The Straw Thing of Fallacy Theory: The StandardDefinition of ‘Fallacy’

HANS VILHELM HANSEN

Liberal StudiesBrock UniversitySt. Catharines, ONCanada L2S 3A1

ABSTRACT: Hamblin held that the conception of ‘fallacy’ as an argument that seems validbut is not really so was the dominant conception of fallacy in the history of fallacy studies.The present paper explores the extent of support that there is for this view. After presentinga brief analysis of ‘the standard definition of fallacy,’ a number of the definitions of ‘fallacy’in texts from the middle of this century – from the standard treatment – are considered.This is followed by a review of the definitions of ‘fallacy’ in the earlier history of logicbooks, including those of Aristotle, Whately, Mill and De Morgan. The essay concludesthat there is scarcely any support for Hamblin’s view that this particular definition of ‘fallacy’was widely held.

KEY WORDS: Antoine Arnauld, Aristotle, Augustus De Morgan, Charles Hamblin, fallacy,John S. Mill, Richard Whately, standard definition of fallacy, the standard treatment offallacies

1. INTRODUCTION

The history of fallacy theory, like the history of other theories, is rife withits own heroes and villains, landmark texts and authoritative authors.Although this essay is silent on who the heroes and villains might be, itdoes survey many of the significant works in fallacy theory, and it directlyaddresses a claim made by the most prominent historian of fallacies,Charles Hamblin. The claim in question, HC (‘Hamblin’s claim’), concernsthe ubiquity of a certain definition of ‘fallacy,’ and the purpose of thepresent inquiry is to determine the extent of the support for the claim.

Not far into Hamblin’s book, Fallacies, we meet the following sentence.

(HC) A fallacious argument, as almost every account from Aristotleonwards tells you, is one that seems to be valid but is not so(Hamblin, 1970, p. 12).

This sentence is noteworthy for a number of reasons; one of them is thatit is frequently quoted. In fact, van Eemeren, Grootendorst, SnoeckHenkemans et al. (1996, p. 70) believe that HC expresses the standarddefinition of fallacy. So, for the record, let us enter the followingdefinition.

Argumentation

16: 133–155, 2002. 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

(SD1) A fallacious argument is one that seems to be valid but is notso.

Notice that SD1 is a definition of ‘fallacious argument,’ not of ‘fallacy;’that is, SD1 leaves open the possibility that there are fallacies that are notarguments. However, a few pages after HC we find Hamblin writing, ‘Afallacy, we must repeat, is an invalid argument’ (p. 39). This is consistentwith the reading that most commentators have given to HC. So, the realstandard definition of ‘fallacy’ must be,

(SDF) A fallacy is an argument that seems to be valid but is not so.

Hamblin was critical of SDF – although he did not call it by any name atall – and many of those whom he has influenced share his attitude. But thatis not our concern here.

Although it is not part of SDF, the fragment of HC that reads, ‘as almostevery account from Aristotle onwards tells you,’ constitutes the motivationfor this paper. Hamblin’s remark is an empirical and historical claim which,restored to context and charitably interpreted, yields:

(HHC) Most accounts of fallacies, starting with Aristotle’s account andcontinuing with the accounts until 1970 (the year of publica-tion of Hamblin’s book), accept SDF as the correct definitionof ‘fallacy.’

I have doubts about HHC and I want to examine it by dipping into thehistory of the definitions of ‘fallacy,’ inquiring whether SDF has been asfrequently held as Hamblin thinks.

It has already been said that it wasn’t Hamblin who proposed ‘thestandard definition of fallacy’ as a name for SDF, it was Grootendorst(1986, p. 31) who dubbed it thus, and the name continues to be used insubsequent publications by van Eemeren and Grootendorst. I am onlyfollowing them in using it. Presumably, van Eemeren and Grootendorstmean ‘standard’ in the same sense that Hamblin meant it in his discussionof the ‘the standard treatment of fallacies,’ viz., ‘the typical or averageaccount [of fallacies] as it appears in the typical short chapter or appendixof the average modern textbook’ (Hamblin, 12). If this is the right under-standing of ‘standard,’ then, by referring to SDF as the standard defini-tion of fallacy, van Eemeren and Grootendorst imply not only that SDF hasadherents, but that it is the typical definition advanced. Johnson explicitlysays what others have left us to infer; namely, that SDF is ‘the mostcommon conception of fallacy’ (Johnson, 1987, p. 240).1 These authors,therefore, think that SDF is in wide circulation. However, their claims arenot intended to stretch far beyond the current scene: they do not maintainthat SDF’s popularity stretches back across the ages to Aristotle or evento the nineteenth century, so we cannot ascribe HHC to them. Only Hamblinis charged with HHC.

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2. THE ANALYSIS OF THE ‘STANDARD DEFINITION OF FALLACY’

The analysis of SDF is not straightforward. Johnson (1987, p. 241) observesthat SDF is an instance of the pattern, ‘A fallacy is an X which appears tobe Y but is not in fact Y.’ In order to highlight the distinct components ofSDF I think this should be modified to read, ‘A fallacy is an X whichappears to be Y but is not in fact Y.’ Accordingly, I will treat SDF as con-sisting of three components, each expressible as a necessary condition ofSDF.

The ontological component indicates the kind of thing a fallacy is.According to SDF, a fallacy is an argument where argument is understoodas a collection of statements of which one is indicated as the conclusionand the others are indicated as advanced in support of the truth (or accept-ability) of the conclusion. Here, as is consistent with the tradition of theStandard Treatment of fallacies (STF), there is nothing dialectical, orprocess-like, about an argument. As we shall see, not everyone agrees thatall fallacies are arguments in this sense of ‘argument,’ so the argument con-dition of SDF – that a fallacy is an argument – is not trivial.

The second component of SDF is the logical component. It holds that afallacy is an invalid argument. An argument is deductively valid, if andonly if, its premises entail its conclusion, i.e., if it is not possible both that(a) the set of statements identified as the premises are true and (b) the state-ment identified as the conclusion is false. An argument is deductivelyinvalid if, and only if, it is a deductive argument that is not deductivelyvalid. However, unless our search for supporters of SDF is to be limitedto those who think there are only fallacies in deductive arguments, we mustbe willing to treat Hamblin’s use of ‘invalid’ (in SDF) as ambiguous.Therefore, let us allow inductive invalidity as well. An argument is induc-tively valid if, and only if, it is not a deductive argument and its conclu-sion is probable on the assumption that its premisses are true. An argumentis inductively invalid, therefore, if, and only if, it is not a deductiveargument and it is not the case that its conclusion is probable on the assump-tion that its premisses are true. Now the logical component of SDF can beexpressed in the invalidity condition: a fallacy is an invalid argument; i.e.,deductively invalid if the argument is deductive and inductively invalid ifthe argument is inductive.

