested claim is simply asserted, often confidently, without the evidence needed to justify it.
EvidentialTactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Cherry picking
Occurs when someone selects only the evidence that supports a conclusion and ignores a wider body of evidence that weakens, qualifies, or reverses it.
TacticalEvidential
Foundational
Middle school+
Contextomy
Occurs when words are selectively excerpted from their original context in a way that changes or distorts what the speaker meant.
TacticalLinguistic
Intermediate
High school
Demanding negative proof
Occurs when someone tries to protect a claim by insisting that critics must prove the claim false instead of the claimant first supplying adequate support.
TacticalEvidential
Foundational
Middle school+
Empty refutation
Occurs when someone declares an argument false, debunked, or dishonest without identifying the specific flaw that would actually show it is false.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Fallacy of many questions
Occurs when a question smuggles in one or more assumptions that have not been established, then pressures the listener to answer as if those assumptions were already sett...
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
False attribution
Occurs when support for a claim is borrowed from a source that is fabricated, misquoted, unqualified, anonymous in the wrong way, or otherwise not what it is presented to...
EvidentialTactical
Foundational
Middle school+
False surrender
Occurs when someone calls for a truce, balance, or 'agree to disagree' posture not because the evidence is genuinely inconclusive, but because their position is under pre...
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
If-by-whiskey
Occurs when someone uses strategically shifting language that seems to support both sides by quietly changing the meaning of the key term to suit the audience.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Judgmental language
Occurs when pejorative, loaded, or insulting language is used to steer judgment in place of actual support for the conclusion.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Misleading vividness
Occurs when a striking anecdote or emotionally intense case is used to make a problem seem more common, clear, or representative than the broader evidence allows.
TacticalPerceptualEvidential
Foundational
Middle school+
Moving the goalpost
Occurs when evidence that was supposed to satisfy a stated standard is dismissed and a new, harder standard is introduced so the conclusion never has to be reconsidered.
TacticalEvidential
Foundational
Middle school+
Perverted analogy
Occurs when an analogy is deliberately stretched past its intended point so it can be mocked or refuted.
TacticalConceptual
Intermediate
High school
Poisoning the well
Occurs when negative framing is introduced in advance so that whatever a person says next will be dismissed before it is fairly heard.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Proof by verbosity
Occurs when a claim is protected by an avalanche of words, side points, jargon, or branching assertions that overwhelm reasonable scrutiny and create the illusion of dept...
TacticalLinguistic
Intermediate
High school
Red herring
Occurs when someone diverts attention from the unresolved issue by switching to a different issue that is easier, safer, or more emotionally useful.
TacticalEmotional
Foundational
Middle school+
Straw man argument
Occurs when someone replaces an opponent's actual position with a weaker, more extreme, or simplified version and then refutes that easier target.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Style over substance fallacy
Occurs when the polish, confidence, charisma, or dramatic force of a presentation is treated as if it established the quality of the argument itself.
TacticalPerceptual
Foundational
Middle school+
Thought-terminating cliché
Occurs when a familiar slogan or stock phrase is used to stop inquiry, deflect scrutiny, or create the feeling that an issue has already been settled.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+
Tu quoque
Occurs when criticism is answered not by engaging the issue, but by pointing to similar hypocrisy or wrongdoing elsewhere.
TacticalEvidential
Foundational
Middle school+
Two wrongs make a right
Occurs when someone treats one wrong act as justified because it responds to, retaliates against, or balances out another wrong.
TacticalEvidential
Foundational
Middle school+
Vague insulators
Occurs when vague, elastic, or undefined terms are chosen so that a position sounds meaningful while resisting clear testing or criticism.
Tactical
Foundational
Middle school+