PHI 1101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Ad Hominem, Tu Quoque, Informal Fallacy

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHI 1101
• Professor: Dean Lauer

Document Summary

A fallacy is an error in reasoning that nevertheless may appear at first glance to be correct reasoning. Logicians distinguish two general types of fallacies formal and informal fallacy. A formal fallacy is an error in reasoning that can be defines in terms of its form or bare logical structure alone, without reference to its content or what it is about o. The flaw lies in the abstract logical form rather than in the specific content. A n informal fallacy is an error in reasoning that is not simply due to the pure form of the argument (hence it is informal ) o. In informal fallacy, one must examine the actual content of the reasoning to find the error because the problem is not a matter of pure form alone. The following argument may look like good reasoning at first glance, but upon closer inspection it is not: