Test your basic knowledge |

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. 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.






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






3. 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.






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






5. 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.






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






7. The level of mercury in seafood may be unsafe - but what will fishers do to support their families?






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






9. 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.






10. 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.






11. 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.






12. In listening to what you have to say I have this to say in reply: only an idiot would argue for pursuing a peaceful solution to this conflict.






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






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






15. 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.






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






17. 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.






18. 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.






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






21. 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.






22. 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.






23. 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.






24. Either you worship God or you worship Satan.






25. 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.






26. Everyone else is going out and getting drunk tonight - so you should too.






27. 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.






28. 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






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






30. 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)






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






32. 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






33. Filthy and polluting coal should be banned.






34. 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.






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






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






37. 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.






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






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






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






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






42. 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.






43. 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.






44. She is feminist; she must hate men.






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






46. 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.






47. 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.)






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






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






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