Fallacies
The choices that people make determine the shape of things to come. This observation holds true at the individual, organizational, national, and global level. Therefore, it is obvious that close attention needs to be paid to critical thinking ability or the way decisions are made. This inference can be drawn because critical thinking involves the formation of logical inferences, the development of cohesive and logical reasoning patterns, and careful and deliberate determination of whether to accept, reject, or suspend judgment. Thus, learning critical thinking skills can help an individual to recognize propaganda, analyze unstated assumptions in arguments, realize when there is deliberate deception, consider the credibility of information sources, and think a problem or decision through in as objective a manner as possible (Halpern, cited Simon & Kaplan; Stahl & Stahl; Moore & Parker, 1996, p. 5-6). In other words, learning to recognize and avoid unsound reasoning techniques or logical fallacies is a vital step in the critical thinking process. It is the objective of this paper to discuss the significance of three such logical fallacies to critical thinking: Appeal to Ignorance; Appeal to Authority; and Appeal to Popularity.
The Appeal to Ignorance fallacy, also known as "argumentum ad ignorantiam," is committed when a lack of knowledge about something is used in order to assert the correctness of a conclusion. This fallacy can occur in two forms. The positive version asserts that what has not been disproved must be true, while the negative version claims that what has not been proved cannot be true (Pirie). The important point to note about this particular logical fallacy is that the reasoning employed...
199). Since critical thinking involves the careful examination of the validity of assumptions as well as the logic of the inferences drawn, the significance of the "argumentum ad ignorantiam" fallacy is self-evident. Indeed, accepting an argument that is based on as tenuous a platform as an appeal to ignorance runs the risk of leading to decisions, which are little more than shots in the dark. A good example, here, would be consumers who make a decision to buy a product based on the claims of advertisements, which use a false cause-and-effect relationship. For instance, there are companies, which claim that wearing copper bracelets will bring about an improvement in arthritis, and dare medical researchers to prove that they don't. In fact, such companies persist in their claim in spite of researchers constantly stating that such an effect cannot be supported by scientific or medical evidence. These promoters of copper bracelets justify their right to making such a claim simply because nobody has been able to disprove the positive effects of copper bracelets on arthritis (Taflinger, 1996).
The Appeal to Authority or "argumentum ad verecundiam" is a fallacy that occurs when the authority used to support a premise in an argument is a wrong one. It is important to note that the fallacy committed is not in the appeal to authority per se, but in the appeal to someone who is not a credible authority (Halpern, 1996, p. 199). Thus, the fallacy lies in the introduction of material, which has no real bearing on the matter under discussion: "The attempt to make our opinions yield before such spurious authority is…