Although, analytically, it is not part of SDF that fallacies can deceiveus, SDF does contain a built-in factor that may explain why we sometimesare deceived by fallacies, viz., that they appear to be better arguments thanthey really are. The psychological component of SDF requires a fallacy tobe an argument which appears, or seems, or ‘looks,’ to be valid. However,if someone held that not invalidity, but unsoundness, was a hallmark offallacies, and he also endorsed the appearance condition, then he wouldhold that fallacies appear sound (rather than appear valid). In that case,following the narrow approach of sticking to the letter of SDF, the position

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would fail to satisfy two of the three conditions of SDF. This narrowapproach won’t allow our survey to notice how often a psychological com-ponent is present because it insists that it must be a very particular kindof psychological component, namely, appearing to be a valid argument.But since we want to have a fair exploration of the extent of SDF’spopularity it is desirable to treat each of its three components as indepen-dently of the others as possible. It would be more interesting, therefore, Ithink, to design our survey in such a way that the appearance condition willbe a function of whatever the logical component is. So, if the logical faultof a fallacy is said to be that it is non-Z (whatever Z is) the psychologicalcomponent will be that it appears to be Z. My proposal, then, is that evenin those accounts of fallacies where Z is not validity, we could still countfallacies as meeting the appearance condition if they appear to be Z.Loosening our inquiry this way will allow us to say of the fallacy charac-terization, ‘an argument appearing sound but being unsound,’ that it hasmet two-thirds of the conditions of SDF, for it satisfies both the argumentcondition and the appearance condition of appearing to be a better thingof its kind than it really is. Precisely, then, our questions will be:

Q1. Is a fallacy an argument? (the ontological component/argumentcondition).

Q2. Is a fallacy a deductive argument that is invalid or an inductiveargument that is invalid? (the logical component/invaliditycondition).

Q3. Is a fallacy something that has an appearance that makes it seemto be a better thing of its kind than it really is? (the psycho-logical component/appearance condition).

Here an affirmative answer to Q2 will imply an affirmative answer to Q1,and a negative answer to Q1 will imply a negative answer to Q2. But it ispossible to answer No to Q2 and still answer Yes to Q3.

It should be agreed that since SDF has three components, someone holdsSDF if, and only if, he endorse all three of them as they have here beenidentified: the ontological, logical and psychological components. This isnot an unreasonable requirement since we have been charitable thrice over.First, in substituting ‘most’ in HHC for ‘almost every’ in HC; second, bybroadening the notion of validity to range over both deductive and induc-tive goodness; and, third, in freeing the psychological component from itsbondage to the logical component in SDF.

3. THE INFAMOUS SIX

In a footnote to his discussion of the STF, Hamblin (p. 13) mentions sixlogic texts that he has ‘especially consulted’. I dub these reluctant volun-

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teers, ‘The Infamous Six’. Hamblin peruses The Infamous Six for examplesof analyses of fallacies that will be grist for his mill. Although he doesnot make an explicit connection between SDF and The Infamous Six, giventhat no particular authors are named as holding SDF, one would presumethat they constitute the best place to start our search for the allegedly manysubscribers to SDF. However, Johnson (1990, p. 158) has suggested thatHamblin’s sample of the current texts is ‘at least peculiar, if not unrepre-sentative.’ Since, in general, it is always a good idea to broaden one’ssample, I will follow Johnson’s suggestion and include the two texts thathe thinks should also be considered, Beardsley’s and Carney and Scheer’s.For good measure, some other sources will be added as well. I shall workthrough The Infamous Six in historical order and then turn to the other‘standard treaters.’

Cohen and Nagel’s book, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method(1934), is the earliest of the Infamous Six. The chapter on fallacies beginsthis way:

It has been customary for books on logic to contain a separate section or chapter onfallacies, defined as errors in reasoning (Cohen and Nagel, 376).

Two pages later we find this elaboration:

In popular usage any argument which leads to a false conclusion is said to be fallaciousor to ‘contain some fallacy somewhere.’ Now if we hold fast to the view that logic isnot identical with all knowledge, and cannot guarantee the material truth of all conclu-sions, we cannot admit that logic alone can tell which conclusions are in fact false. . . .It follows, therefore, that only mistakes in reasoning properly belong to logic. Hence wecannot consistently speak of false assumptions or false observations as logical fallacies.However, we certainly fail to prove the material truth of a proposition when we deduceit from one that is false. And we may speak of material fallacies to denote false claimsof illusions of proof (ibid., pp. 378–379).

Cohen and Nagel, as we shall see, are not the only ones to recognize thefact that logicians use ‘fallacy’ in a narrower sense than does popular usage.The first quote identifies fallacies with errors in reasoning, and the secondone implies that errors of reasoning fall under errors in logic. On theassumption that errors in reasoning are errors in argument, if follows thatfallacies are errors in arguments. Since in Cohen and Nagel’s book ‘an errorin reasoning’ is predominantly taken to be an invalidity, we should thinkthat in addition to the argument condition of SDF, they accept the inva-lidity condition. But the second quotation discourages this conclusion, forthere the concept of fallacy is broadened to cover material fallacies, orfallacies of proof (including Begging the Question); so, for Cohen andNagel, being invalid is only a sufficient and not a necessary condition foran argument to be a fallacy and, therefore, the invalidity condition of SDFis not satisfied after all.

Cohen and Nagel indicate in some passages that fallacies can be decep-tive arguments. Speaking of the verbal fallacies, for example, they say

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that ‘on careful examination’ they are seen not to be good arguments, ‘theappearance being due to an ambiguity’ (ibid., 1934, p. 376), and in intro-ducing sophistical refutations they say that the aim of the arguer is ‘to makethe worse seem the better cause’ (ibid., p. 381). However, there is noexpressed view that the psychological component is part of the idea of a‘fallacy’ for these authors. Nevertheless, rather than make a long argumenthere, let us grant that Cohen and Nagel would admit the psychological com-ponent of SDF if they had been asked to do so. In sum, then, they supportall but the invalidity condition of SDF.

Max Black’s Critical Thinking (1952) is another of The Infamous Sixthat Hamblin mentioned. Black writes about the term ‘fallacy’ as follows.

The term ‘fallacy’ is often used to refer to any kind of mistaken belief, however arrivedat. In this sense it may be said, for instance, that the belief that women are illogical is a‘fallacy.’ For our present purpose, this sense is too wide, and we shall consider only errorsin reasoning. . . . We . . . adopt the following definition: A fallacy is an argument thatseems to be sound without being so in fact. An argument is ‘sound’ for the purpose ofthis definition if the conclusion is reached by a reliable method and the premises areknown to be true. This definition agrees well with one common meaning of ‘fallacy’(Black, 229–230).

Black adopts the argument condition of SDF, and the appearance condi-tion as well, but he demurs from the logical requirement that a fallacy mustbe an invalid argument. What he means by ‘sound’ includes the extra-logical requirement that the premisses of the argument must be ‘known tobe true.’ There can, then, on this account be fallacious arguments that arenot invalid (if there are premisses not known to be true involved). Alsopart of the meaning of Black’s use of ‘sound’ is that a conclusion must bereached by a ‘reliable method.’ We cannot here explore what Black meantby a ‘reliable method’, but Begging the Question, which he rejects on theground that it is fruitless as a proof (p. 237) would surely count as anexample of an unreliable method.

