Formal and informal debate becomes corrupted when people call out informal fallacies in their opponents’ arguments where the argument actually had some sense to it and either the fallacy isn’t really a legit fallacy to begin with or it was improperly called out without taking into account contextual nuance that makes the argument actually logical. In this way, calling out so-called fallacies is used to unfairly discredit opponents’ arguments, and thinking in terms of informal fallacies tends to co-opt truly logical thinking. So, in this light, I will explain exactly what’s wrong with many of the popular informal fallacies.

Argument from incredulity – when someone can’t imagine something to be true, and therefore deems it false, or conversely, holds that it must be true because they can’t see how it could be false.

Not being able to see how something could be true or, conversely, how something could be false, is obviously isomorphic to saying “this is how I see it, and I can’t see it any other way,” and this is the fundamental basis for all staunch beliefs, such as beliefs that one may argue for. The only difference in this case is that the arguer presumably lacks the ability to articulate why they see it this way with such surety. That in itself is not necessarily reason to completely dismiss their argument, because if we give them any credit as an intelligent being, then their not being able to see it any other way is significant.

The particular argument also indicates that its purveyor has thought of all the alternative scenarios they could and all have turned up impossible, as opposed to simply single-mindedly clinging to the one possibility they can imagine as many people do, which also adds a bit of credit.

The argument is also stronger if it reflects underlying (if inarticulable) reasoning that others may share; that is, if others witnessing the argument see it similarly.

The argument may also not be meant to be self-contained but rather an opener for further conversation regarding possibilities how something is true or false. E.g., it may be used to prompt the opponent to explain some way they think their position could be true, which the first person will presumably have some argument against.

Slippery slope (thin edge of the wedge, camel’s nose) – asserting that a proposed, relatively small, first action will inevitably lead to a chain of related events resulting in a significant and negative event and, therefore, should not be permitted.

People often call out the “slippery slope” fallacy as if it’s always necessarily invalid, while in fact, many situations are indeed slippery slopes. While a claim that something will likely or inevitably lead to something further may be left unsubstantiated, it still carries weight if it makes intuitive or reasonable sense to other parties that it’s a slippery slope, or that it may be a slippery slope, thus warranting some amount of trepidation surrounding the prospective action.

Appeal to authority (argument from authority, argumentum ad verecundiam) – an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it.

Argument from authority is not quite a logical proof, obviously, as authorities can be and have been wrong, but authorities are generally authorities for a reason. They tend to be learned experts on the subject, so an authority’s opinion on the matter is probably more credible than either of the arguers’ opinions alone.

Argument from anecdote – a fallacy where anecdotal evidence is presented as an argument; without any other contributory evidence or reasoning.

This is a big one. The common mentality of denialism, particularly regarding any nonphysical (e.g. spiritual, paranormal, parapsychological, mystical, or divine) phenomena, objects, substances, principles, etc., is greatly facilitated by the illusion that anecdotal evidence is meaningless and totally dismissible, mainly due to the fact that it has a label, “anecdotal evidence.” A truly open-minded approach would carefully analyze and weigh every anecdote one comes across for its likely legitimacy based on various clues, even if uncertain/unproven ones, and then come to a conclusion or likely conclusion based on the sum total of all anecdotal evidence and other reasoning. In other words, anecdotal evidence should carry weight to it, especially when there’s a lot of it, and especially when it seems particularly legitimate, but all too often it’s dismissed out of hand because that’s convenient for maintaining one’s physicalist bias.

I wrote more about this here: https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/notes-on-science-scientism-mysticism-religion-logic-physicalism-skepticism-etc/#Anecdotal

Magical thinking – fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events. In anthropology, it refers primarily to cultural beliefs that ritual, prayer, sacrifice, and taboos will produce specific supernatural consequences. In psychology, it refers to an irrational belief that thoughts by themselves can affect the world or that thinking something corresponds with doing it.

This is a case in which physicalist/mechanicalist/scientistic bias directly impinges on what’s considered valid or invalid as if it’s an unquestionable, sure thing. It’s not. It’s merely a reflection of the current zeitgeist. Essentially, whether “magical thinking” really constitutes a fallacy or not depends on whether the world really is magical. It’s popular to believe that the idea of magic is nothing but pure fantasy, but there’s on proof that it is, and meanwhile, magical phenomena are regularly experienced by countless people, and there are entire disciplines and bodies of knowledge devoted to magick.

