Logical errors in inductive reasoning can lead to logical fallacies, especially when there is a lack of proper evidence. It is important to identify and avoid these errors in persuasive arguments. Mistakes in cause and effect can undermine logic, such as the gambler’s due error, post hoc ergo propter hoc, and slippery slope fallacies.
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 making mistakes in relating cause and effect. There are several errors that can be made in arguing cause and effect, and the following errors of cause and effect occur frequently enough to be named.
Due to player: Gambler due error assumes that the expectation of an event is increased after a number of times it does not occur, while the probability is, in fact, the same for any single event. An example is: Of course I will buy another lottery ticket — I haven’t won anything all year and I have to pay. This is a logical fallacy of cause and effect because the probability of winning today is not causally related to not having won in the previous days, even many days before. Losing does not subsequently cause victory.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: Assuming that the sequence indicates causality is the mistake made by this Latin-named fallacy. Translated, the name means “after, therefore caused by”. An example is: my cousin drank the city water and fell ill with leukemia. It must have been the city water that caused his illness. The sequence of drinking the city’s water and subsequently falling ill with leukemia does not by itself lead to a valid conclusion that the water was the causative agent of the disease. So, this is a cause and effect error.
Slippery slope. In this fallacy, an event is assumed to inevitably lead to specific results, when the causal chain is not clear at all. An example is: borrow the car? Next thing, you’ll want your own car and apartment! This argument does not treat an individual case as an individual case and assumes that the case in question will unquestionably follow a pattern which is claimed to exist. Indeed, the request to borrow a car cannot go beyond the explicitly stated objective. The claimed cause and effect relationship simply does not exist.
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