John Oesterle’s Logic: the Art of Defining and Reasoning (1953) isessentially a contemporary interpretation of elementary Aristotelian logicaldoctrine. The last chapter of the book, ‘Sophistical Reasoning,’ begins withthis:

Sophistical reasoning appears to be genuine reasoning but actually is fallacious.Sophistics, therefore, is that part of logic concerned with the defective syllogism. Asophistic argument is a syllogism that seems to infer a conclusion from probable premisesbut, because of one fallacy or another, does not really do so. The defect in the argumentoccurs either on the part of matter alone or on the part of both matter and form (Oesterle,253).

(Oesterle follows this paragraph with a review of fallacies taken almostentirely from On Sophistical Refutations.) Oesterle seems to make a dis-tinction between a sophistic argument and a fallacy, but he does not goon to develop it and I shall take his remarks about sophistic arguments tobe really about fallacies. Since a sophistic syllogism is an argument, it is

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clear that Oesterle accepts the argument condition of SDF, and becausethe sophistic syllogism seems to reach a conclusion without really doingso, he also accepts the appearance condition. However, by interpretingAristotle’s list of extra dictionem fallacies as material fallacies (a defect‘on the part of matter alone’ (p. 253)), and by including Begging theQuestion as a fallacy, he adopts a wider logical condition of fallacies thandoes SDF.

In A First Course in Modern Logic (1960), Edith W. Schipper andEdward Schuh offer the following characterization of fallacies: ‘Strictlyspeaking, the term ‘fallacy’ designates an unacceptable mode of reasoning.However, the term is usually extended to include types of improper defi-nition’ (Schipper and Schuh, 24). In addition to a discussion of five kindsof fallacious definition, Schipper and Schuh go on to consider fallacies ofrelevance, of authority, of ambiguity, and of presumption. That fallaciescan be definitions runs contrary to the argument requirement. And, sinceneither fallacies of authority nor fallacies of presumption (to which belongsbegging the question) need to be invalid arguments, it is indicated that theinvalidity condition is not required. Finally, because Schipper and Schuhdo not pay any heed to the appearance condition, we must surmise that theyare committed to no part of SDF.

Irving Copi’s Introduction to Logic (1961)2 has been one of the favouritetargets of the post-STF literature, perhaps because it has been so widelyused. Near the beginning of the chapter on informal fallacies Copi writes,

The word ‘fallacy’ is used in various ways. One perfectly proper use of the word is todesignate any mistaken idea or false belief, like the ‘fallacy’ of believing that all menare honest. But logicians use the term in the narrower sense of an error in reasoning orin argument. A fallacy, as we shall use the term, is a type of incorrect argument (Copi,52).

Copi goes on to distinguish fallacies of relevance and fallacies of ambi-guity, and defines a ‘fallacy’ as ‘. . . a form of argument that seems to becorrect but which proves, upon examination, not to be so’ (ibid.). Thisdefinition of ‘fallacy’ satisfies the argument and appearance conditions ofSDF, but since Copi does not give an explanation of what he means by‘correctness,’ it is difficult to say whether he also holds the invalidity con-dition of SDF.

However, the following observation may be pertinent. Unlike Salmon(below), Copi does not seem to be using ‘correct’ as a broad term tocover both deductive and inductive goodness. My reason for saying this isthat there is no discussion at all, or mention, of inductive fallacies inIntroduction to Logic. The question then arises, ‘Why would Copi speakof fallacies as incorrect arguments rather than invalid arguments if he isonly concerned with deductive arguments?’ Perhaps ‘correct’ has a widerconnotation than ‘valid’ and is meant to include the condition that willblock Begging the Question from being a good argument. This possibility

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is born out by Copi’s classifying of Begging the Question as a fallacy ofrelevance – arguments in which the premisses are logically irrelevant totheir conclusions (p. 53) – and then rationalizing this by distinguishingpremisses that are logically irrelevant to the truth of a conclusion frompremisses that are logically irrelevant to proving a conclusion (p. 65). Sincean argument with premisses that are logically irrelevant to proving its con-clusion is an incorrect argument, a consistent story can be told about Copi’sdefinition of ‘fallacy’ and his treatment of Begging the Question. Hence,charity requires that we do not saddle Copi with the invalidity condition.

In Wesley Salmon’s Logic (1963) we find that ‘logically incorrect argu-ments are called “fallacies,” ’ and ‘logically incorrect’ is given the fol-lowing definition: ‘The premises of a logically incorrect argument mayseem to support the conclusion but actually they do not’ (Salmon, 4).Strictly speaking, Salmon’s words do not imply that all fallacies are argu-ments, but given that he offers no examples of fallacies that are not argu-ments, we may take him as holding the ontological condition of SDF.Moreover, Salmon does not say that a fallacy must have the appearance ofbeing a better argument than it really is. He is content with the possibilitythat there may be such an appearance; nevertheless, I shall count him asaccepting the appearance condition.

With regard to the logical component of Salmon’s view of fallacies hewrites:

Since the logical correctness or incorrectness of an argument depends solely upon therelation between premises and conclusion, logical correctness or incorrectness is com-pletely independent of the truth of the premises. In particular it is wrong to call anargument ‘fallacious’ just because it has one or more false premises (Salmon, 4).

The concept of ‘logical correctness’ is used as a broad term to cover bothdeductive validity and inductive validity. Hence, Salmon endorses the inva-lidity condition of SDF, and I will therefore count him as endorsing all theconditions of SDF. This seems reasonable in light of Salmon’s rejection ofthe material fallacies and his omission of any discussion of Begging theQuestion. Moreover, although Salmon discusses the arguments against theman and from authority, and mentions (in a footnote) the argumentum adhominem, – argument types that when fallacious have difficulty fallingunder SDF – he does not consider these as fallacies.

This completes our survey of the concepts of ‘fallacy’ proposed by TheInfamous Six. Let us now enlarge the sample with other well-known textsfrom the same time period; that is, the mid-twentieth century.

Monroe Beardsley’s Practical Logic (1950) shows a pronounced interestin fallacies. Like Salmon, he has no chapter devoted especially to fallaciesbut, after some brief introductory remarks, he discusses them throughouthis text in conjunction with their preferred counterparts.

When an argument violates a rule of inference it is said to commit a ‘fallacy.’ A falla-cious argument conforms to the rules of inference up to a point, and so, at first glance,

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it seems to be all right. That is why fallacies are so deceptive. But every fallacy has anantidote; when we show up a fallacious argument, by making clear the rule of inferenceit violates, its power to mislead is gone. For then it looks fallacious.

It is quite important not to misuse the word ‘fallacious.’ A false statement is not afallacy. . . . Only arguments can be fallacious. And, roughly speaking, an argumentis fallacious if it claims to conform to a rule of inference but in fact does not (1950,pp. 16–17).

