Every Single Logical Fallacy Explained

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Logical fallacies are a hot button topic. Every year, there are videos that go viral all across YouTube explaining the top 10 logical fallacies, or the best logical fallacies, and how to spot and disprove them. And these are all well and good, but I want to do something a little bit different. I want to propose a framework that moves beyond simply identifying logical fallacies and instead sees why they are such poor arguments and gives you a way to spot bad debating, even when you can't explicitly name the logical fallacy involved.

So, rather than listing fallacies one by one, I'm going to break them down into types and then argue why I think this is a more productive and ultimately much more helpful way of viewing logical fallacies. These types certainly won't be exclusive or exhaustive, and some fallacies will definitely fall into more than one category, but I do encourage you to build upon and improve my framework for your own personal use. This is also something of a sequel to a video I made a long time ago about logical fallacies, and it will cover some of the same material, but there's also plenty of new stuff. So if you've seen that one, you will still get a lot from this one. By the end of this video, I hope that you won't even need to use these named fallacy labels at all.

But let's begin with the easiest kind of fallacy to define and step into one of my favorite topics: formal logic. But before moving on, I want to take a brief moment to thank today's very kind sponsor, Squarespace. If you're looking to build a website, then you know it can be a real pain. First, you have to choose a domain name, and then design the whole thing. And there's always this underlying worry that you're messing up and creating something that's not just messy, but actually looks downright unprofessional. But this is where Squarespace comes into play. They compress all of that complexity into a single platform and use ready-made templates to take all of that headache out of website building. They also have a feature called Design Intelligence, which uses AI tools to help you make design choices, which is really handy if, like me, you don't have the mind of a graphic designer and don't necessarily have an eye for visual arts, to put it incredibly gently. Head to squarespace.com/unlistedadvice and use the code unlistedadvice to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain name. Thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring this video, and let's get back to it.

One formal approaches. The word logic is used in a surprising number of ways, from denoting particular systems to just meaning thinking well. When I was at university, I mainly studied formal logic, which is a type of language designed to establish which premises imply which conclusions. In other words, what we can infer from what. That sounds a bit abstract, but we've all encountered this sort of thing in its basic form. Take the following argument: One, all men are mortal. Two, Socrates is a man. Three, therefore, Socrates is mortal. Everyone can recognize that this is a good argument, but more than that, it is valid. That is, if all of its premises are true, its conclusion cannot be false. If all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates just must be mortal. This is because the argument has the following valid logical structure: One, for any X, if X is F, then X is G. Two, A is F. Three, therefore, A is G.

Formal logical systems set certain rules which dictate which moves in an argument are valid and which are not. That is, which preserve truth and which allow for mistakes to creep in. These rules can vary between different logical systems. For example, while classical logic states that any statement must be true or false and there is no in-between, in three-valued logics, there is truth, falsity, and some third thing, which often stands in for something like "I'm not sure." So, whereas in classical logic, the argument structure: One, not not A. Two, therefore, A is valid. In many three-valued logics, it is not. Classical formal logic provides one very neat framework with which to look at many logical fallacies. For all the sway they hold in popular discourse, most logicians don't really talk about particular logical fallacies, but simply identify whether a given argument or proof is valid or not.

Some fallacies just use an invalid argument structure, like the following: One, if Socrates were here, then people would be angry. Two, Socrates is not here. Three, therefore, people will not be angry. This argument looks almost exactly like a valid logical structure called a modus ponens argument, where if A implies B and A is true, then B must also be true. However, the actual structure of this argument is: If A implies B, and A is false, then B must also be false. But this simply doesn't follow. We can clearly see this in our example. Even if Socrates were not there, irritating everyone with his incessant questioning, people could still be angry. They just have to be angry at something else, like the weather or a substandard pot of tea. This fallacy is known as denying the antecedent. As we said, it's a mistake in logical structure. It is perfectly possible that all of the premises would be true and the conclusion would still be false. It is invalid.

