1.

FREEDOM RULE:
I. Parties must not prevent each other from putting forward standpoints or casting doubt on
standpoints
II. Applicable to the confrontation stage of a critical discussion.
A. Fallacies placing limits on standpoints or doubts:
a) Declaring standpoints sacrosanct:
(1) censoring the challenging of your standpoint.
(a) e.g. "the superiority of democracy as government is evident, there is no
discussion possible."
b) Declaring standpoints taboo:
(1) censoring someone's standpoint.
(a) e.g. "it is insane that the secretary wants to make the breaking of the fast a
national holiday!"
B. Fallacies restricting the other party’s freedom of action:
1. by putting the other party under pressure:
a) Argumentum ad baculum or appeal to threat:
(1) pressuring your opponent by means of threat.
(a) e.g. "if you don’t join our demonstration against the expansion of the park,
we'll evict you from your apartment. So, you should join our demonstration."
b) Argumentum ad misericondiam or appeal to pity:
(1) pressuring your opponent by means of an appeal to pity.
(a) e.g. "I studied specifically because I knew my career depends on a good
grade. If you give me a failing grade I'm ruined!"
2. by attacking the person, using an argumentum ad hominem:
a) Abusive argumentum ad hominem:
(1) disqualifying the other party as stupid, bad or unreliable.
(a) e.g. "not only are you a liar, you're also an instigator... you're an inferior
human. Do you know that?"
b) Poisoning the well or circumstantial argumentum ad hominem:
(1) disqualifying the other party as biased.
(a) e.g. "of course you are against money for childcare. You don’t have any."
c) Tu quoque:
(1) disqualifying the other by stating that his position is at odds with his behaviour.
(a) e.g. "democrats pointed out that although Pete Wilson made the crackdown
on illegal immigrants a key theme in his ’96 Republican presidential bid, he
and his wife hired illegals as household help."
2. BURDEN OF PROOF RULE
I. Whoever advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if asked to do so.
II. Applicable to the opening stage of a critical discussion.
A. Fallacies of evading the burden of proof:
a) Evading the burden of proof:
(1) picturing the standpoint as a self-evident matter of course.
(a) e.g. "everybody knows that!"
b) Ethical fallacy or argumentum ad verecundiam:
(1) appealing to one's own authority.
(a) e.g. "I'm a doctor, I just know."
c) Fallacy of immunising the standpoint or word magic:
(1) generally, assuming that something exists, because the word for it exists.
(a) e.g. "otherwise it wouldn’t be sport, right? Essentially, sport is healthy..."
d) Fallacy of shifting the burden of proof:
(1) shifting the burden of proof to your opponent.
(a) e.g. "why not?"
3. STANDPOINT RULE
I. A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has been really advanced by
the protagonist.
II. Applicable to all stages of a critical discussion.
a) Straw man fallacy:
(1) attacking a distorted or exaggerated version of the interlocutor’s standpoint or
even a standpoint that you impute upon him.
(a) e.g. fictional standpoints.
(b) e.g. exaggerations.
(c) e.g. oversimplifications.
4. RELEVANCE RULE
I. A standpoint may be defended only by advancing argumentation relating to that standpoint.
II. Applicable to all stages of a critical discussion.
a) Ignoratio elenchi or irrelevant conclusion or missing the point:
(1) giving an argument that fails to address the issue in question.
(a) e.g. "does the law allow me to do that? The law should allow you to do that
because of this and that!"
b) Pathetic fallacy or argumentum ad populum:
(1) merely playing on the sentiments of your audience.
(a) e.g. "everyone likes this, therefore you should like it too!"
c) Ethical fallacy or argumentum ad verecundiam:
(1) appealing to one's own authority.
(a) e.g.: "I'm a doctor, I just know."
5. UNEXPRESSED PREMISE RULE
I. A person can be held to the premisses he leaves implicit.
II. Applicable to the argumentation stage of a critical discussion.
a) Straw man fallacy:
(1) exaggerating implicit premises.
(a) e.g. "I won’t buy it, because it’s too expensive. But why wouldn’t you buy
something expensive, ever?
b) Fallacy of denying an unexpressed premise:
(1) disclaiming an unexpressed premise.
(a) e.g. "Jan is unreliable, because he is Roman Catholic. So you think that
Roman Catholic people are unreliable? That’s not what I said!"
6. STARTING POINT RULE
I. A standpoint must be regarded as conclusively defended if the defence takes place by means of
arguments belonging to the common starting points.
II. Applicable to the argumentation stage of a critical discussion.
A. Smuggling in dubious propositions:
1. by means of questions with controversial presuppositions:
a) Plurium interrogationum or many questions fallacy:
(1) posing a question such that the other side gets committed to some harmful
proposition, whatever way he answers.
(a) e.g. "minister, is this horrendous economy measure your own personal
caprice, or has it been forced upon you?'
2. by means of assertions with controversial presupposition:
a) The loaded words fallacy:
(1) trying to smuggle in dubious propositions when making a statement.
(a) e.g. "abortion is supporting the legalised murder of innocent babies."
3. by giving a reason that comes down to the questioned standpoint:
a) Petitio principii or begging the question:
(1) using an argument that comes down to or starts with the claim to be defended.
(a) e.g. "God exists, because the Bible states so and the Bible is God’s word."
7. ARGUMENTATION SCHEME RULE
I. A standpoint must be regarded as conclusively defended if the defence takes place by means of
arguments in which a commonly accepted scheme of argumentation is correctly applied.
II. Applicable to the argumentation stage of a critical discussion.
1. Using an unsuitable argumentation scheme:
a) Argumentum ad popupulum or bandwagon fallacy:
(1) defending a standpoint by pointing at the impressive support it receives.
(a) e.g "the wisest have all been interested in astrology, therefore it is reliable."
 b) Argumentum ad consequentiam:
(1) presenting something as true because it would be great if it were, or conversely
that something is false because it would be horrible if true.
(a) e.g. "there must be an objective yardstick for good and evil, because
otherwise we’re left at each other’s mercy."
c) Argumentum ad vericundiam:
(1) appealing inappropriately to (alleged) experts.
(a) e.g. "Einstein said that God doesn’t throw dice so God must exist."
2. Incorrectly applying an argument scheme:
a) Faulty or hasty generalisation or secundum quid:
(1) justifying a general conclusion on an insufficient number of observations.
(a) e.g. "my next door neighbour is an actress and has a boisterous laugh.
Therefore, all actresses laugh boisterously."
b) False analogy:
(1) starting from a comparison that’s off track.
(a) e.g. "no one objects to a physician looking up a difficult case in medical
books. Why, then, shouldn't students taking a difficult examination be
permitted to use their textbooks?"
c) Post hoc ergo propter hoc or, in English, hereafter, therefore, for this reason:
(1) unthinkingly concluding from a sequence that the first causes the second.
(a) e.g. "since Rutte II, the economy is booming. Therefore, it’s due to Rutte II
that the economy is booming."
d) Slippery slope:
(1) reasoning that a certain course of action is undesirable or that a certain
proposition is implausible because it leads to an undesirable or implausible
conclusion via a series of tenuously connected premises, each of which is
understood to lead, causally or logically, to the conclusion that follows it.
(a) e.g. "legalising prostitution is undesirable because it would cause more
marriages to break up, which would in turn cause the breakdown of the
family, which would finally result in the destruction of civilisation."
8. VALIDITY RULE
I. The arguments used in a discursive text must be valid or capable of being validated by making
one or more unexpressed premisses explicit.
II. Applicable to the argumentation stage of a critical discussion.
III. In our evaluation procedure, the validity rule, only applies to argumentation that is presented as
deductively valid. Contrary to the eighth rule, the argumentation scheme rule applies to
argumentation that is presented as defeasibly valid.
 a) Af rming the consequent:
(1) taking a true conditional statement like if "P then Q" and invalidly inferring its