Beardsley emphasizes his view that a fallacy is an argument (although hefails to treat Many Questions, as an argument; p. 525), and he finds theappearance condition to be integral to fallacies. The only question, then,concerns the nature of inference rules. Beardsley recognizes two kinds ofarguments (deductive and inductive; p. 197) and his inference rules arethe rules that license the basic inferences required in each kind (p. 16).However, his treatment of Begging the Question as a fallacy (p. 365) showsthat he is not committed to the invalidity condition. ‘The whole point ofdeductive reasoning,’ wrote Beardsley, ‘is to take us from a set of premisesto another statement that is implied by those premises’ (p. 384). The stresson ‘another’ is Beardsley’s, and we must take it as indication that repeti-tion and Begging the Question do not conform to the rules of inference andtherefore conclude that he did not hold that invalidity is a necessary con-dition of fallacies.

Ward Fearnside and William Holther’s book, Fallacy: The Counterfeitof Argument (1959), is one of the few pre-Hamblin books that can be saidto have been devoted entirely to fallacies. In their introduction we findthis paragraph:

The word ‘fallacy’ is sometimes used as a synonym for any kind of position that is falseor deceptive, and sometimes it is applied in a more narrow sense to a faulty process ofreasoning or to tricky or specious persuasion. We will use ‘fallacy’ in the latter sense sothat one may say a fallacy occurs where a discussion claims to conform to the rules ofsound arguments but, in fact, fails to do so (Fearnside and Holther, 3).

Here, in the preferred definition, is assent to the argument condition, butnot to either of the invalidity or appearance conditions. The survey ofmore that fifty fallacies is divided into logical, psychological and materialfallacies. Although the appearance condition might be expected to beintegral to the discussion of the psychological fallacies at least, it is not.And, since the invalidity condition is clearly not met by the material fal-lacies, Fearnside and Holther hold only the argument condition of SDF.

In Fundamentals of Logic (1964), James D. Carney and Richard K.Scheer introduce the study of fallacies with this discussion.

A fallacious argument in logic is an incorrect argument. It is also customary to restrictthe word ‘fallacious’ to incorrect arguments which in certain contexts seem to some tobe correct (Carney and Scheer, 11).

Like Hamblin’s oft-quoted sentence, this definition leaves open the possi-bility that there are non-argument fallacies. But let us overlook this and

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take Carney and Scheer to be supportive of the argument condition,and the appearance condition, too. Our last question then, will turn onthe meaning of ‘incorrect argument.’ Carney and Scheer hold that ‘The cor-rectness of an argument is determined independently of the truth ofthe premisses of the argument’ (p. 10); and although they allow for bothdeductive and inductive invalidity as form of incorrectness, this does notexhaust the possibilities. Begging the Question, for example, is classifiedas a material fallacy of relevance, that is, an argument, ‘whose premissesare irrelevant to establishing the truth of the conclusion’ (p. 19). If the stressis put on ‘establishing,’ which may be taken as synonymous with ‘proving’in this context, then Carney and Scheer can be seen to have made the samemove as Copi did above – not denying that Begging the Question is validbut denying that it is a proof. In light of this we must take Carney andScheer to be construing correctness/incorrectness more widely than Salmondoes, and we infer that they are denying the invalidity condition.

Nicholas Rescher, in Introduction to Logic (1964), defines a ‘fallacy’as

Any type of argument – deductive or inductive – that is generically incorrect in that manyor all of the particular arguments that belong to it are inadequate is called a fallacy.Arguments that belong to such a type are said to be fallacious, since they commit . . .the general fallacy at issue. The fallaciousness of an argument has nothing to do withthe truth of its conclusion: what matters is the evidential support given – or rather notgiven – to the conclusion by the premisses (Rescher, 68).

Here the term ‘adequacy’ ranges over the same ground that ‘correctness’does for Salmon: deductive and inductive validity. However, after distin-guishing formal and informal fallacies, Rescher divides the informal fal-lacies into three sub-categories: fallacies of ambiguity, of relevance andof presumption. In the last class is placed petitio principii because itpresumes the very conclusion to be demonstrated (ibid., p. 85). Strictlyspeaking, Rescher does not endorse the argument condition of SDF sincehe takes fallacies to be types of arguments rather than (tokens of) argu-ments; however, although the type-token distinction is of the utmost logicalimportance, in the context of the present inquiry it would seem overlypedantic to deny that in Rescher’s view fallacies are arguments. Rescher’sinclusion of the fallacies of presumption – which do not give the rightkind of ‘evidential support’ – show that he does not support the invaliditycondition. Nor does he show any interest in the appearance condition.Hence, to Rescher we may attribute only the argument condition of SDF,and this we do half-heartedly.

So far support for HHC may be described as ‘underwhelming.’ Mightthe history of fallacy theory offer up a better show of support?3

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4. EARLIER VIEWS ON ‘FALLACY’

In this section we must be brief. The authors whose views I present arenearly all well known in the history of fallacy theory, and I will let themspeak in their own words as much as possible rather than denigrate themby crude summaries. My selection is based largely on the texts which Ihave or to which I could easily find access. Given this admission, it willonly be possible to establish a presumptive case for or against HHC.

Aristotle was not only the first fallacy theorist, he is still one of the mostinteresting. Unfortunately, his views can only be presented here in the barestoutline. In the Topics (162b3–15) he identifies four different kinds of falsearguments (pseudos logos): (a) those that appear to be conclusive but aren’t,are false arguments; (b) those that come to the wrong conclusion are falsearguments; (c) those that reach the right conclusion but do so in a mannerinappropriate to the subject matter are false arguments; and (d) argumentsbased on false premises are false arguments, also. However, it is the firsttwo kinds of false arguments mentioned here which get re-identified asfallacies (paralogismoi), and become the focus of discussion, in OnSophistical Refutations. This latter treatise opens with this sentence:

Let us now treat of sophistical refutations, that is, arguments which appear to be refuta-tions but are really fallacies and not refutations.

Here there is an apparent identification of sophistical refutations withfallacies. Other parts of the text, however, make it plain that Aristotledistinguishes sophistical refutations from fallacies in the following way:

(ASR) A refutation is sophistical if, and only if, it contains a fallacy.

In the briefest possible description, an attempted refutation is a two-personencounter with a questioner trying to refute an answerer. In general, theanswerer is only allowed to say Yes or No to the questions put, and thequestioner, if his refutation is to be a success, must use only these answersto deduce a conclusion logically inconsistent with the answerer’s professedthesis. It is reasonable to take ASR as implying that a sophistical refuta-tion – as opposed to a dialectical refutation – is sophistical because itcontains a fallacy. So, what is a fallacy for Aristotle?

Generally, two kinds of things can go wrong with dialectical refutationsthereby rendering them sophistical refutations containing fallacies. First,the deduction of the statement that is to contradict the answerer’s thesismay be spurious. In this case, the fallacy is a fault in a syllogism occur-ring in a sequence of one or more syllogisms. This accords with the SDFcondition that a fallacy is an argument; however, a syllogism is a particu-larly interesting kind of argument satisfying certain restrictions that areworth noting.