If we were being technical, then every fallacy of logical structure is just an example of the non sequitur fallacy. This is Latin for "it doesn't follow," and it identifies an argument as invalid. This is why if logicians are criticizing an argument, they will tend to say, "This doesn't imply what you think it does," or "This argument step is invalid," rather than pointing to a specific named logical fallacy. It's worth noting a good number of fallacies do fall into this category. Let's call them loosely fallacies of form. For example, the fallacy of composition is when you infer something about the whole set or collection of objects from properties about the objects themselves. The fallacy of composition is quite interesting because sometimes it actually does get you to the right conclusion, but its structure does not guarantee that you will find the right conclusion. For example, here is a solid argument that still technically uses the fallacy of composition: One, every part of this house is made of Lego. Two, therefore, the house is made of Lego. The general structure of this argument is: Every X in collection Y holds property F, so the collection itself holds property F. However, we can immediately see that this isn't always the case. For example: One, every brick in this wall is under 30 cm long. Two, therefore, the wall is under 30 cm long. In both cases, the form of the argument is fallacious, but in the first argument, it still worked because it just so happens that if all the parts of something are made of a certain material, then the whole thing is also made of that material. This doesn't hold for properties like length or shape, and so the general argument scheme cannot be relied upon. We must assume some auxiliary premise to make it work, and this illustrates another general point that's going to become incredibly key in this video: just because an argument is fallacious, it doesn't mean that the conclusion is definitely not true.

This is especially the case when it comes to formal fallacies, because validity is an incredibly high bar to jump over. It means there is no possibility where the conclusion is false, provided that all the premises are true. For example, the following is a really quite persuasive argument, and most people would say it is in some sense good, but it is still definitely not valid: One, every morning so far, the sun has risen. Two, therefore, the sun rises every morning. Of course, this is a perfectly normal inductive argument, yet it is technically invalid because it is possible that even though the sun has risen every morning for billions of years, it will stop rising tomorrow through some unpredictable change. Logical validity is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to argumentation.

Additionally, the second property of an argument that logicians are often interested in is soundness. This term is used in a couple of different ways. Sometimes it means the premises of the argument are true, and sometimes it means the premises of the argument are true and the argument is valid. Most people use the second definition, even though I think the first is more helpful because it allows you to talk about the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument entirely separately. But my personal quibbles aside, essentially, if an argument is valid, then the next question to ask is: Are all the assumptions of the argument true? This is because if they are, then the conclusion must also be true, and we have an airtight case for that conclusion. Then it's happy days, because we can all go home and the argument is put to rest.

For our current purposes, we can analyze some logical fallacies as having an obviously unsound premise or obviously unsound premises. For example, take a classic ad hominem attack. Imagine that two politicians are having a public debate, and one of them turns to the other and says, "But you're a bad person, so your policies will run this country into the ground." We could represent that argument in propositional form as follows: One, you are a bad person. Two, policies put forward by bad people will run countries into the ground. Three, therefore, your policies will run this country into the ground. The trouble is, the second premise of this argument is just false. Policies have merits independent from the people putting them forward. It could be that a truly immoral person nonetheless has far more economic or political acumen than their opponents. Likewise, someone who was extremely personally moral could be an outright incompetent leader. What is true and what policies make sense have nothing to do with the people who proposed them.

However, it gets complicated since, despite the argument's unsoundness, most people do want to know their leader's personal moral character when voting for them, and we don't tend to think that they are wrong to do so. Whether this particular argument is unsound depends on which conclusion is actually being argued for. Political rhetoric often means people exaggerate the strength or form of their conclusions. If the politician instead turned to the audience and said, "My opponent is morally bad, so you should not trust them to make policies in your interests," the situation changes entirely. Then we have the following argument: One, my opponent is a bad person. Two, you can't trust bad people to make good policies. Three, therefore, you can't trust my opponent to make good policies. At the very least, the second premise here is much more plausible. It is not so obviously unsound that we would want to dismiss it as fallacious. After all, politicians can enrich themselves while in office, and they can make policies that are not in the interests of the people they're governing. And this may be more common if the politician themselves doesn't have a strong personal moral compass.

We can make similar observations about appeals to authority. If someone is saying, "A leading expert has said this, so it is true," that relies on the false idea that whatever a leading expert says simply must be true. But of course, leading experts are wrong all the time, and mistakes are part of how collective expertise progresses. One of the greatest mathematicians of the early 20th century, David Hilbert, believed that mathematics would be reducible to a complete and consistent logical system, and he was definitely proven wrong by Gödel. However, it's also clear that appeals to authority are not always fallacious. For example, imagine that myself and a friend are having a discussion about the science of batteries. However, neither of us know very much about the science of batteries. In this case, appealing to what an expert thinks or expert consensus is a pretty decent proxy measure for reliable belief formation. Experts can certainly be wrong, but if we personally don't know that much about a topic, then they're often what we have to go on. It can provide defeasible evidence for a particular conclusion.

