Know your logical fallacies Trivia Quiz

Answer: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" is Latin for "after this, therefore because of this." Maybe you really did get a shot from a bad batch or you're allergic, but there are many other reasons you could be sick. Not everything that happens after you do something is because you did it.

Answer: Ad hominem

"Ad hominem" is Latin for "to the man" (in the sense of "person", not necessarily male). The fallacy consists of saying that because someone is (allegedly) a bad person, what they say must be false or everything they did must be bad.

Answer: Straw man

It's easier to beat up a scarecrow than to take on your opponent's actual arguments. In this example, the mayor is saying that the money would be better used to make the students better readers, not that she hates sports. Maybe she's made a mistake, and maybe she isn't a sports fan, but you have to answer it.

Answer: No fallacy

There's no fallacy here. You can defend someone's right to say something without supporting what they say.

Answer: Appeal to emotion

Love is a good and powerful thing, but emotions aren't the way to decide who is the best candidate. The appeal to emotion substitutes feelings for reasons. The same fallacy applies to candidates who appeal to hatred.

Answer: False dichotomy

The false dichotomy fallacy consists of excluding all possibilities but two, when others exist. Maybe both proposals are bad. It's common for the two sides of a false dichotomy to be two versions of the same error.

Answer: No true Scotsman

The canonical version of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy goes something like this: "He couldn't have done that! No Scotsman would! What, you've got proof? That just means he isn't a TRUE Scotsman!" You'd like to believe that no member of your group would commit certain deeds, but it can happen.

Answer: Begging the question

The term "begging the question" is often misused. As a logical fallacy, it means assuming a point in order to support it. It's closely related to circular reasoning. This example isn't ad hominem, since if she steals, that would in fact establish she's a thief. The fallacy is in repeating the claim in a different form as if it proved it.

Answer: No fallacy

The statement is valid. If you don't know, you shouldn't leap to a conclusion.

The term "excluded middle" is a messy one with two opposite meanings. It's sometimes used to mean that there's no middle ground between a clear, unambiguous statement being true or false. That's called the "law of the excluded middle." It's also used to mean the fallacy of denying that intermediate states can exist on a spectrum; the term "false dichotomy" is clearer.

Answer: Appeal to ignorance

The appeal to ignorance consists of implying that if a claim hasn't been disproven it must be true, or if it hasn't been proven it must be false. It's different from the burden of proof principle, which says you shouldn't accept an assertion as true until there's adequate evidence or reasoning behind it.