Another example in which the assumption of mechanicalism is baked right into what we call something is the so-called frequency illusion. I wrote about that here https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2025/03/13/frequency-illusion/ and here https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/notes-on-science-scientism-mysticism-religion-logic-physicalism-skepticism-etc/#Bias.

Ad hominem – attacking the arguer instead of the argument. (Note that “ad hominem” can also refer to the dialectical strategy of arguing on the basis of the opponent’s own commitments. This type of ad hominem is not a fallacy.)

Arguments against the person are often actually relevant to the legitimacy of the person’s argument. Many traits of human beings, both positive and negative ones, impinge on their ability to form correct opinions.

Of course, one could argue that an argument stands on its own merit and substantiation and thus personal traits have nothing to do with it, but this isn’t fully the case when a statement is being made by an expert/authority figure, and also, to some degree, we should just trust the intelligence and sensibilities of the person making an argument by virtue of them being fellow humans, at least/especially when their argument makes intuitive sense to us, and furthermore, arguments are rarely exactly logical proofs, so there’s always some amount of credentializing involved whether conscious or unconscious, and that credentializing should of course be diminished when we find out pertinent detracting things about their character.

Appeal to nature – judgment is based solely on whether the subject of judgment is ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’. (Sometimes also called the “naturalistic fallacy”, but is not to be confused with the other fallacies by that name.)

Whether this is a fallacy depends on whether what’s natural really is generally or always better. According to the Wikipedia page for this fallacy, “What is natural is good” has no factual meaning beyond rhetoric in some or most contexts.” This is entirely an assumption. It could easily be that what’s natural is what was meant to be and that what’s unnatural is humans’ endeavors to upset some kind of sublime balance. This could be true if there as any kind of tendency of nature, whether physical or nonphysical/mystical, to arrive at optimal patterns of being.

Besides the possibility that spirit could have had an influence in the development of the natural world, there is an obvious naturalistic argument for natural things being better: the human form evolved in in a natural context, and the processes of life exist within delicate balances that can easily be upset, e.g. by new and unnatural influences such as artificial chemicals in our foods and environment, sedentary lifestyles, a stressful workforce, the easy availability of any amount and any kind of food we want, etc. We know these things cause endless problems. Technology in general is also used to destroy the biosphere, which will eventually result in the destruction of ourselves, and domestication and medical technology in general is causing genetic drift due to largely removing evolutionary stressors, which will continue to make us weaker, dumber, uglier and less durable.

Moving the goalposts (raising the bar) – argument in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded.

I can see how moving the goalpost can be problematic, of course, in that if the opponent meets their first standard of convincing and then the person moves the goalpost, it would seem that the matter has been settled and the person is only moving the goalpost out of convenience/desperation. But therte’s more to the story.

First, the opponent meeting the person’s initial demands could merely make the person realize that their initial demands were too lax. Their argument could still be correct, whether out of correct reasoning and/or perspicacity or out of coincidence, in which case demanding an even more stringent goalpost would be prudent.

Second, there was likely no particular reason for the exact level of stringency posed by the first goalpost to begin with. It was just accepted and agreed upon because it was what was presented. So, presenting a further goalpost could just be seen as a recontextualization of the argument that we could also just agree on for the same reasons as the first one.

Kettle logic – using multiple, jointly inconsistent arguments to defend a position.

It’s not actually fair to consider someone’s arguments illegitimate if they contradict each other, for two reasons:

1. Any one of the arguments could be legitimate, even if they all can’t, and
2. If the only indication that one or more of the arguments is illegitimate is that they contradict each other, then each argument stands no more chance of being illegitimate than the opponent’s argument if they only offer one argument or significantly fewer arguments, because in that case, we wouldn’t know if the opponent’s argument is illegitimate, because the fact that they didn’t happen to raise another argument that contradicts it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily legitimate.
   
   This implies that arguing is a somewhat imprecise, imperfect art and that arguments from either side can easily seem to be strong while not actually being correct.