And put a pin in this importance of context when evaluating logical fallacies, as it's going to be the focus of the third section of this video. Considerations like this mean that while formal approaches to logical fallacies are fantastic in a whole host of ways, and I think that if everyone learned basic propositional logic, the world would be a much better place, they don't do justice to the full complexity of argumentation. For one thing, contextual factors like the prior knowledge of the arguers and the strength with which a particular conclusion is put forward seem highly relevant to where a given argument is fallacious or not, and this isn't necessarily captured neatly by just using formal systems. Another way of looking at matters might be more convenient or more practical. Moreover, there are fallacies like the no true Scotsman fallacy, and the burden of proof fallacy, and the straw man fallacy, which are not to do with soundness and validity, but something a little bit more nebulous, and as a result, the formal approach can't quite capture this. So, as much as it pains my heart to do so, we must descend from the platonic realm of logical laws to the messy business of real-world argumentation and step into a fascinating recent field of philosophy called informal logic.

Two, the argument game. In Ludwig Wittgenstein's posthumously published works, he gave one of the most famous analyses of language in history that went on to influence computer science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and more. Whereas many traditional theories of language tended to focus on the semantic content of statements and the pure logical relations between them, Wittgenstein's later works were much more concerned about what language does and the different purposes it serves. He called these purposeful ways of using language language games, and similar to other types of games, they have certain rules and certain expectations. Just like how when you're playing chess, there are appropriate ways to move the pieces and inappropriate ones. There are ways to get conversations wrong, so to speak. Some of these language games are very obvious and have very obvious rules, like a cross-examination in a court of law, where there are explicitly defined constraints on what can and cannot be said, and someone actively enforcing those constraints at the time. But some games are much more subtle. For example, the language game of stand-up comedy allows people to say false statements as long as they are funny enough, whereas the language game of a PhD viva does not give this leeway.

So, one way to look at this larger class of logical fallacies that are not captured by formal logic is to ask: What are the rules of the argumentative language game, and do these wider logical fallacies break them? In recent years, many philosophers have tackled this question. One highly influential analysis comes from Douglas Walton, and says that in a standard argument, each person aims to persuade the other person while at the same time getting to the truth of the matter as much as possible. According to Walton, the implicit rules of this language game assume that each person genuinely wants to persuade their opponents to their point of view and to understand why they disagree. He asks us to picture the dialogue as two agents, each of which hold conflicting conclusions and a set of prior commitments that led to those conclusions. That is, what they already believe. To give you a flavor, I'll outline just some of his explicit rules: One, arguments against the opponent must assume the opponent's commitments. Two, both sides must honestly represent both their commitments and their opponents', and not change their commitments without explicitly saying so. Three, each person must answer reasonable questions from the other side. Four, no one can declare definitive victory until the other side's position is untenable or has been explicitly conceded. Five, in general, arguments should appeal mainly to the opponent's reason.

These are just a general sketch of Walton's rules of argumentation. They are not exhaustive because what seems appropriate in an argument will vary slightly from situation to situation and is not really reducible to a finite set of laws. But a good overall question to ask is this: Is each person honestly searching for the truth and to persuade one another on that basis, or do they seem like they're doing something else? If they're doing something else, then Walton thinks they are implicitly breaking the rules of argument. In my last video on logical fallacies, I called this sort of thing "bad manners," but the framework of informal logic provides a much more precise way of dealing with them. Incidentally, that video ended up getting restricted for sexual content. I could have sworn that I didn't, but perhaps I was wrong. Either way, a few examples will help illustrate why this way of looking at fallacies can sometimes be helpful.

Take the no true Scotsman fallacy. This is where someone suddenly shifts their definitions in order to defend a point. Say, for the sake of argument, we were debating whether philosophers made good lovers. You pointed to a number of philosophers who either were or would make very poor lovers, say Nietzsche and numerous monastic thinkers throughout history. But I then reply, "Aha! But they must have not been true philosophers. Any true philosopher is a phenomenal lover." This is a classic example of the no true Scotsman fallacy. I am changing my definition on the fly to reply to a counterexample. The thing is, there is nothing logically wrong with this. Logic cannot dictate definitions, and if I suddenly want to define "philosopher" in a weird and wonderful way, there is no logic police who will come to my house and handcuff me to my radiator. Formal logic can only kick in once definitions have already been established. But no true Scotsman still breaks a key rule of argumentation. It is dishonestly shifting my position without explicitly conceding this to my opponent. It means I am no longer arguing honestly, but attempting to obscure what my true conclusion and my true beliefs are.

