Logical errors can occur in inductive reasoning due to lack of proper evidence, leading to logical fallacies. It’s important to identify and avoid these fallacies, such as appeal to hate, force, and guilt by association, which involve emotion rather than reason in decision-making. These fallacies can undermine logic and lead to irrational decisions.
Logical errors are errors of reason that can occur in inductive reasoning. As inductive reasoning moves from the particular to the general, it is important to determine the amount and type of evidence needed to make a valid argument. Lack of proper evidence is linked to different kinds of logical fallacies.
Since logic is one of the main techniques used in persuasion, it is important to be able to identify and discount logical fallacies in other people’s arguments and to avoid making them in your own arguments. One of the things that can undermine logic is to make arguments on an appeal to emotion, rather than arguing on rational grounds. There are several mistakes that can be made in appealing to emotion, and the following mistakes in appealing to emotion occur frequently enough to be named.
Appeal to hate. This fallacy links the quality of an idea to its overall appeal. One example is: The hardworking families of this city are adamantly opposed to this change in the enacted high school graduation requirements, and this proves it is a bad idea. This is a logical fallacy of appealing to emotion because the quality of a suggestion cannot be determined by the emotional response of the people who support or reject it, but lies in the details of the idea itself.
Appeal to force. Using threat or force to persuade a course of action is an appeal to force. It’s another example of a way to involve emotion rather than reason in a decision. An example is: if you don’t support my candidacy for mayor, you will regret it, believe me. . . Fear of dire consequences to one’s person is not the kind of influence that should determine political decisions: it is an appeal to emotion to force a decision, rather than an appeal to reason to make a logical decision.
Guilt by association. In this fallacy, there is the assumption that a connection provides more information than it actually does. An example is: the president was in charge during the purchase of that awful new oil painting, so obviously we can’t trust his judgment. . . This fallacy can fail either by drawing the erroneous conclusion that because two things are connected in one aspect, they are connected in every aspect, or alternatively, that anyone with a connection to certain objects or people must be over the edge.
In the above example, holding office at an event does not necessarily identify that person as an advocate or event manager. For all we know, the president may have voted against the purchase and been overruled by others. Knowing as little as we do, it is certainly not valid to draw general conclusions about the judgment of him. By trying to engage our wrath about a previous decision, the argument is an appeal to emotion and seeks to engage our emotions about the previous decision in the current discussion. This is not a rational way to make a decision.
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