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Logical Fallacies

Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. Person: A we should liberalize the laws one beer B: No any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic and goes only for immediate gratification.






2. My friend - who is serving in infantry in Iraq - tells me that the government has a secret plan for how to win the war that they won't release until after the election - and because he is my friend and I like and respect him - this must be true.






3. A black family move into my neighborhood once - and they were financially quite well-off - better than we were; this proves that black people actually are economically equal to whites.






4. This is an attack on the character of a person rather than her/his opinions or arguments.






5. You can't give me a C - I'm an A student.






6. Everyone else is displaying a flag - or a support our troops sticker on their car - therefore - you should too.






7. There's no way a man could love a man or a woman love a woman as much as a man and woman love each other.






8. It has been scientifically proven that people need to drink a certain amount of water every day to keep healthy. Water is liquid and so is beer. Therefore people should be able to substitute beer for water - drinking beer each day as doctors recommen






9. This is a conclusion that oversimplifies the argument by reducing it only to two sides or choices.






10. That boy scout made an old lady's day by visiting and entertaining her in her nursing home; we should give generously to the boy scouts as a result.






11. If you restrict my right to say whatever I want however I want this is the beginning of totalitarianism in America.






12. That celebrity is suffering a lot of pain and aguish after breaking p with his girlfriend and coming through drug and alcohol rehabilitation treatment; he is a role model for all of us - and needs us to support him by his albums and going to his movi






13. This is a conclusion based on insufficient evidence. In other words - you are rushing to a conclusion before you have all the relevant facts.






14. I don't support the President's foreign policy; look at the disastrous way he has taken care of our domestic economy.






15. The administration closed the smoking court in our school at the end of the last year - and fights among students have gone down his year; therefore - closing the smoking court caused the reaction in fights among students.






16. Britney Spears says that George W. Bush has got a great plan for the economy - and so therefore I am supporting him because I trust what she has to say.






17. Either you worship God or you worship Satan.






18. Green Peace's strategies aren't effective because they are all dirty - lazy hippies.






19. I knew a gay guy who was not very masculine; this just goes to show that gay guys are more effeminate than straight men.






20. There's no way that anyone can argue that abortion is anything other than murder.






21. She is feminist; she must hate men.






22. This involves drawing an analogy that is based upon faulty equations or identifications of terms. The writer makes a comparisons between two objects which is either inaccurate or inconsequential.






23. American students' relatively poor performance in foreign language and geography examinations means that they should be subjected to regular standardized tests in these two areas each year throughout their mandatory period of schooling.






24. This is a conclusion based on the premise that if A happens - then eventually through a series of small steps - through B -C -...X -Y -Z will happen - too basically equating A and Z.






25. This is a diversionary tactic that avoid key issues - often by avoiding opposing arguments rather than addressing them.






26. This argument gives a lie an honest appearance - by insisting on What is only partially or formally true.






27. Filthy and polluting coal should be banned.






28. You can't trust jim to do a good job as student body president; he doesn't dress with an up-to-date sense of style.






29. The writer suggest that readers should listen and follow what someone has to say about something that he or she is in fact not a credible - reliable authority on.






30. In this case the writer forms an argument which leaves out a necessary portion in a logical sequence - seeming to suggest a logical connection when in fact one does not exist.






31. Students in kindergarten at Jefferson Elementary school did better when given milk and cookies than when not; therefore students at UWEC will do better too if they are given milk and cookies in class.






32. This sort of argument relies on the faulty assumption that because one event follows another - the second necessarily causes the first






33. If we let homosexual couple live on our street before you know it our neighborhood will start to become like Greenwich Village in New York or the Castro District in San Francisco.






34. This logical fallacy proposes that there are simply cannot be another possible way of making sense of and engaging with an issue but the one you represent.






35. Because of the possibility of poisoning of Halloween candy by some people who give it out to trick or treaters - communities should ban trick-or-treating.






36. This argumentative fallacy in which the rhetor frames an issue in terms of exaggerated threats or dangers.






37. Because of the possibility of a terrorist hijacking or mechanical failure - flying on a plane is too dangerous and should be avoided altogether.






38. I drank bottled water and now I am sick - so the water must have made me sick.






39. This fallacy of argument recommends a course of action on the grounds that everyone else is following the same path.






40. If we can Hummers because they are bad for the environment eventually the government will ban all cars - so we should not ban hummers.






41. Either you support the president in everything he says and does or you are not a patriotic American






42. I gave you everything i had to give to you(right then and there when you asked me - but of course everything I could have given you if I took into account what I maintain elsewhere.)






43. The conclusion that the writer should prove is validated within the claim. The author assumes as true they very claim that is disputed - in a circular argument.






44. I did not have sex with that woman(if by sex you mean penile-vaginal intercourse). (from bill clinton in relation of the nature of his relationship with monica lewinsky)






45. This move oversimplifies an opponents' view point and then attacks that hollow argument. This opponents position is misrepresented as being more extreme than it actually is - so it becomes easier to refute.






46. We can either stop using cars or destroy the earth.






47. Here's what I think about what you have written: anyone who opposes the death penalty for murder is a criminal at heart.






48. I can't be guilty of embezzlement; I'm an honest person.






49. Relying on manipulatively heart-warming or heart-wrenching appeals to emotion to win support for what has not been otherwise rationally justified.






50. Even though it's only the first day - I can tell this is going to be a boring course.