“My roommate said her philosophy class was hard, and the one I’m in is hard, too. All philosophy classes must be hard!”

1. Some Examples of Fallacies “My roommate said her philosophy class was hard, and the one I’m in is hard, too. All philosophy classes must be hard!” Two people’s experiences are, in this case, not enough on which to base a conclusion.

2. “We should abolish the death penalty. Many respected people, such as actor Guy Handsome, have publicly stated their opposition to it.” While Guy Handsome may be an authority on matters having to do with acting, there’s no particular reason why anyone should be moved by his political opinions.

3. “The seriousness of a punishment should match the seriousness of the crime. Right now, the punishment for drunk driving may simply be a fine. But drunk driving is a very serious crime that can kill innocent people. So the death penalty should be the punishment for drunk driving.” True, the punishment for drunk driving should be very serious, but it doesn’t support the claim for the death penalty.

4. “Animal experimentation reduces our respect for life. If we don’t respect life, we are likely to be more and more tolerant of violent acts like war and murder. Soon our society will become a battlefield in which everyone constantly fears for their lives. It will be the end of civilization. To prevent this terrible consequence, we should make animal experimentation illegal right now.” Since animal experimentation has been legal for some time and civilization has not yet ended, it seems clear that this chain of events won’t necessarily take place. Even if we believe that experimenting on animals reduces respect for life, and loss of respect for life makes us more tolerant of violence, we cannot assume that this will cause an end in civilization. In other words, the extreme makes this claim far weaker and unbelievable.

5. “Guns are like hammers—they’re both tools with metal parts that could be used to kill someone. And yet it would be ridiculous to restrict the purchase of hammers—so restrictions on purchasing guns are equally ridiculous.” True, guns and hammers share some similar parts. However, we restrict guns because they can easily be used to kill large numbers of people at a distance. This is a feature hammers do not share. Thus, the analogy is weak, and so is the argument based on it. So the mere fact that you can draw an analogy between two things doesn’t prove much, by itself.

6. Now time for a little game…  “Sally isn’t good at math and neither is her best friend, Kelly. Girls must not be very good at math.”

7. “Gun violence has increased and schools have been the sight of gun violence most often seen on the news. Gun violence in schools must be stopped! If teachers were armed at school, gun violence would decrease.”

8. The minimum wage in SeaTac went up, and then the number of people purchasing marijuana also went up around the same time. Obviously, raising the minimum wage has increased the number of drug sales.

9. “If you have same gender schools (all boy/girl school), then boys and girls won’t know how to socialize with each other. If they don’t know how to interact with one another, then they will be less likely to get married. If there are no marriages, then there will no longer be enough children to sustain the human race. Thus, humanity will cease to exist.”

10. “Homework is like the mail. You get the mail every day, but rarely do you read all of it. But, you wouldn’t get rid of the mail, would you?” “Brad Pitt drives a Prius because he claims that emissions from gas-powered cars are the cause for global warming. Therefore, we should get rid of all non-electric cars.”