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Apr 2, 2024 · Causation in psychology refers to the relationship between variables where one variable causes a change in another, leading to an observable effect on behavior or outcomes. Understanding causation is crucial in psychology as it helps researchers establish the reasons behind certain behaviors or phenomena. By exploring causal relationships ...
Jul 9, 2024 · You can do various things to identify and avoid the slippery slope fallacy when it is being used by others. These include: Call out a lack of evidence that one small thing will lead to a big thing. “Look at arguments that claim one thing will inevitably lead to another,” says Etienne.
The problem in logic lies in the assumption that one step will inevitably lead to another incremental step, and another, and another, ending up in a bad result. As RationalWiki puts it: “A leads to B which leads to C which leads to D which leads E which leads to zebras having relations with elephants.“. Here are a couple of examples of a ...
Nov 20, 2017 · Behavioral mind-sets can play a crucial role in understanding how one thing leads to another, often without the actor’s intention. Future research may fruitfully address strategies that can curb spillover effects, reducing the unintended impact of past activities.
- Alison Jing Xu, Norbert Schwarz
- 2018
- What Is A Logical Fallacy?
- List of Logical Fallacies with Examples
- The Sunk Cost Fallacy – Definition and Example
- The Ad Hominem Fallacy – Definition and Example
- The Straw Man Fallacy – Definition and Example
- The Slippery Slope Fallacy – Definition and Example
- The Circular Reasoning Fallacy – Definition and Example
- The Equivocation Fallacy – Definition and Example
- The Post Hoc Fallacy – Definition and Example
- The Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy – Definition and Example
A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that makes your argument less effective and convincing. And you want to be able to spot these fallacies in other people's arguments (and your own) so you can call them out or fix your own strategy. There are two major types of logical fallacies, formal and informal. In formal fallacies, there's a problem w...
In this article, we'll look at the most common informal fallacies so you can learn to identify them and avoid them.
Have you ever finished a task (that you really didn't want to complete) simply because you'd put so much time and effort in already? You probably felt like you didn't want all that hard work to go to waste, or to be for nothing. You were likely falling prey to the sunk cost fallacy. It states that it's actually better to abandon a project that's go...
Ad hominem means "against the person" in Latin. So the ad hominem fallacy happens when you attack a person's character, appearance, personality, or other irrelevant aspects in an argument instead of attacking what they're saying. These types of attacks are fallacious because they're not relevant to the argument, and so they distract from the point ...
When you hear the term "straw man", what comes to mind? Probably a figure of a person made of straw, like a scarecrow, or something else insubstantial. That straw figure isn't too solid, and you could just knock it over with a little push or a strong gust of wind. The same holds true for straw man fallacies – they represent weaker arguments that ar...
The slippery slope fallacy refers to arguments that get increasingly dramatic and out of hand very quickly. Especially when the ever-more-dramatic conclusions aren't realistic or likely to happen. These types of arguments are often made when someone wants to emphasize how drastically bad an outcome would be. Perhaps a better name for this fallacy, ...
Have you ever noticed someone arguing in a way that they seem to go around in a circle? It might seem like they're making an argument, but they'll use their conclusion to justify their argument, and their argument to justify their conclusion. If this sounds confusing, that's because it is. When someone says something like "This tee-shirt is wet bec...
Equivocation means that you're taking a word or phrase and changing its meaning slightly so that it means something else. Or you're using one word or phrase instead of another to hide the true meaning of what you're saying. In other words, you're being ambiguous with your language. If something is ambiguous, it means that you can interpret it in mo...
You might have heard the phrase "post hoc ergo propter hoc" before, even if you've never studied Latin. This Latin phrase translates to "After this, therefore because of this." Now that might sound like a jumble of conjunctions and such, but it basically means that if event B happened after event A, that must mean that event A caused event B. Post ...
No one knows everything – it's just a fact of being human. We're all still learning, and while some might know more than others, we'll all be ignorant about certain things. With that in mind, it's pretty easy to see why the appeal to ignorance fallacy is so common and so useless. When you say something like "Well, no one's ever seen Nessie (the Loc...
Plus, figuring out what actually causes something isn’t always easy. Sometimes we might think one thing leads to another when they’re actually not connected at all—like thinking a black cat crossing your path causes bad luck. But even with these puzzles to solve, the Law of Cause and Effect is still really handy.
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In order to believe that one thing caused another, we usually need to have some idea of how the first thing could cause the second. If we cannot imagine how one would cause another, why should we find it plausible? Any argument about agency, or the way in which one thing caused another, depends on assumptions about what makes things happen. If ...
