Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies

The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies: "The Taxonomy is more useful than the alphabetical index for studying the logical relationships between fallacies. To understand an individual fallacy, it may be helpful to move upward in the Taxonomy via the 'Type' link, in order to understand the more general fallacy of which it is a subfallacy. Also, moving downward via the 'Subfallacy' link can help in understanding a general fallacy through seeing a more specific version of it. Finally, moving sideways via the 'Sibling' link can help to explain the nature of a fallacy by comparing it with a similar one of the same basic type. Some individual fallacies―such as Wishful Thinking―are found in more than one spot in the Taxonomy, which is because they are subfallacies of more than one type of fallacy."