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Reasoning [a deduction, a syllogism] is based on certain statements made in such a wayas necessarily to cause the assertion of things other than those statements and as a resultof those statements (SE 165a1–2).4

This definition puts three constraints on syllogisms. Not only must the con-clusion follow necessarily, it must be different from any of the premisses(thereby blocking Begging the Question) and it must not be entailed by anyproper subset of the premisses (syllogistic reasoning is non-monotonic).5

This restrictive sense of argument opens the door to the possibility thatinvalidity is not the only thing that may be deductively wrong with anargument. These being the conditions on syllogisms, one might define oneof Aristotle’s senses of ‘fallacy’ as ‘an argument that is a non-syllogism.’This, however, would leave out a an aspect that is essential to fallaciesand sophistical refutations. By the first passage cited from Aristotle, it isevident that sophistical refutations must appear to be better refutations thanthey really are. Can the analogous claim be made for Aristotle’s fallacies?The question is important because SDF is about fallacies, not sophisticalrefutations. A number of passages mentioning both refutations and deduc-tions are responsive to this question. For example,

[R]easoning [syllogisms] and refutation are sometimes real and sometimes not, but appearto be real owing to men’s inexperience; for the inexperienced are like those who viewthings from a distance (SE 164b26–27).

By distinguishing refutations and syllogisms, and predicating ‘appearing’of both, Aristotle is found to hold the appearance condition as part of histheory of fallacies. This, then, allows us to define one of Aristotle’s sensesof fallacy.

(AF1) An argument that appears to be a syllogism but is not really asyllogism is a fallacy.

Understood this way, we can state a sufficient condition of sophisticalrefutations.

(SR1) A refutation is sophistical if it contains an argument that appearsto be a syllogism but is not really a syllogism.

SR1 covers a lot of territory, but not all of what passes for a sophisticalrefutation.

The second way in which a refutation may be sophistical is if the laststatement of the deduction intended to contradict the answerer’s thesis doesso only apparently. That is, suppose the syllogistic deduction is not in error,but that there is a failure of contradiction between what is rightly deducedand what is supposed to be contradicted. This possibility Aristotle countsas one of the instances of ignoratio elenchi (167a23 ff.) and it hearkensback to the second kind of false argument identified in the Topics. To beconsistent with the focus of On Sophistical Refutations we will now have,

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(AF2) A genuine syllogism which appears to come to the right con-clusion but really comes to the wrong conclusion, is a fallacy

AF2, occurring in an intended refutation, will render it sophistical. Thus

(SR2) A refutation is sophistical if the conclusion of the genuinesyllogism appears to contradict the answerer’s thesis but doesnot really do so.

Not only is the invalidity condition of SDF undermined by two of thenecessary conditions of being a syllogism – no redundant premisses, andno repeating of premisses in the conclusion – it is also brought low byAF2 which allows that some fallacies are not invalidities. Hence, Aristotlecannot be held to the invalidity condition of SDF.

In summary, we see that Aristotle accepts the argument and the appear-ance conditions on fallacies but rejects the invalidity condition. In general,the tradition he began has largely followed his lead. In particular, we cansee that Aristotle did not subscribe to SDF, and that HHC is wrong inclaiming him as its progenitor.

Skipping forward a millennium-and-a-half, we come to William ofSherwood who, in his Introduction to Logic (13th c.), takes up theAristotelian project from On Sophistical Refutations. Sherwood treatssophistical syllogism and sophistical disputation as the same thing(Sherwood, 133), so we may fairly attribute to him the argument condi-tion of SDF, and also the appearance condition since he echoes Aristotlein saying, ‘sophistical disputation . . . is that by means of which a personcan appear wise’ (ibid.). Although Sherwood largely follows Aristotle onmost points pertaining to fallacy, he makes the following interesting remarkwith regard to Begging the Question.

But a doubt arises [at this point as to whether they [Question Beggings] really areparalogisms], because everyone of those inferences is necessary . . . . In response to thiswe must point out that the acceptability of an inference lies not merely in the necessityof the consequence but is inseparable from its producing belief regarding a doubtfulmatter. That cannot be accomplished, however, except on the basis of premisses that areprior and better known. Therefore, when one assumes in an inference what is in somerespect the same as the conclusion . . . the inference will not be acceptable, because itwill not produce belief regarding a doubtful matter (ibid., p. 158).

Sherwood is aware that Begging the Question is not an invalid argument,and he gives an explicit epistemological twist to Aristotle’s requirement onsyllogisms that the conclusion is not the repetition of a premiss. Sherwoodcannot, therefore, be said to accept the invalidity condition of SDF.

Let us next consider Arnauld and Nicole’s Logic, or the Art of Thinking(1662) also known as The Port-Royal Logic. It does not make an explicitattempt to define ‘fallacy’ but in Part III, chapter 20, ‘Fallacies committedin everyday life and in ordinary discourse,’ we can find some of the threadsrelevant to SDF.

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We have not made it a point to distinguish false judgments from unsound arguments,and we have paid equal attention to the causes of each. This is as much because falsejudgments are the source of unsound arguments and necessarily result in them, as becausein fact there is almost always a hidden inference embedded in what appears to be a simplejudgment, since there is always some reason or principle behind this judgment. Forexample, when we judge that a stick that appears bent in water really is bent, this judgmentis based on the general and false proposition that what appears bent to our senses is bentin reality. Here there is an embedded inference, although it is not made explicit (Arnauldand Nicole, 203–204).

Although, at first glance, Arnauld and Nicole do not find it necessary torestrict fallacies to arguments, by introducing the idea that every judgmentis the result of an inference, they give this passage a surprisingly modernring. Hence, it is not unreasonable to say that they endorse the argumentcondition of SDF. And, by their illustration of the stick-in-the-waterexample, we have evidence that they would also favour the appearancecondition. However, although some of the fallacies reviewed in the Port-Royal Logic are from Aristotle’s list of thirteen – including Begging theQuestion – a new class of fallacies is introduced which concern subjec-tivity and bias in everyday reasoning. These relate mainly to questions ofauthority and manner, or style, and, although such fallacies might be recon-structed as invalid reasonings, Arnauld and Nicole’s view – not unlikeBacon’s account of the idols of the mind – is that the arguments are faultybecause ‘our minds are usually weak and obscure, full of clouds andshadows’ (p. 220). It would therefore be a forced interpretation to saddlethis work with the invalidity requirement.

Isaac Watts’s, Logick: or, the Right Use of Reason (1796), is importantin the history of logic since it is one of the very few logic texts to havehad any influence between The Port-Royal Logic and Whately’s book inthe early nineteenth century.

From Truth nothing can really follow but what is true: Whensoever therefore we find afalse Conclusion drawn from Premisses which seem to be true, there must be some Faultin the Deduction or Inference; or else one of the Premisses is not true in the sense inwhich it is used in that Argument.

