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Decoding Reasoning: Exploring Logical Fallacies and the Pitfalls of Appeal to Ignorance

The Appeal to Ignorance

Decoding Reasoning: Exploring Logical Fallacies and the Pitfalls of Appeal to Ignorance

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What are logical fallacies?

Logical fallacies are like landmines; easy to overlook until you find them the hard way.

One of the most important components of learning in college is academic discourse, which requires argumentation and debate. Argumentation and debate inevitably lend themselves to flawed reasoning and rhetorical errors. Many of these errors are considered logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are commonplace in the classroom, in formal televised debates, and perhaps most rampantly, on any number of internet forums.

But what is a logical fallacy? And just as important, how can you avoid making logical fallacies yourself? Whether youโ€™re in college, or preparing to go to college; whether youโ€™re on campus or in an online bachelorโ€™s degree program, it pays to know your logical fallacies. This article lays out some of the most common logical fallacies you might encounter, and that you should be aware of in your own discourse and debate.

A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning common enough to warrant a fancy name. Knowing how to spot and identify fallacies is a priceless skill. It can save you time, money, and personal dignity. There are two major categories of logical fallacies, which in turn break down into a wide range of types of fallacies, each with their own unique ways of trying to trick you into agreement.






A Formal Fallacy

A breakdown in how you say something. The ideas are somehow sequenced incorrectly. Their form is wrong, rendering the argument as noise and nonsense.


An Informal Fallacy

Denotes an error in what you are saying, that is, the content of your argument. The ideas might be arranged correctly, but something you said isnโ€™t quite right. The content is wrong or off-kilter.


Any time ignorance is used as a major premise in support of an argument, itโ€™s liable to be a fallacious appeal to ignorance. Naturally, we are all ignorant of many things, but it is cheap and manipulative to allow this unfortunate aspect of the human condition to do most of our heavy lifting in an argument.

An appeal to ignorance isnโ€™t proof of anything except that you donโ€™t know something.


Interestingly, appeal to ignorance is often used to bolster multiple contradictory conclusions at once. Consider the following two claims:
โ€œNo one has ever been able to prove definitively that extra-terrestrials exist, so they must not be real.โ€
– โ€œNo one has ever been able to prove definitively that extra-terrestrials do not exist, so they must be real.โ€

If the same argument strategy can support mutually exclusive claims, then itโ€™s not a good argument strategy.


An appeal to ignorance isnโ€™t proof of anything except that you donโ€™t know something. If no one has proven the non-existence of ghosts or flying saucers, thatโ€™s hardly proof that those things either exist or donโ€™t exist. If we donโ€™t know whether they exist, then we donโ€™t know that theyย doย exist or that theyย donโ€™tย exist. Appeal to ignorance doesnโ€™t prove any claim to knowledge.




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Logical Fallacies

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