One of the key skills of a critical thinker is knowing how to identify when an argument is by discussing a reasoning incorrect (a fallacy of argument, or also called a fallacy of rhetoric). And I say “know how to identify” because the task of labeling what fallacy in particular is discussing can be a major hassle, due to the large number of fallacies that exists: “the straw man”, “the slippery slope”, “argument ad hominem”,….
A few days ago, thanks to the blog of the New York Times dedicated to the philosophy Opinator, I discovered a resource that could serve as reference material for the exercise of critical thinking: a infografía on fallacies argumentative.
The infographic is fashionable: to represent complex information in a way that is understandable and easily digestible can be an art, and the straightforward presentation can help the audience to capture the essence of the issue with least efforts, taking advantage of the visual guides on the graph.
The infographic that I present is divided into six sections, which correspond to the major groups of fallacies we can find in an argument, even if the work is to use other names to group them together:
- Fallacies that appeal to the mind
- Fallacies that appeal to emotions
- Deductions erroneous
- Errors cause – and-effect
- Content manipulation
- Direct attacks
Within each group, the fallacies they are presented with a small graph that helps us to remember the mechanism of the fallacy, accompanied by a brief description and an example. By way of illustration, I offer a screen shot of one of the fallacies:
A resource highly recommended, you can find it in the blog Information is beatiful.