When an argument carries the Face of Truth with it, and yet leads us into mistake, itis a Sophism (Watts, 1796: Part iii, ch. 3).

Watts’s word for fallacies is ‘sophism.’ It seems clear that he holds theargument and appearance conditions of SDF but since he includes thefallacies of Begging the Question, ignoratio elenchi, and False Cause, Wattscannot be endorsing the invalidity condition.

Next we come to Richard Whately whose Elements of Logic, first pub-lished in 1826, went through many editions, was favourably reviewed byMill, was studied by Peirce as a young man, and was still used as atext in the early part of the twentieth century.6 In the chapter on fallacies,he writes that a fallacy is ‘any unsound mode of arguing, which appearsto demand our conviction, and to be decisive of the question in hand,when in fairness it is not’ (p. 153). Here we may attribute to Whately the

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argument condition (on the not unproblematic assumption that arguingimplies the use of arguments) and the appearance condition as well.However, it is evident that Whately does not subscribe to the logical com-ponent of SDF since one of his main claims to fame in the history of fallacytheory is his articulation of the distinction between logical and non-logicalfallacies The latter are fallacies despite the fact that they are valid argu-ments, and their fault is to have either a mistaken premiss or a mistakenconclusion. Moreover, being decisive, and demanding our conviction arenorms of logical appraisal wider than validity and they are designed toembrace the material as well as the logical fallacies. Hence, Whately rejectsthe invalidity condition.

John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic (1843) devotes one of its six booksto fallacies. His classification includes fallacies which are not argumentsbut

[propositions] believed and held for true, literally without any extrinsic evidence . . . .This class, comprehending the whole of what may be termed Natural Prejudices, andwhich I shall call indiscriminately Fallacies of Simple Inspection or Fallacies a priori,shall be placed at the head of our list (Mill, 1843: Bk v, ch. 2, sec. 2).

Hence Mill cannot be said to hold to either the argument condition ofSDF or the invalidity condition. The rest of the fallacies, however, do allfall under the heading of fallacies of inference. There is also good reasonto think that Mill thinks a fallacy must have the appearance of being a betteritem of its kind than it really is, for he says,

It is . . . not unimportant to consider what are the most common modes of bad reasoning;by what appearances the mind is most likely to be seduced from the observance oftrue principles of induction; what, in short, are the most common and most dangerousvarieties of Apparent Evidence, whereby men are misled into opinions for which theredoes not exist evidence really conclusive (ibid., Bk 5, ch. 1, sec. 1).

I will conclude, then, that the only one of the three conditions of SDF towhich Mill subscribes is the appearance condition.

Augustus De Morgan and his Formal Logic (1847) are best know tofallacy scholars for the remark that

There is no such thing as a classification of the ways in which men may arrive at an error:it is much to be doubted whether there ever can be (De Morgan, 237).

(De Morgan’s doubts are taken as an indication of impossibility by Hamblin(p. 13)). Nevertheless, the chapter that De Morgan devotes to fallacies isperhaps the most thorough treatment of the classical fallacies given inthe nineteenth century. De Morgan is thoughtful about the definition of‘fallacy.’

The terms fallacy, sophism, paradox, and paralogism, are applied to offenses againstlogic; but not with equal propriety, Fallacy and sophism may technically have been first

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applied to arguments in which there is a failure of logic: but it is now very common toapply them also to arguments in which there is a falsehood of fact, or error of principle,though logically treated; and if this last use be not correct, writers on logic have sanc-tioned it in their examples (De Morgan, 238).

Here we are given two definitions. The original meaning of the termwas ‘applied to arguments in which there was a failure of logic.’ Thisanswers to the argument and invalidity conditions of SDF but not theappearance condition. De Morgan remarks that the concept has been broad-ened to include false facts or errors of principle in arguments. This givesus a second, more modern definition of ‘fallacy.’ The more modernnotion of fallacy, then, still holds to the argument condition but not theinvalidity condition. Notice that De Morgan is gently charging the moderntradition with inconsistency when he suggests that their examples maybe inconsistent with their given definitions. There is no evidence thatDe Morgan thinks the appearance condition is part of the concept of‘fallacy.’

Stanley Jevons wrote a number of books on logic, among themElementary Lessons in Logic: Deductive and Inductive (1877). Therein hedefines ‘fallacies’ as ‘the modes in which, by neglecting the rules of logic,we often fall into erroneous reasoning’ (Jevons: 169). By ‘reasoning’ hemeans

the progress of the mind from one or more given propositions to a proposition differentfrom those given. Those propositions from which we argue are called Premises, and thatwhich is drawn from them is called the Conclusion (ibid., p. 15).

From his definition we may infer that he accepts the argument conditionof SDF – fallacies are arguments. We see too that Begging the Question,or at least the most elementary forms of it, is ruled out by the definitionof ‘reasoning;’ nevertheless, Jevons also gives it a syllogistic interpreta-tion in which it is exposed as a circular proof (ibid. pp. 179–180). As forthe invalidity condition of SDF, Jevons, like Whately, accepts a class ofmaterial fallacies which ‘are concerned . . . with the subject of the argument. . . and cannot be detected and set right but by those acquainted with thesubject’ (ibid., p. 170); therefore, he does not subscribe to the invaliditycondition of SDF. I can find nothing in Jevons to indicate that he endorsedthe appearance condition. Jevons, by the way, follows Aristotle’s list ofthirteen with little variation.

Henry Sidgwick’s, Fallacies: A View of Logic from the Practical Side(1884), finds that fallacy is used in four different senses, of which he prefersthe fourth.

(1) A piece of false reasoning, in the narrower sense; either an invalid ‘immediate infer-ence,’ or an invalid syllogism; a supposed equivalent form which is not equivalent,or a syllogism that breaks one of the rules.

(2) A piece of false reasoning, in the wider sense; whereby from true facts, a falseconclusion is inferred.

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(3) A false belief, whether due to correct reasoning from untrue premisses (reasons orsources), or to incorrect reasoning from true ones.

(4) Any mental confusion whatever (Sidgwick, 1884, p. 172).

The first definition ranges over invalid syllogisms and immediate infer-ences, the second over invalid arguments that refuse to be put into syllo-gistic form, the third over material fallacies. It is not possible here toexplain Sidgwick’s motivation for preferring the fourth definition of‘fallacy,’ except to say that he is as interested in the causes of fallacy asin fallacies themselves, and he thinks that if we were limited to any ofdefinitions (1)–(3) we would be restricted in our search for the causes.Being thus restricted we would be forced to ‘guess at the cause’ (ibid.,p. 173) and would be more likely to assign a false cause. However, indefining ‘fallacy’ simply as ‘any mental confusion whatever,’ none of theconditions of SDF are met.

James Creighton’s, An Introductory Logic (1905), holds that ‘In the strictsense of the word, a fallacy is to be defined as an error in reasoning’(Creighton, 1905, p. 153). However, he relents from this hard line andwidens his sights to include non-arguments.