The same goes for the motte and bailey fallacy. This is where an arguer has two positions which they shift between at will. The motte is usually an eminently sensible and defensible position, but one that is much more modest, whereas the bailey is a far more extreme position that is taken whenever the arguer is not being directly challenged. To use my normal outlandish example, imagine that I am the leader of the Puppy Hating Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and I want to argue for the complete eradication of puppies. I know that my position is highly unpopular, so I conceal it using a motte and bailey fallacy. My motte is: "I'm just letting people know that some of these puppies will inevitably bite people when they grow up." And my bailey is: "All puppies must be proactively disposed of." Whenever someone challenges my second, extreme position by pointing out that most puppies will grow up to be harmless, I can then say, "I know that most puppies are harmless. I'm just telling people that some will inevitably bite when they are fully grown." Again, there is nothing in formal logic that prevents me from doing this, but I'm not being honest about my position, and so I'm falling foul of the argumentative rules.

Then there are burden of proof fallacies. This is where I unjustly try to make someone else bear the burden of proof when it truly rests with me. For instance, if I were arguing that goblins control the weather, and someone else asked me to produce proof, and I simply said, "Well, you can't prove that goblins don't control the weather," I am trying to make the opponent take up the burden of proof when I'm the one making a novel and unusual claim. It's not always the person making a positive claim who has the burden of proof. If I'm defending the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and someone else simply wants to say, "It's false that the Earth revolves around the Sun," then they're making a negative claim and I'm making a positive one, but they still have the burden of proof because the generally accepted position is heliocentrism. This doesn't by itself mean that heliocentrism is correct, but it does mean that if the goal of an argument is to persuade people, it definitely requires disproving rather than the burden beginning on the heliocentrists, so to speak.

The straw man fallacy is also not against any rules of formal logic. Logic deals with relationships between propositions, and nowhere does it say that you cannot completely parody your opponent's position in the process. But it does go against the rules of argumentation outlined here. It is dishonestly representing your opponent's standpoint, and as a result, it is an informal fallacy. But believe it or not, things get even more complicated, because despite the fruitfulness of this approach, we can't simply lay down a set of laws and say that anything that breaks them is a fallacy. For many supposed fallacies, whether or not they are actually fallacious is highly dependent on context. But luckily, this is just our next point.

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Three, contextual fallacies. Imagine for a moment that I am a lawyer arguing that my client should be given a lighter sentence than usual for his crimes. I talk about how he grew up in a broken home, how a gang took him under their wing, and how he only committed this crime because he was starving. "Won't you take pity on this man?" I said. Here is my question: Is what I'm doing fallacious or not? It is clearly an appeal to pity, which is normally seen as a fallacy, but whether it is outright fallacious seems to depend on a further question: Is the pity warranted? This example is also from Walton's work, and it fantastically illustrates the importance of context when we're discussing fallacies. For instance, imagine the crime committed was stealing a loaf of bread, and the situation was all very Jean Valjean. In this case, most people think that the appeal to pity would be somewhat appropriate, since most think petty theft is less worthy of condemnation when it is committed out of desperation. However, if the man was guilty of a triple homicide, then most think the appeal to pity is now entirely inappropriate. You can't try and make us feel pity now; we want to say you have already done the near unforgivable. Walton argues that whether the appeal to pity is fallacious or not cannot be established by simply looking at the argument. We must also look at the context in which the argument is given, and he is not the only one. The same point is made by Christopher Tindale and has become mainstream among informal logic scholars.

Another pretty good example of contextual importance is the ad hominem attack we looked at earlier. There, the contextual factor was what specifically the politician was arguing for. If they were arguing that bad people necessarily make bad politics, then they would commit a fallacy. If they were instead arguing that bad people are less trustworthy, and this is pretty important if you're going to be in a position to empower yourself at the cost of your nation, then the ad hominem attack is no longer irrelevant but is pretty important. It seems like that's a pretty good thing to know. Attacking someone's person in a debate is only fallacious if their character is not actually pertinent to the issue at hand.

