Logical Fallacy of the Week, Week 54: Red Herring Fallacy

Red herring is an English-language idiom that commonly refers to a type of logical fallacy in which a clue is intentionally or unintentionally misleading or distracting from the actual issue.  It is also a literary device employed by writers that leads readers or characters towards a false conclusion, often used in mystery or detective fiction……..As an informal fallacy, a red herring falls into the broad class of relevance fallacies; it is related, but not identical to ignoratio elenchi. It may be confused with straw man arguments as well, although the red herring does not involve any misrepresentation of a position……To Read More……

Editor's Note: At this point I will spend the next 34 weeks focusing on ALL the Red Herring Fallacies.  There are 25 main red herring fallacies listed with 9 as sub-fallacies bringing the total to 34.

 As an example:  The logical fallacy known as Ad hominem has two sub fallacies called Poisoning the well and Abusive fallacy.   The main fallacy called Appeal to emotion has five:  Appeal to fear, Appeal to flattery, Appeal to pity, Appeal to ridicule, Appeal to spite and Wishful thinking. 

I have chosen to emphasize these because these are, in my opinion, the most instinctive versus intellectually used fallacies.  In otherwords, people will use red herring arguments while not even realizing what it is they are doing. 

There are times in our lives that during a discussion you will find yourself in a intellectual dilemma where-in you are clearly losing the argument, yet you know you are right.  You just can’t figure out why they are wrong.  Logical fallacies may be the answer….and mostly red herring fallacies.  Once you can understand them you will find the opposing argument is easy to overcome -but you can’t overcome what you can’t recognize.   

The other important part of this exercise is to help us realize any errors in our own thinking, because the goal of Paradigms and Demographics is substantially different than what you will find on so many blogs.  So many of them are so ego and philosophy driven that all they care about are winning arguments.  Most of those bloggers are enormous time wasters and I do not allow them to post comments on Paradigms and Demographics because I consider them intellectually dishonest.

I am only interested in searching out and following the facts - no matter where they go - in search of truth.  Paradigms and Demographics is not about winning arguments. It about being right.