Courtney Force
Phil110
Wawrytko

Fallacy Essay

When you are unaware of what fallacies are, they are easily overlooked and every argument seems logical. However, when one becomes aware of fallacies it is easy to identify them and see the fallaciousness of various arguments, ads, comics and statements. After being on the Speech and Debate in high school, I realized how often people rely on fallacious arguments to prove their points. The fallacy that I have encountered the most and that I am guilty of using the most is the hasty generalization fallacy and the fallacy that I understand the least is the “begging the question” fallacy.
I feel that the hasty generalization fallacy is easiest to accidentally use because if something seems true for most cases, or for all the cases that we know of, we naturally want to assume that it is true ALL the time. I saw this a lot in debates. People would throw out a number of facts and then jump to the conclusion that because it was true in a few instances that it must be a fact that is true all the time. However, one must realize that just because something is true a lot of the times doesn't mean that it is true every single time. We must go further into proving our point. We must also prove that the alternatives are not true and that this fact is true every single time. We can not “hastily” jump to an invalid “conclusion”.
The “begging the question” fallacy is the one that I understand the least and have the hardest time with