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+
Teaching path
Start here
A foundational sequence for first-time readers and classrooms starting with the fallacies they are most likely to meet in ordinary discussion.
Recommended sequence
Use the order below as a lesson sequence, review set, or comparison track.
Appeal to authority
Occurs when someone treats an authority's endorsement as if it settled the issue, even when the authority is unqualified, the field is divided, or the claim still require...
EvidentialEmotional
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+
Begging the question
Occurs when an argument quietly assumes the very point it is supposed to prove, so the conclusion is built into the premises.
Formal
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+
Correlation is not causation
Occurs when someone treats a correlation, coincidence, or time pattern as if it already established that one factor caused the other.
Causal
Foundational
Middle school+
False dilemma
Occurs when someone presents a limited set of options as if they were the only live possibilities, while reasonable alternatives are ignored or suppressed.
Conceptual
Foundational
Middle school+
Hasty generalization
Occurs when someone draws a broad conclusion from too little evidence, too small a sample, or a badly skewed sample.
EvidentialMathematical
Foundational
Middle school+
No True Scotsman
Occurs when someone protects a generalization from counterexamples by redefining the group with an ad hoc 'real' or 'true' membership test.
ConceptualLinguistic
Foundational
Middle school+
Slippery slope
Occurs when someone claims that a relatively small first step will trigger a chain of worsening outcomes without showing why that chain is likely, stable, or hard to stop...
CausalConceptual
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+
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+