Dictionary of Fallacies

I’ve created this as an updating list of fallacies that I come into contact with in my discussions with people not only here on my blog. If its an already well known fallacy, I won’t list it; what I will list are originally coined and rarely known fallacies. In alphabetical order.

Dictionary Definition  - The use of a dictionary definition for a word where it is being used in a specific context such that the dictionary definition doesn’t capture the meaning of the word as it is being used.

Example: “Blindness isn’t an evil, because the dictionary defines evil as a morally bad action.”

The mistake here is that there exists an archaic use of the word “evil” stemming from Scholastic theology/philosophy where the term “physical evil” is used to denote privations of ordinary natural potencies (i.e. blindness as opposed to sight). Since this use of the word is archaic, the dictionary won’t include this definition, even though such a definition is still correct and accurately describes.

Euphorism – Related to emotionalism. This is a fallacious worldview viewpoint wherein the excitement of one’s emotions to some sort of passion is taken as proof of some belief.

Example: Link

The mistake presented over and over in that blog post is the mistaking of an elated feeling for proof that enchantment can be had non-ironically in a naturalistic world. Emotions simply provide no proof of any positive statement, no more for the existence of non-ironic enchantment than for God. Emotions are just emotions, feelings, grounded in the body’s chemistry, not in some fundamental feature of ontological reality.

Personalism – Believing that someone is personally attacking you by arguing against something you asserted.

Example: “You don’t have to be a douchebag like that! All I did was say something.”

The mistake here is that the substance of a proposition can be controversial, and the choice to argue against an assertion does not lead to its being a personal attack. A personal attack would occur in the case of saying “No, you’re wrong because you’re stupid!” However, arguing “Your assertion is wrong because it is self-defeating” is not the same.

God as Object – Wherein God is treated in the same way as one treats of something else.

Example: “Consciousness requires interaction; ergo, God cannot exist apart from something else.”

The mistake is that it treats God as just one object amongst others, such that in a “set of all objects that exist” God would be treated as just something that exists within the world, rather than something uniquely unique. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, “God is not in a genus.” Literally, a set of all that exists must either include only God or exclude God, because God is the only being that “exists” like God.