Misplaced Concreteness

Mistakenly supposing that something is a concrete object with independent existence, when it's not.

Example:

There are two footballs lying on the floor of an otherwise empty room. When asked to count all the objects in the room, John says there are three: the two balls plus the group of two.

John mistakenly supposed a group or set of concrete objects is also a concrete object.

Misleading Vividness

When the fallacy of jumping to conclusions is committed due to a special emphasis on an anecdote or other piece of evidence, then the fallacy of misleading vividness has occurred.

Example:

Yes, I read the side of the cigarette pack about smoking being harmful to your health. That's the Surgeon General's opinion, him and all his statistics. But let me tell you about my uncle. Uncle Harry has smoked cigarettes for forty years now and he's never been sick a day in his life. He even won a ski race at Lake Tahoe in his age group last year. You should have seen him zip down the mountain. He smoked a cigarette during the award ceremony, and he had a broad smile on his face. I was really proud. I can still remember the cheering. Cigarette smoking can't be as harmful as people say.

The vivid anecdote is the story about Uncle Harry. Too much emphasis is placed on it and not enough on the statistics from the Surgeon General.

Misconditionalization

See Modal Fallacy.

Many Questions

See Complex Question.

Maldistributed Middle

See Undistributed Middle.

Lying

A fallacy of reasoning that depends on intentionally saying something that is known to be false. If the lying occurs in an argument's premise, then it is an example of the fallacy of questionable premise.

Example:

Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Kennedy were assassinated.
They were U.S. presidents.
Therefore, at least three U.S. presidents have been assassinated.

Roosevelt was never assassinated.

Logical

See Formal.

Loaded Language

Loaded language is emotive terminology that expresses value judgments. When used in what appears to be an objective description, the terminology unfortunately can cause the listener to adopt those values when in fact no good reason has been given for doing so. Also called Prejudicial Language.

Example:

[News broadcast] In today's top stories, Senator Smith carelessly cast the deciding vote today to pass both the budget bill and the trailer bill to fund yet another excessive watchdog committee over coastal development.

This broadcast is an editorial posing as a news report.

Line-Drawing

If we improperly reject a vague claim because it's not as precise as we'd like, then we commit the line-drawing fallacy. Being vague is not being hopelessly vague. Also called the Bald Man Fallacy, the Fallacy of the Heap and the Sorites Fallacy.

Example:

Dwayne can never grow bald. Dwayne isn't bald now. Don't you agree that if he loses one hair, that won't make him go from not bald to bald? And if he loses one hair after that, then this one loss, too, won't make him go from not bald to bald. Therefore, no matter how much hair he loses, he can't become bald.

Lack of Proportion

Either exaggerating or downplaying a point that is a crucial step in a piece of reasoning is an example of the Fallacy of Lack of Proportion. It's a mistake of not adopting the proper perspective. An extreme form of downplaying occurs in the Fallacy of Suppressed Evidence.

Example:

Chandra just overheard the terrorists say that they are about to plant the bomb in the basement of the courthouse, after which they'll drive to the airport and get away. But they won't be taking along their cat. The poor cat. The first thing that Chandra and I should do is to call the Humane Society and check the "Cat Wanted" section of the local newspapers to see if we can find a proper home for the cat.