Is This A Five Minute Argument, Or The Full Half Hour?
At the Software Development Best Practices conference yesterday, I went to a session on Human-Centered Risk Management. It was totally fascinating! One topic that was discussed was Rhetorical fallacies.
Rhetorical fallacies, or fallacies of argument, don’t allow for the open, two-way exchange of ideas upon which meaningful conversations depend. Instead, they distract the reader with various appeals instead of using sound reasoning. They can be divided into three categories:
- Emotional fallacies unfairly appeal to the audience’s emotions.
- Ethical fallacies unreasonably advance the writer’s own authority or character (personal attack).
- Logical fallacies depend upon faulty logic.