Fallacies

Fallacies are common types of arguments that have a strong tendency to go badly wrong, or to be used as deceptive tricks when two parties reason together. In some instances they are simply careless errors in thinking, while in other cases they are techniques of argumentation used by one arguer more or less deliberately to try to fool another into accepting a false conclusion. Fallacies have been described in logic textbooks since the time of Aristotle; their study, long neglected, has begun to be revived in recent years, as its practical importance in natural language reasoning has become apparent.