Reification (concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) – treating an abstract belief or hypothetical construct as if it were a concrete, real event or physical entity (e.g.: saying that evolution selects which traits are passed on to future generations; evolution is not a conscious entity with agency).

I’ve seen people pull the alarm on people claiming, or seeming to claim, that evolution has this or that agenda or goal, while in fact evolution is supposed to be a blind, unconscious process devoid of any agency. The problem with this is that, more often than not, such wording is really used as a shortcut, as it would take a lot more words to say something like “the nature of natural selection is such that this or that end result tends to come about,” and furthermore, whether it happens by blind, unconscious processes or via some kind of agency usually/often makes no practical difference for the subject at hand.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for ‘after this, therefore because of this’; temporal sequence implies causation) – X happened, then Y happened; therefore X caused Y.

This one seems to be more often not called out as a fallacy of argument, but rather as a fallacy of one’s personal thinking. And I think it can actually be fruitful. While X happening after Y happening obviously doesn’t mean Y necessarily caused X, assuming that it did could greatly speed up one’s practical/usable knowledge of cause and effect, especially where one has other reasons to think there’s probably a causal link between the two, such as a hunch. Such assumption risks being wrong, of course, but the worst that can happen is that trying to put the supposed causal principle to practice would fail. The risk of being wrong about uncertain things seems to be greatly exaggerated by intellectuals in general in comparison to the possible benefits of being right.

Once in IRC, I had the nick post_hoc_reifier, and somebody asked me if I’m more magickal or scientific thinking, and I said both. He said he was too, and that double-jointed people such as him and me are rare.

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While we’re on the subject of fallacies, I want to mention one that I see all the time that really grates on me, which really is a fallacy, or at least an improper debate tactic of some sort, that isn’t mentioned in any list. I guess I’ll call it the “last argument fallacy.” It’s when you make a number of independent arguments for your case, any one of which should actually be sufficient to make the case, and the opponent argues only against the last one, or possibly one of the other arguments at random, and the debate continues on from there as if all the other arguments you made don’t matter.

The mind has many faculties of perception, intuition, and so on that are beyond the faculty of rationalization or reason. Reasoning is very limited; it only relies on facts that are obvious enough to be known to the analytical mind, as opposed to facets of a situation that are known only liminally, and it cannot ‘process’ or work in a holistic manner. Consider the fact that artificial neural networks, a type of computer artificial intelligence, don’t work via a process of rationalization at all and yet are able to identify patterns with amazing success, and they are modeled after biological brains. And that’s to say nothing of the possibility that mind and its intuition and such come from more sources than just the neurological! (That’s a whole other subject, though. See Richard A. Nichols III’s answer to Is there a relationship between heart transplantation and recipient*s emotions and personality?)

Either way, just try completely rationalizing your emotional interactions with other humans.. you’ll come to a dead end fast!

The other factor to consider is that the universe is not necessarily completely mechanistic or otherwise straightforwardly comprehensible as rationalization would require. Nature is probably way too amazing, mysterious, enigmatic, magical and ineffable to fit into the box that analytical reasoning would like to put it in.

Why? Because for any frame of mechanism or causality you can put it in, that frame is probably open-ended and connected to higher, more meta frames (or potentially imaginable frames/models) because there’s no principle that would limit it. The universe is like an onion with unlimited layers to peel away to get to the center, just like the answering question of why some facet of physics operates the way it does can only lead to more questions, and asking why the universe even came into existence requires answering within the context of some larger field of existence.

To illustrate the part about answering a question only leading to more questions, say you want to know why things fall to the ground instead of rise into space. You may figure out that masses attract other masses with a force proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. Then the question is why does it do that? Say you answer that with relativity, combining gravitational attraction with the concept of inertia and postulating that mass-energy bends space-time around it, thus changing the ‘world line’ or quickest inertial route from one place to another. Why does it do that? Nobody knows. Some people have attempted to reduce gravity to a side-effect of the electromagnetic force. Why does the electromagnetic force exist? Nobody knows. If somebody did know what causes it to exist, the next step could only be to ask why those things that cause it to exist are as they are.

Or let’s say we figure out why two substances when mixed together create a third, completely different substance after releasing some smoke. We may explain that with the idea of atoms and chemistry. Why are atoms made the way they are and why do they behave as they do? We could explain that with the Standard Model, but why is the standard model the way it is? Nobody knows. If somebody did know why the Standard Model is as it is, the next step could only be to ask why those things that cause it to be the way it is are as they are.

Say you want to know where the universe came from or why it exists. Well, now we have the Big Bang to explain it. But why did the Big Bang happen? We could postulate, for example, the Eternal Inflation model, or some other model of a multiverse, or maybe just some kind of proto-time and ‘random’ quantum fluctuations that happened before the Big Bang, but why did those things exist? The questions never end.

This is all just to point out that the universe is necessarily a never-ending field of Russian dolls, and the mechanics each doll (inasmuch as they even are mechanical) contains hints or implications of the nature of its containing doll and the doll(s) it contains, etc. (Of course even the separation of the universe into discrete layers of dolls may itself be merely arbitrary, but the principle holds either way.)

To get back to the problem of whether the universe is even mechanistic or not (which the process of rationalizing it would desperately want it to be), science (as in, popular thinking among scientists) currently assumes that it is fully mechanistic, but there is no proof of this. We assume that it is because of the extreme efficacy of mechanical models in predicting and manipulating the world; however, these predictions are only effective in limited domains.

For example, we can very little predict specifically how someone will behave (even if you can, more or less, in some circumstances), how the weather will turn out, or which way a butterfly will fly in.. you can assume that this is all just the result of atoms bouncing around in a billiard-ball sense and its unpredictability is merely 100% the result of its immeasurable and incomputable complexity, but that would be begging the question: how do you know there are not non-mechanistic aspects to their behavior?

Also, if quantum mechanics has taught us anything it’s that events are fundamentally unpredictable, things just behave with relative predictability on the macroscopic scale when particles move in aggregate. We call quantum events “truly random”, but how do we know there is not a rhyme or reason to them that simply goes beyond our ability to model it, perhaps even our ability to rationalize about it?

Also, even if the universe is ultimately modellable with rationality, we’d be unlikely to have the proper rationality, or to use rationality in the proper way, to ultimately model it. That’s because rationalization carries with it many assumptions; it carries with it a certain worldview. For example, what if Berkeley’s idealism is correct and everything is ultimately mental, i.e. all there is are conscious beings interacting with each other? (See Entangling Conscious Agents, Donald Hoffman.) What if that means there are many principles of nature that thus work more like psychology, with all its inconsistency, its open-endedness, its free will, and its regular contingency upon interpretation, than clockwork? Common rationality would abhor this.

I say a lot of “what if”s and “probably”s, but I actually have no doubt that the universe is magical and not completely mechanistic; I just wanted to help lead others’ rationalities easily to my point of view by not confronting them with positive, likely objectionable claims, and the idea that the universe may be non-mechanistic, magical, psychological, or otherwise non-modellable to some degree is sufficient to raise doubt that we may not be able to rationalize everything.

“The man who listens to reason alone is lost; reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.” —George Bernard Shaw

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.” —Rabindranath Tagore

Let me present to you an interesting thought experiment: Can you think of any hypothetical set of results of past experiments on matter that would have been totally satisfying, such that we’d know that we fully understand what matter is to its core? It seems that, no matter what happens—possibly as a result of our modes of investigation or of the very way our minds work—there must always be further questions, smaller and smaller levels at which we can break things down to discover new, more fundamental truths about matter.

First we discovered physical substances weren’t continuous all the way down but rather made of atoms, but what are atoms made of? We discovered they’re made of subatomic particles—electrons, protons, and neutrons—but what are those made of? We discovered protons and neutrons are made of quarks, and now we’re wondering whether quarks are made of anything more fundamental. It seemingly never ends as we go further and further down the rabbit hole. (See also https://exalumen.blog/2018/04/13/notes-on-science-scientism-mysticism-religion-logic-physicalism-skepticism-etc/#Reductionism.)

