What exactly is a logical fallacy?
They are called fallacies of logic because they break the rules of logic, or cause your mind to make the attempt to do so. Put a beautiful woman behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang convertible, take a picture of it for advertising, and you can see the point. They have nothing to do with each other, but you are expected to draw a conclusion that is false. This one goes by several names, one of which is Fallacy by Association. The examples with the As and Bs, and the one about Socrates, are logic systems called “syllogisms”. A syllogism is two premises and a conclusion. The conclusion must follow NECESSARILY from the two premises, or the conclusion is invalid. Any invalid conclusion is a fallacy, because the syllogism broke the rules of logic. There are 256 syllogisms in form, and only 12 of those are valid. The other 244 forms break the rules. Some are so obvious a 5 year old can pick them out. Some are so hard to spot that philosophers argue over them for millenia. Almost all the conclu