Beyond these more obvious contextual factors, conclusions can be argued for at different strengths. In practice, we don't just believe things wholeheartedly or reject them outright. We believe things to a given degree of confidence. We might also not believe in something, but just think it's plausible, or believe in something while recognizing that it is only probable and not definitive. And this has a real bearing on whether a given argument is fallacious or not. This is again pretty evident with an appeal to authority. For example, if I were arguing that the Earth was flat, and you pointed out that almost every expert on the topic agrees that the Earth is not flat, this does not refute any of my flat Earth arguments directly. However, it will be enough to throw doubt upon the conclusion, shift the burden of proof in my direction, and warrant further investigation on my part. Say, the recent South Pole experiments which demonstrated that the Earth was definitely not flat, or any of the other numerous experiments along the same lines. The appeal to authority was justified for a particular conclusion: establishing the definite uncertainty of the Flat Earth hypothesis. Then this allowed for further investigation, revealing that the Earth was not flat.

Context is especially important when thinking about inductive arguments. Some fallacies, like the slippery slope fallacy, depend almost entirely on whether there is sufficient evidence for the slippery slope in question. For instance, when debating whether euthanasia should be legalized in a given country, people tend to point to where euthanasia laws have gradually expanded from just applying to painful terminal illnesses to more and more cases, such as non-terminal conditions and mental illnesses. When this is brought up, some people accuse it of being a slippery slope fallacy. But that depends on one, to what extent these expansions have actually happened, and two, whether the new country's legal system is sufficiently similar to those other countries that the expansion might plausibly happen there too. It also depends on how strongly the conclusion is argued for. If the arguer thinks the slippery slope will definitely happen, then that is fallacious. No inductive reasoning can justify such claims. Whereas if they're simply saying that this evidence makes it more probable that the slippery slope will occur, then that is not fallacious, but a standard application of inductive reasoning. Again, this is all assuming that their premises are correct.

Similarly, some standardly fallacious arguments can't prove anything is true, but they can shift the burden of proof in some contexts. This is often the case for the argumentum ad populum, or the appeal to popular opinion. If the majority of people woke up tomorrow believing that the sky was green, that would certainly not make it green, but it would mean that it's plausibly on us to convince them otherwise. This is because if we assume that the goal of our argument is to persuade, then in this case, persuading the most people requires refuting their beliefs, and in this case, positively arguing that the sky is not green. Here, the justification for moving the burden of proof is practical rather than philosophical, though this too will vary from context to context. A publicly elected politician has to care a lot more about what the majority thinks than an academic who will largely pay attention to academic consensus.

The contextual factors just never end. Sometimes what counts as fallacious depends on pretty wide-ranging philosophical beliefs, like what is right and wrong. This is clearest with the argumentum ad baculum, or the argument from force. A classic example of this is: "Believe what I do, or I will hurt you." At one level, this is an unsound argument because no amount of force will make a false proposition true. But sometimes warning of consequences is perfectly reasonable. For example, if you're about to steal a car, I might say, "You shouldn't do that. You'll go to prison." Here, I'm assuming that you want to act in your own best interests, and I'm reminding you of the likely consequences of your actions. This differs from a direct threat because I'm not going to send you to prison myself, and also because most people see it as just for car thieves to be punished for their actions. If instead we were in the world of 1984, and a Thought Police agent said, "You should say that," "You'll go to prison," this seems closer to a fallacy because the law in question strikes us as unjust.

These numerous contextual factors add pretty significant complication to our definitions of fallacies because it means we can no longer identify most fallacies simply by their structure or their appearance. We can't label every time someone references an expert as an appeal to authority fallacy, and we can't dismiss every appeal to emotion as straightforwardly fallacious. We need to ask: What context did the argument take place in, and what is the arguer actually trying to prove? The world of argumentation is far broader than simply formal logic or even the rules we outlined in the previous section. Identifying fallacies in practice requires what Aristotle called phronesis, or practical wisdom. It means taking into account a wide variety of factors, incorporating formal logic, context, and the implicit rules of persuasion to evaluate the extent to which any given argument is committing one or more fallacies.

But then this raises an important further question: If there's all this complication to logical fallacies, then what's the point of criticizing arguments using these terms? And I would say there actually isn't much point beyond simply convenience, and that we would do well to expand our horizons here.

