Fallacies, otherwise known as "the Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation". See, "The Thinker’s Guide to Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation" (Free download versions).
Dr Richard Paul and Dr Linda Elder wrote:The word ‘fallacy’ derives from two Latin words, fallax (“deceptive”) and fallere (“to deceive”). This is an important concept in human life because much human thinking deceives itself while deceiving others. The human mind has no natural guide to the truth, nor does it naturally love the truth.
What the human mind loves is itself, what serves it, what flatters it, what gives it what it wants, and what strikes down and destroys whatever “threatens” it.
How can humans create within their own minds such an inconsistent amalgam of the rational and the irrational? The answer is self-deception. In fact, perhaps the most accurate and useful definition of humans is that of “the self-deceiving animal.” Deception, duplicity, sophistry, delusion, and hypocrisy are foundational products of human nature in its “natural,” untutored state. Rather than reducing these tendencies, most schooling and social influences redirect them, rendering them more sophisticated, more artful, and more obscure.
To exacerbate this problem, not only are humans instinctively self-deceptive, they are naturally socio-centric as well. Every culture and society
sees itself as special and as justified in all of its basic beliefs and practices, in all its values and taboos.
The over-whelming preponderance of people have not freely decided what to believe, but, rather, have been socially conditioned (indoctrinated) into their beliefs. They are unreflective thinkers. Their minds are products of social and personal forces they neither understand, control, nor concern themselves with. Their personal beliefs are often based in prejudices. Their thinking is largely comprised of stereotypes, caricatures, oversimplifications, sweeping generalizations, illusions, delusions, rationalizations, false dilemmas, and begged questions.
Their motivations are often traceable to irrational fears and attachments, personal vanity and envy, intellectual arrogance and simple-mindedness. These constructs have become a part of their identity.
- A List Of Fallacious Arguments by Don Lindsay Archive.
Click on the links, above or below, or search the web for definitions of these classically defined intellectual devices (yuktis).
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time." - Richard Nixon
Ad Hominem (Argument To The Man)
Affirming The Consequent
Amazing Familiarity
Ambiguous Assertion
Appeal To Anonymous Authority
Appeal To Authority
Appeal To Coincidence
Appeal To Complexity
Appeal To False Authority
Appeal To Force
Appeal To Pity (Appeal to Sympathy, The Galileo Argument)
Appeal To Widespread Belief (Bandwagon Argument, Peer Pressure, Appeal To Common Practice)
Argument By Emotive Language (Appeal To The People)
Argument By Fast Talking
Argument By Generalization
Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement)
Argument By Half Truth (Suppressed Evidence)
Argument By Laziness (Argument By Uninformed Opinion)
Argument By Personal Charm
Argument By Pigheadedness (Doggedness)
Argument By Poetic Language
Argument By Prestigious Jargon
Argument By Question
Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam)
Argument by Rhetorical Question
Argument By Scenario
Argument By Selective Observation
Argument By Selective Reading
Argument By Slogan
Argument From Adverse Consequences Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics
Argument From Age (Wisdom of the Ancients)
Argument From Authority
Argument From False Authority
Argument From Small Numbers
Argument From Spurious Similarity
Argument Of The Beard
Argument To The Future
Bad Analogy
Begging The Question (Assuming The Answer, Tautology)
Burden Of Proof
Causal Reductionism (Complex Cause)
Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection, False Emphasis)
Cliche Thinking
Common Sense
Complex Question (Tying)
Confusing Correlation And Causation
Disproof By Fallacy
Equivocation
Error Of Fact
Euphemism
Exception That Proves The Rule
Excluded Middle (False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma, Bifurcation)
Extended Analogy
Failure To State
Fallacy Of Composition
Fallacy Of Division
Fallacy Of The General Rule
Fallacy Of The Crucial Experiment
False Cause
False Compromise
Genetic Fallacy (Fallacy of Origins, Fallacy of Virtue)
Having Your Cake (Failure To Assert, or Diminished Claim)
Hypothesis Contrary To Fact
Inconsistency
Inflation Of Conflict
Internal Contradiction
Least Plausible Hypothesis
Lies
Meaningless Questions
Misunderstanding The Nature Of Statistics
Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection)
Needling
Non Sequitur
Not Invented Here
Outdated Information
Pious Fraud
Poisoning The Wells
Psychogenetic Fallacy
Reductio Ad Absurdum
Reductive Fallacy (Oversimplification)
Reifying
Short Term Versus Long Term
Slippery Slope Fallacy (Camel's Nose)
Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck)
Statement Of Conversion
Stolen Concept
Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension)
Two Wrongs Make A Right (Tu Quoque, You Too)
Weasel Wording