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The previous fallacies include arguments that fail to meet the conditions of relevance. The fallacies in the next section include those that fail to meet the conditions of sufficiency.
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思辨精英：英语辩论-构筑全球视角 [:1705132538]
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21.2.3 Hasty Conclusions
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The general fallacy category of hasty conclusions is sometimes called “jumping to a conclusion.” This general category of fallacies is one wherein all of the evidence and arguments that the debater offers, taken in combination with one another, do not meet the test of sufficiency.
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Those arguments may not meet the test of sufficiency because the evidence was not systematically gathered, because the sampling of evidence was not systematic, or the debater ignored the presence of contrary evidence (Johnson and Blair, 2006: 70-72). The following examples are ones where an argument is relevant to the claim that the debater is making, but the evidence supporting the claim is relevant, but not sufficient. As a result, they are classified under the general category of hasty conclusion. Two common examples and a few other less common examples will be discussed.
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21.2.3.1 Hasty Generalization The first example, is a fallacy of reasoning by example. Arguments commit that fallacy when the examples selected to support the claim are insufficient either in number or in their representativeness.
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Earlier, a sample argument about genetically engineered foods (GEF) was discussed. In that case, the claim made was that GEF are dangerous to human health. Five examples of GEF were presented as evidence. But, the selection of only five examples from the hundreds of available examples of GEF is not enough to prove the link between the evidence and the general claim of the danger of GEF. Thus, this example is a hasty generalization.
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21.2.3.2 Slippery Slope Arguments Slippery Slope arguments sometimes are fallacious. Using such arguments, debaters try to connect a series of events in a causal chain that ultimately “culminate[s] in calamity” (Govier, 2009: 439).
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Contrary to popular opinion, slippery slope arguments are not necessarily fallacies (Volokh and Newman 2003: 21-23). They only are fallacies when all of the connections in the causal chain are not properly made. Even though the connections are relevant to the claim, they may be fallacious because the connections are insufficiently documented.
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Americans who oppose restrictions on gun ownership commonly argue that one form of control will lead to another, which will eventually lead to the prohibition of all guns, including hunting rifles. The argument is that, “If we allow restrictions on the ownership of semiautomatic firearms, then anti-gun politicians feeling their political muscles will see handgun ownership as their next target. If they succeed in banning the ownership of handguns, it will be a short time until they are able to build political momentum to outlaw all kinds of firearms including hunting rifles as well as gun collections.” The argument as presented above is a slippery slope fallacy because the causal connections between each of the steps are not well documented.
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The arguments described above are fallacious because, even though they may be relevant to the claims they are making, their premises or evidence are insufficient to establish the claims. A large number of other fallacies also can be included in the category of hasty conclusions. Some of those are briefly described below.
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21.2.3.3 Two Wrongs Two wrongs is a label used for a fallacy commonly called “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” As “a misplaced appeal to consistency. A person is urged to accept or condone one thing that is wrong because another similar thing, also wrong, has occurred or has been accepted and condoned” (Govier, 2009: 444).
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21.2.3.4 Improper Appeal to Practice It is a fallacy that assumes that a person is justified in doing things that are common practice, even if that practice is clearly wrong. “Why should I pay the women in my business wages equal to men? Other businesses pay men more, so I should be able to do the same.”
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21.2.3.5 Fallacy of Composition It is a fallacy in which the evidence is drawn from some part of a whole, but the conclusion is about the whole (Govier, 2009: 439). “He Jingkai, a debater from China, is a superb debater. Therefore, China has some of the best debaters in the world.” China may well have excellent debaters, but this argument, nevertheless, makes a fallacious statement about the relationship of the part (He Jingkai) to the whole (Chinese debaters).
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21.2.3.6 Fallacy of Division It involves a fallacious argument in which the evidence is drawn from the whole, but the conclusion is about a part of the whole. The argument assumes that what is true of the whole must be true of its constituent parts. “Harvard is an excellent university, therefore Lawrence Tribe, who is a law professor at Harvard, must be an excellent professor.” Like the above example, the claim may be correct, but the reasoning is fallacious because it makes an improper statement about the relationship between the whole (Harvard) and its constituent parts (Professor Tribe).
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21.2.3.7 Post Hoc Fallacy It is also called by its Latin name post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which means “after this, therefore before this.” This fallacious argument assumes that, because one thing predates another, the first must have caused the second. A person may argue that “After Barak Obama took office, the US economy went into a recession; thus, Obama’s policies were the cause of the recession.” Whether Obama’s policies contributed to the recession has not been argued well here. The debater has simply assumed a cause-and-effect relationship.
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21.2.3.8 Faulty Analogy It is a fallacy that occurs when two cases are compared to each other but are not similar in terms of the relationship stated in the comparison. Were someone to argue that Nelson Mandela is today’s Abraham Lincoln, that argument would be subject to the charge of faulty analogy. Whether or not that charge is correct would depend on whether or not the argument presented sufficient similarities between Mandela and Lincoln, and on whether or not Mandela and Lincoln were different in significant ways.
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The fallacies in the preceding section are related to the standard of sufficiency. In prior sections we described fallacies related to each of the standards of a quality argument: acceptability, relevance, and sufficiency. This list of fallacies certainly is not exhaustive.
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思辨精英：英语辩论-构筑全球视角 [:1705132539]
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21.3 Summary
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Several of the previous chapters in this text have described the kinds of arguments, the elements that comprise them, and the various structures into which arguments are crafted. This chapter changed directions to discuss the quality of arguments—those features that separate better arguments from worse arguments. The three criteria discussed were acceptability of evidence, relevance, and sufficiency of the link between evidence and claim. Along with those three criteria, the chapter discussed the most basic of fallacies that correspond to each of the three criteria: problematic premises, irrelevant reasons, and hasty conclusions. Then, each of those categories was exemplified by more specific fallacies classified under each.
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