Exploring Common Logical Fallacies: Ad Hominem, Bandwagon, and Faulty

This essay provides an assessment of common logical fallacies, focusing on flaws in reasoning that undermine arguments. It discusses three specific fallacies: ad hominem, bandwagon, and faulty generalization. Ad hominem is defined as avoiding the main topic by attacking the person making the argument, shifting from the argument itself to the arguer's character or motives. The bandwagon fallacy involves doing something simply because others are doing it, regardless of one's own beliefs, often seen in political contexts where individuals vote for a candidate to be part of the majority. Lastly, faulty generalization is described as drawing conclusions about a large group based on limited instances, leading to incorrect assumptions. The essay references academic sources to support its explanations of these fallacies.

Running head: COMMON LOGICAL FALLACIES
COMMON LOGICAL FALLACIES
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1
COMMON LOGICAL FALLACIES
This essay will make an assessment on the different common logical fallacies. Common
logical fallacies are the flaws in reasoning which generally undermines the validity of the prescribed
argument. To make a productive conversation impossible fallacious arguments are proposed. Mostly
the politicians and the media mainly uses these types of fallacies to fool people because they have a
very misleading type of behavior despite of the people’s intellectual as well as their emotional
weakness. This essay will be describing three such common logical fallacies, the first fallacy which
will be discussed is Ad homlnen which is a Latin term short form of the term argumentum. This is one
of those argumentative strategy where the genuine or the main discussion of the topic is fully avoided,
whereas the motive, character and the attribute of the person who is making the argument is majorly
attacked. This statement is used by the person who takes advantage of the opponent’s personal
feelings or interest in a debate rather than sticking to the general principles of the debate. But in the
present century the scenario has changed the newer sense of the term ‘ad hominem’ suggests an attack
which is directly on the character of the opponent rather than the argument (Van & Grootendorst
2014).
The second logical fallacy which is also a very common factor is ‘Bandwagon’ which mainly
means that if someone else is doing the thing one has to do it also. Bandwagon effect is something
where the individuals will be doing something just because primarily other individuals are also doing
the same thing despite of their own beliefs which they ignore. The bandwagon effect also has the
capability for producing wide implications, which is mostly seen in the areas of politics, where the
individuals will be voting the for a particular candidate so that the voter can also be one of the
member of the major group, so that the voter also can be one of the candidate who has gained much
name, fame and money from politics. Bandwagon is most likely a fallacy based argument which
mainly depends on the assumptions where the opinion of the majority of the people is always valid,
where everyone believes certain thing so one should do that to. In the present scenario it is also known
as an appeal to the popularity, where the authority of the many is given much priority (Shannon
2016).

2
COMMON LOGICAL FALLACIES
The third or the last fallacy which is to be described is ‘Faulty Generalization’ which is
mostly about concluding about all or many instances of an incident which has been reached on basis
of just few instances of the incident. Faulty Generalization is mainly about jumping into the
conclusion part. It can be explained with an example, suppose we are generalizing a group of people
from different countries. If we find that a person is very angry and he belongs to from a country X, it
will be suspected that most people from the country X are mostly angry. Therefore Faulty
Generalization can also further lead to many incorrect solutions (Nahata & Quinn 2017)

3
COMMON LOGICAL FALLACIES
References
Bromley, D. W., & Cernea, M. M. (2013). The management of common property natural
resources: Some conceptual and operational fallacies (Vol. 57). World Bank
Publications.
Nahata, L., & Quinn, G. P. (2017). Expanding parental permission in pediatric treatment: A
hasty generalization. American Journal of Bioethics, 17(11), 29-30.
Shannon, C. E. (2016). The bandwagon. IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 2(1), 3.
Van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (2014). Relevance reviewed: The case of
argumentum ad hominem. Argumentation, 6(2), 141-159.