So, given this strange scenario in which the truth behind material objects can never be complete, as there’s always a more fundamental level that you can look at, is it possible that these further and further levels of truth about the world don’t already exist somewhere in reality, but are made up as we go along? What if the results of experiments done for the first time tend to conform to the expectations of the observers, which are themselves wild guesses or rationalizations to explain what they’ve already seen? What if the principles of general relativity, quantum field theory, and nuclear physics were originally rationalizations by individual scientists or groups of scientists made up as the only ways they could think of to explain certain experimental results (which themselves had been the results of expectations), and then, once those truths are established, all subsequent experiments automatically yield similar results? In the book ‘Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Knew About Quantum Physics is Different’, Philip Ball says,

Quantum theory had the strangest genesis. Its pioneers made it up as they went along. What else could they do? It was a new kind of physics – they couldn’t deduce it from the old variety, although they were able nonetheless to commandeer a surprising amount of traditional physics and math. They cobbled old concepts and methods together into new forms that were often nothing much more than a wild guess at what kind of equation or mathematics might do the job.

It is extraordinary how these hunches and suppositions about very specific, even recondite, phenomena in physics cohered into a theory of such scope, precision and power. Far too little is made of this when the subject is taught, either as science or as history. The student is (certainly this student was) presented with the mathematical machinery as though it were a result of rigorous deduction and decisive experiment. No one tells you that it often lacks any justification beyond the mere (and obviously important) fact that it works.

There’s a popular theory by Rupert Sheldrake called morphic resonance, in which anything that happens anywhere makes it subsequently easier or more likely for it to happen the same way elsewhere. According to Sheldrake, scientists have discovered that, once a particular kind of crystal was grown in a lab anywhere on Earth, it subsequently become easier or faster to grow the same crystal elsewhere. And, he claimed, a similar phenomenon exists with rats solving mazes. Once a rat solves a particular maze in a particular lab, other rats in other labs solve the same maze in much quicker time. (See also https://exalumen.blog/2019/09/14/how-were-looking-at-instinct-wrong/.)

All of physics—or, more to the point, the reason there’s order in the universe, the reason physics is apparently the same everywhere—could boil down to / be explained by morphic resonance. Of course, the leads to the question of why some physics apparently existed already (as there was apparently a world before observers, apparently operating according to some physical system, in order to even give rise to observers in the first place) while other parts of physics were left to be defined by humans. I think the answer is that consciousness has always existed, as a fundamental aspect of the universe (see https://exalumen.blog/2020/02/07/why-im-an-idealist/), so consciousness could easily have been the origin of all physical principles. (Of course, the idea that consciousness is somehow fundamental to the universe seems implied already by my idea that experimental results could somehow be affected by conscious expectation, because how else would consciousness have such power?)

Another question this theory raises is, why would our own creations of physical principles on our little planet in our little galaxy instantly affect all of the universe? Aren’t there/have there been other intelligent species out there in the universe who would also be discovering/creating experimental results? The answer could be that

Another question this theory raises is, how is it that, after having discovered all these physical principles, they so coherently explain so many things that have existed since way before we discovered said principles, such as in geology, biology, the study of planets, stars, nebula, the cosmic background radiation, etc., etc.

This idea is a continuation of the last part of https://myriachromat.wordpress.com/2023/05/13/idea-6-project-catalyst-organization-procat/.

A website for issues that will be voted on by congress or decided by governors, mayors, etc. For bills, it would automatically list all the ones that need to be decided on, from http://usa.gov (update: I’m not sure if the bills are still available at that website or where to find them now.) For issues only affecting only legislation in a particular area, perhaps only people from that area would be allowed to vote. With each issue could be an explanation of what factors need to be considered, preferably posted by congress members or mayors, etc. Also, for bills, it would be nice if congress members posted summaries, including the gotchas that are tacked on just because they can. Bills don’t seem that easy to read.

This doesn’t have to be a government-supported website, because the idea isn’t that the voters legally or necessarily determine the outcome–it’s for politicians to peruse results and feedback at their liesure. Voters should be able to attach explanations about their feelings/opinions along with their votes. Also have the ability for users to post their own bills or other suggestions for changes in legislation or budget, vote for user proposals, or create new branch versions of existing proposals/bills. Attached explanations should be rateable so that it’s easy to see which sentiments have a lot of support and are well-presented. User proposals/branches should also be rateable.