Four, beyond logic and fallacies. Perhaps my favorite named fallacy is the fallacy fallacy. This is where someone uses logical fallacies a bit like a magic spell, as if merely speaking their name is enough to dismiss someone's argument and furthermore treat their conclusion as false. The best demonstration I found of this magic spell use of fallacies is actually in a meme by original P 6209. Here we have an exchange between two people. One is a stereotypical Chad, and the other a sort of caricature of an unintelligent person. The Chad is using fallacy labels to convince the other person to give him their wallet, illustrating just how unhelpful this little argumentative name-calling can sometimes be. Here, saying, "Imagine if I asked for your bank details," is changing the subject of the debate, but it's doing so in a relevant way. It is challenging the Chad to show that their demands can be justified to some external third party, and that they're not just making a self-interested demand. We can imagine situations where the Chad actually has a good response. Imagine that he's investigating the other person on suspicion of murder, and he wants to use the wallet as evidence. Then he could say, "These two situations are not the same. I am confiscating your wallet for public benefit, and if I were under investigation for murder, then my wallet could also be taken."

As we've already discussed, sometimes so-called fallacies are simply imperfect arguments rather than ones that deserve outright dismissal. If I'm having a debate and someone makes an appeal to authority fallacy, suggesting that whatever the expert consensus is must be true, then sure, they have made a mistake. But it would also be a mistake for me to ignore expert opinion if I know far less about the topic. Expert consensus is definitely worth listening to; it's just not worth taking as gospel. My opponent has actually told me something very valuable here, and if I'm arguing in good faith and search for truth, then I would ask, "Although this person has presented the argument in a fallacious way, what does it actually imply?" Another way of posing this question is: What is the justified warrant of the fallacious argument? That is, what useful information does the fallacious reasoning still contain? Sometimes this just won't be very much. If someone argues that I am wrong because I have curly hair, and curly-haired people can never be right, then I haven't really learned anything other than that my opponent does not like curly hair. But if they were appealing to majority opinion on the matter, then that does tell me something. It means that either most people are wrong, or there might be some flaw in my own position. Of course, it could be that they are all wrong, but it does encourage me to reexamine my argument. It sows just that little bit of doubt and justifies a measure of epistemic humility.

Here, instead of just pointing out the fallacy and being done with things, we are noting what the opponent's premises actually do imply. It's in effect a principle of charity that allows us to steelman our opponent's position. If you wanted to go one step further, another question you could ask is: What would it take for my opponent to be correct? This allows you to see not just where they go wrong, but also what it would take for their argument to become persuasive. For example, if my opponent is overplaying their hand with an unjustified slippery slope argument, it's worth asking how much further evidence would be needed before their point becomes highly justified and in fact incredibly persuasive. Circumstances change all the time, and by using this approach, our beliefs will change along with them, rather than becoming calcified and dogmatic.

I also think that the named fallacy approach has some disadvantages beyond the tendency to assume that the conclusion is false just because the argument in its favor is fallacious. It also encourages this incurious attitude to debate, where we're simply trying to find ways to dismiss an opponent's position rather than take anything from it ourselves and potentially improve our stock of true beliefs. Additionally, given the considerations from the last couple of sections, pointing to particular fallacies can often be unhelpful for appreciating what has actually gone wrong in a particular argument. If not all personal attacks are ad hominem fallacies, and not all slippery slope arguments are fallacious, then we may obscure what's happening by attempting to pigeonhole these arguments based on surface-level features.

So, I would propose a slightly different approach. Instead of reaching for fallacy labels, we can ask a series of questions to evaluate almost any argument that's thrown our way: One, is this argument valid? Two, are there any obviously unsound premises? Three, are they acting as if they want an honest discussion of ideas, or have they fallen foul of an argumentative rule? Four, with what strength is the conclusion being argued for: plausibility, probability, proof, or something else? Five, what level of strength do the premises actually give to the conclusion? Does it match the arguer's intention, or have they overplayed their hand? Six, what have your opponent's premises shown, if they are true, regardless of their intention? Do you need to adjust your argument or your beliefs on this basis? And seven, under what circumstances would your opponent's argument be correct?

Of course, this is just my model, and it is very much open to improvement or adjustments depending on its flaws and your individual needs. But I hope it is some help in taking you through the process of both identifying what is wrong with a fallacious argument, but also what might be learned from it regardless. Because while it can be satisfying to simply hurl a fallacy at someone, this way, I'm reasonably confident that you'll be able to take something new from almost every argument you encounter, even, and perhaps especially, the bad ones. But if you want to learn more about the kinds of questions that promote sound critical thinking, then I have a video on Socrates's very famous questioning model right here. Thank you so much for watching, and have a wonderful day.