In the syllogism, however, propositions and premises form the data or starting-point. If,now, these propositions are not properly understood, the conclusions to which they leadare likely to be false. We may then first divide fallacies into Errors in Interpretation,and Fallacies in Reasoning (ibid.)

Most likely Creighton was influenced by Mill in identifying a class offallacies of interpretation which were much like Mill’s fallacies of inspec-tion. This means that, like Mill, Creighton does not accept the argumentcondition of SDF. Nor is he committed to the invalidity condition since headmits both non-arguments and a class of material fallacies. Creightondiffers from Mill in that there is no indication that he thinks that the psy-chological component is a part of the definition of ‘fallacy.’

Horace Joseph’s appendix on fallacies in his An Introduction to Logic(1916) is a compact discussion of some of the key concepts in fallacytheory. ‘A fallacy is an argument which appears to be conclusive when itis not,’ writes Joseph (p. 566). This definition satisfies the argument andthe appearance conditions of SDF. However, Joseph’s use of ‘conclusive’in the definition allows him to count not only Begging the Question butalso ignoratio elenchi as fallacies (the argument being ‘perfectly sound. . . the sole defect lies in the fact that the conclusion proved does notconfute the thesis maintained’) (p. 590). Hence, Joseph cannot be said toadopt the invalidity condition.

In Roy Wood Sellars’s The Essentials of Logic (1917), he speaks offallacies as ‘misadventures’ (p. 141). The chapter, ‘Fallacies in Argumen-tation,’ begins with a general statement about fallacies.

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A fallacy is, broadly speaking, an error in reasoning. . . . We may misinterpret our per-ceptions, or classify things wrongly, or work out bad definitions, or confuse ideas, ordraw invalid conclusions from premises (Sellars, 1917, p. 141).

According to this broad definition, a fallacy meets none of the conditionsof SDF. But soon after this opening remark Sellars adopts a broad classi-fication between deductive and inductive fallacies and then (p. 143) dividesthe former into fallacies of equivocation and fallacies of unwarrantedassumption. The fallacies of unwarranted assumption include Begging theQuestion, Many Questions, some of the ad-arguments, as well as IrrelevantConclusion. In view of the subsequent classification it seems best to ignoreSellars’s broad definition of ‘fallacy’ and, instead, take him to be in favourof the argument condition of SDF. But the unwarranted assumption fal-lacies are not invalidities, so he cannot be read as holding the invaliditycondition. Nor can he be charged with the appearance condition: some ofhis comments on some of the fallacies could be interpreted as incliningtowards the view that false appearance is part of fallacies, but they do notamount to an avowed view about fallacies in general.

It will not be inappropriate to end this historical survey of conceptionsof ‘fallacy’ with a work that appeared only three years before Hamblin’sbook: John Mackie’s article, ‘Fallacies,’ in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy(1967). Being an encyclopedia article, it presents not so much an accountof Mackie’s own views as a survey of the subject, both historical and ana-lytical. However, the article begins, ‘A fallacy, in the strict sense, is aninvalid form of argument’ (p. 169). We may take this to be Mackie’s view,and it meets both the argument and the invalidity conditions of SDF.7

However, although he acknowledges that fallacies are mistakes ‘intowhich people frequently and easily fall’ (ibid.), there is no indication thatMackie thinks the appearance component an essential part of the defini-tion of ‘fallacies.’ Mackie’s own view may be separated from his commentson the larger field. He prefers the sense of ‘fallacy’ just given, but is obligedto mention non-deductive fallacies which cannot be compared to strictlyvalid arguments, and of fallacies in discourse (such as inconsistency andcircularity) he says that they ‘are not mistakes in reasoning from premises,or evidence, to a conclusion but are to be condemned on some other ground’(ibid.).

5. CONCLUSION

The inquiry has been about whether HHC – a weakened version ofHamblin’s claim that ‘almost everyone from Aristotle onwards’ acceptedSDF – is true. The inquiry has fallen into two parts. In the first part themodern standard-treaters were examined, six of whom were named byHamblin. In the second part of the inquiry the same question was put

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to the earlier history of fallacy theory. The answers entered in the tablesummarize the results.

Author(s)8 – Book Argument Appearance Invalidity

Condition Condition Condition

01 Cohen and Nagel, Intro. to Logic and Sc. Method (1934) YES YES NO

02 Black, Critical Thinking (1946) YES YES NO

03 Oesterle, Logic: Art of Defining and Reasoning (1953) YES YES NO

04 Schipper and Schuh, First Course in Mod. Logic (1960) NO NO NO

05 Copi, Introduction to Logic (1961) YES YES NO

06 Salmon, Logic (1963) YES YES YES

INTERMEDIATE RESULT 1–6: THE INFAMOUS SIX 5/6 = 83% 5/6 = 83% 1/6 = 17%

07 Beardsley, Practical Logic (1950) YES YES NO

08 Fearnside and Holther, Fallacies (1959) YES NO NO

09 Carney and Scheer, Fundamentals of Logic (1964) YES YES NO

10 Rescher, Introduction to Logic (1964) YES NO NO

INTERMEDIATE RESULT, 7–10: OTHER MODERNS 4/4 = 100% 2/4 = 50% 0/4 = 0%

INTERMEDIATE RESULT, 1–10: MODERNS’ TOTALS 9/10 = 90% 7/10 = 70% 1/10 =10%

11 Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations (4th c. B.C.) YES YES NO

12 W. of Sherwood, Introduction to Logic (13th c.) YES YES NO

13 Arnauld and Nicole, L’Art de Penser (1662) YES YES NO

14 Watts, Logick (1725) YES YES NO

15 Whately, The Elements of Logic (1826) YES YES NO

16 Mill, A System of Logic (1843) NO YES NO

17 De Morgan, Formal Logic (1847) YES NO NO

18 Jevons,* Elementary Lessons in Logic (1877) YES NO NO

19 Sidgwick, Fallacies (1884) NO NO NO

20 Creighton,* An Introductory Logic (1905) NO NO NO

21 Joseph, An Introduction to Logic (1916) YES YES NO

22 Sellars,* The Essentials of Logic (1917) YES NO NO

23 Mackie,* Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967) YES NO YES

INTERMEDIATE RESULT, 11–23: HISTORICAL SOURCES 10/13 = 77% 7/13 = 54% 1/13 = 8%

OVERALL RESULTS, 1–23 19/23 = 83% 14/23 = 61% 2/23 = 9%

5.1. Findings

Of The Infamous Six (lines 1–6) the argument and appearance conditionsare satisfied five of six times, but the invalidity condition is satisfied onlyonce. By the requirement that someone accepts SDF if, and only if, heaccepts all three of its necessary conditions, only Wesley Salmon holdsSDF. In the broader view of the modern text in lines 1–10, 90% supportthe argument condition, 70% the appearance condition, and only 10% theinvalidity condition. In the survey of earlier, pre-‘modern’ texts in lines11–23, 77% are in favour of the argument condition, 61% support theappearance condition, and 9% the invalidity condition. Overall, lines 1–23,‘from Aristotle onwards,’ the results are that 83% include the argumentcondition, 61% the appearance condition, and 9% the invalidity condition.

