42 An Introduction to Clearer Thinkingmasses, their emotions, their prejudices, their feelings. This
fallacy contends that quantity is quality - we see it in advertise
m ents: “Three out of four people interview ed chose
___(fill in the blank).” The most familiar form of
this fallacy occurs whenever we hear the phrase, “Everybody’s
doing it, so it must be OK.” Or “Billions of hamburgers sold.”
The idea that everybody’s doing it, everyone is reading it,
everybody is dressing this way, everybody likes so and so, is a
meaningless comment. The issue is—everyone is reading it, but
is it worth reading, is it good reading, and why?
f) Argumentum ad ingnorantium: The appeal to ignorance.
In this fallacy there are three forms which constitute the appeal
to ignorance: 1) it is assumed that what might possibly be true
is actually true; 2) it is assumed that a statement is correct simply
because an opponent cannot prove it false; 3) it is assumed a
complete argument is false because some non essential element
in the argument is proven false. Examples of each of these
fallacies follows:
Form 1 - President Eisenhower once warned us about the
power of the “military/industrial complex.” To say there is some
sort of collusion between the military and industry is easy, since
both work closely together. But to say it is not to prove it, and
prove it you must.
Form 2— When a person proposes a thesis it is his obligation
to prove it, not to challenge another to disprove it. So, to say “Life
on Mars does exist, prove me wrong,” is an example of form 2.
Form 3— Often called “nit picking,” this form takes a minor,
non essential part of a statement, proves it wrong and concludes
that the whole statement is false. For example, “On December 7,
1941, at 9 a.m., the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, which
effectively brought the United States into World War II.” “Ha!”
says the nit-picker, “the attack took place at 8 a.m.— You are
wrong.” The statement is essentially correct. The time is inciden
tal to the truth of the statem ent.
These are j ust some of the nonlinguistic fallacies that get in the
way of the accuracy needed to reason well. It is not so important
that we know all of them, but that we are aware of what they are
and how they hinder our approach to thinking, and therefore, our
understanding. All the following nonlinguistic fallacies are
errors in reasoning: