Online Resources on Informal Fallacies

I encourage you to look at the following Web sites for additional information and review on informal fallacies. You can, if you wish, substitute these readings for the corresponding chapters in Conway and Munson.

• The Fallacies of Composition and Division

• More info on inconsistency

• On special pleading (Special pleading is a kind of inconsistency. People who commit the fallacy of special pleading claim that a rule of thumb that applies to everyone does not, however, apply to them, because of their special circumstances. But if the rule really applies to everyone, it does apply to them.)

• On poisoning the well

  Another account of poisoning the well

• On compatibility with all states of affairs

• On Straw Man vs. Red Herring vs Missing the Point

• On quibbling

• On objectionable vagueness

• Excellent general site on fallacies ("The Fallacy Files")

• On fallacies of relevance (irrelevant emotional appeals, ad hominem, appeal to questionable authority, appeal to ignorance, etc.)

• On fallacies of presumption (accident, false cause, begging the question, complex question, etc.)

• On fallacies of ambiguity (equivocation, amphiboly, composition, division, accent)