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However, because the sample surveyed is small, the evidence against HHCamounts only to a presumptive case. But it is a strong presumptive casesince most of the works dealt with are thought to be the key works in thehistory of fallacy theory. Therefore, for the present, the survey gives us agood reason to reject HHC.

The survey impresses upon us not only that the ontological componentof fallacies as arguments is very firmly entrenched in the tradition (83%),it also shows that the psychological component, that a fallacy appears tobe a better thing of its kind than it really is, is widely supported (61%).Although the fallacies tradition does not support HHC, it does support akindred generalization: a fallacy is an argument that appears to be a betterargument of its kind than it really is. No one, however, I believe, has artic-ulated what it is to be a fallacy exactly this way.

5.2. Discussion

It must be admitted that Cohen and Nagel, Oesterle, Copi, and Beardsleyand others have dealt unimaginatively with the fallacy of Many Questions;9

however, I do not take this as evidence that they deny the argument con-dition if their professed view is that a fallacy is an argument. We may wantto charge some of these authors with sloppiness, as Hamblin does, butcharity asks us to understand that the examples given could be parts ofarguments. Thus the problems of fitting Many Questions and Begging theQuestion with SDF are dissimilar: the latter could not be an invalidargument (and so could not satisfy the invalidity condition) no matter howmuch charity we were prepared to dispense, whereas the former could beincorporated in an argument (and so made to fit the argument condition ofSDF).

Several of the authors (Cohen and Nagel, Black, Copi, Fearnside andHolther, De Morgan and others) recognize both a wide sense of ‘fallacy’that is in popular usage and a narrower sense of the term which they tryto explicate in logical terms. Still, the invalidity condition is the conditionof SDF that logicians have endorsed least frequently – it occurs only 9%of the time in the survey. One wonders why. In the sources dealt with inthe present paper, this does not seem to be for a theoretically motivatedreason such as Massey’s claim that there is no logical method of estab-lishing invalidity (see Massey, 1981). Rather, it seems in many of theauthors to be the desire to accommodate ignoratio elenchi, Begging theQuestion, and later, the broader class of material fallacies. To what extentthese are logical fallacies depends both on how widely ‘logic’ is construed,and how the fallacies are analyzed. It should not be left unnoticed, however,that invalidity is not the only fault that could be considered as a logicalone. There is also the failure to contradict when contradiction is needed,and there is the demonstration that a premiss is repeated as a conclusion.

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Hence, that there are fallacies that do not suffer from invalidity does notimply that they are not fallacies under the purview of logic.

Hamblin, in his celebrated study of fallacies – of which five chaptersare historical in nature – must have known as well as we do now, thatHHC is false. Why then would he say such a thing as, ‘A fallaciousargument, as almost every account from Aristotle onwards tells you, is onethat seems to be valid but is not so’? (my emphasis). This statement impliesHHC, and HHC is false. Johnson (1990, p. 156) writes that Hamblinexaggerated for the sake of emphasis in his portrayal of the STF. The samemust be true of Hamblin’s historical remark about fallacies: since it ishardly possible that he was being careless, he must have been intention-ally exaggerating. Unfortunately, some have not noticed this.10

Although van Eemeren and Grootendorst use the term ‘the standarddefinition of fallacy,’ they have also written that ‘The problem with thisdefinition is that most fallacies discussed in the Standard Treatment donot fit with it. In fact, only a few formal fallacies fall without any problemunder this definition’ (1996, p. 70). This is also a claim that deserves tobe investigated. But notice that it is quite different from HHC in that it isnot an empirical claim but a conceptual one. Van Eemeren and Grootendorstmust have recognized Hamblin’s irony since they have dubbed SDF‘standard’ and also think that it is mistaken. At any rate, attacks on SDFas if it were a popular or widely held definition of ‘fallacy’ are really attackson a definition that appears to have very few adherents. The standarddefinition of fallacy, it would appear, is the straw thing of fallacy theory.11

NOTES

1 Johnson mentions only one person who holds SDF which is Gerald Massey (Johnson,1987, p. 109). However, since Massey attributes the definition to Hamblin, Massey cannotbe thought of as offering independent evidence for the ubiquity of SDF. Moreover, sinceMassey’s papers are from the mid-1970s, they fall outside the scope of the present inquiry.It should also be noted that in Johnson, 1990, Johnson says that ‘since [Hamblin’s book,SDF] has become the accepted definition of fallacy’ (p. 154). This is not the same claimmade in Johnson’s 1987 paper, and, I think it is not true.2 The first edition was 1953 but Hamblin refers to the second, 1961, edition.3 It is difficult to understand the historical location of the standard treatment of fallacies.Mostly, but not only, twentieth century texts are mentioned by Hamblin in his discussion ofThe STF. For the purposes of this paper I have counted books – both those by the InfamousSix and others – that would be considered as possible texts at the time when Hamblin waswriting, as modern texts and therefore part of the standard treatment of fallacies. Earlierworks (Joseph’s and before) along with Mackie’s article (because it is not a text) I discussin the ‘historical’ part of the essay.4 Forster translation. Similar – almost identical – definitions of ‘syllogism’ are given atthe beginnings of the Topics and the Prior Analytics.5 See Woods and Hansen (to appear) for an elaboration and the significance of this non-monotonic condition.

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6 Examples from Whately’s Logic continue to find their way into the modern texts; e.g.,Copi’s, and Carney and Scheer’s.7 The reader will notice that Mackie identifies a fallacy as an invalid form of argument,rather than an invalid argument. Whether there are forms of fallacies, and how many of thefallacies this can be said of, is an interesting question which unfortunately cannot be pursuedhere.8 Authors not considered by Hamblin are marked with ‘*’.9 Black and Salmon omit discussion of Many Questions, but Schipper and Schuh do attemptto treat it like an argument.10 I count myself among the duped. See Hansen and Pinto, p. 4.11 I wish to express my thanks to Robert Pinto, Ralph Johnson, Christopher Tindale andChristian Campolo for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay, and totwo of this journal’s demanding but very constructive anonymous referees.

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Arnauld, Antoine and Pierre Nicole: 1662/1996, Logic or the Art of Thinking, J. V. Buroker,trans. and ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Beardsley, Monroe C.: 1950, Practical Logic, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.Black, Max: 1946, Critical Thinking, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs.Carney, James D. and Richard K. Scheer: 1964, Fundamentals of Logic, Macmillan, New

York.Cohen, Morris R. and Ernest Nagel: 1934, Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method,

Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Copi, Irving M.: 1961, Introduction to Logic, 2nd ed., Macmillan, New York.Creighton, James Edward: 1905, An Introductory Logic, MacMillan, New York. De Morgan, Augustus: 1847, Formal Logic, Taylor and Walton, London.Eemeren, Frans H. van and Rob Grootendorst: 1995, ‘The Pragma-dialectical Approach to

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