converse '-P then -Q'.

b) Denying the antecedent:
(1) taking a true conditional statement like if 'P then Q. ¬ P' and invalidly denying

the antecedent '¬Q'.

c) Fallacy of division:
(1) blindly transferring a property that applies to the whole to the parts of the whole.

(a) e.g. "the church is rich and the pope is part of it, therefore the pope is rich."
d) Fallacy of composition:
(1) blindly transfer a property that applies to the parts of a whole to the whole.

(a) e.g. "every word of this sentence is understandable, therefore this sentence is

understandable."
9. CLOSURE RULE
I. A failed defence of a standpoint must result in the protagonist withdrawing his standpoint and a

successful defence must result in the antagonist withdrawing his doubt about the standpoint.

II. Applicable to the concluding stage of a critical discussion.

a) Lockean ad hominem:
(1) concluding from the success of your defence against your opponents that it is

defensible against all or that it is true.

(a) e.g. "I was right, because, after all, no-one present was able to bring

something sensible against my theory."

b) Argumentum ad ignorantiam:
(1) concluding from a failure of the defence of a standpoint that it is false.

(a) e.g. "nobody has been able to prove that aliens exists, therefore they don't."
10. USAGE RULE
I. Parties must not use any formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous,

and they must interpret the formulations of others as carefully and accurately as possible.

II. Applicable to all stages of a critical discussion.

a) Fallacy of unclearness, here a slippery slope:
(1) reasoning by way of tiny steps, making your argument unclear so that your
opponent doesn’t know where to draw the line in your argument.
(a) e.g. "someone who has no hair is bald. Besides, one hair more or less cannot
make the difference in deciding if someone is bald. Therefore, someone with
one hair is bald. Furthermore, someone with two hairs is bald. Thus, whoever
fi
 has n hairs is bald. But everyone has a certain number n of hairs. Therefore,
everyone is bald."
b) Fallacious equivocation:
(1) making a term in reasoning switch meaning.
(a) e.g. "the Amstel river runs through Amsterdam. Whatever runs has feet.
Therefore, the Amstel river has feet."
THE RULES OF A CRITICAL DISCUSSION AND FALLACIES THAT APPLY TO MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS OF THEM:
Freedom rule Burden of proof Standpoint rule Relevance rule Unexpressed Starting point Argumentation Validity rule Closure rule Usage rule
rule premise rule rule scheme rule

declaring x presenting x as straw man ignoratio straw man many questions ad verecundiam denying the Lockean ad unclearness
sacrosant evident elenchi antecedent hominem (slippery slope)

declaring x ad verecundiam ad populum loaded terms ad populum a rming the ad ignorantiam equivocation
taboo consequent

ad baculum immunisation ad verecundiam begging the ad fallacy of

question consequentiam division

ad hominem shifting burden secundum quid fallacy of

of proof composition

poisoning the straw man false analogy

well

tu quoque post hoc

propter hoc

slippery slope
ffi