Moreover, not all logical relations are obvious, so that a logical relationship may not cause a subjective feeling of relatedness. The fact that two ideas are logically related may be one reason why one makes you think of the other, but there are other reasons, and the stream of consciousness often includes associations between ideas that are not at all logically related. Both types are vague in that there are no precise, language-independent definitions of semantic or causal relevance.Īnother ambiguity of the term "relevance" is that logical relevance can be confused with psychological relevance. It is ambiguous in that deductive and inductive reasoning seem to involve distinct types of relevance: Deductive relevance is semantic in nature, whereas inductive relevance is causal. Logical relevance is a vague and ambiguous notion.In practice, these two approaches have similar results, but mine does not treat Red Herring as a sort of bin for examples of logical irrelevance that don't fit elsewhere. In contrast, I consider all fallacies of irrelevance as types of Red Herring, though I would usually classify individual arguments as some subfallacy thereof. Most other logicians seem to use Red Herring, under whatever name they call it―see the Aliases, above―as a catch-all category for any irrelevant argument that doesn't fit into one of the other types of fallacy of irrelevance 6.This is why I provide no example of this fallacy: for an example, see any of its subfallacies, above. Because it is the most general fallacy of irrelevance, most fallacious arguments will be identified as some more specific type of irrelevancy.A set of premisses is logically irrelevant to a conclusion if their truth does not make it more likely that the conclusion is true. Any argument in which the premisses are logically unrelated to the conclusion commits this fallacy. Red Herring is the most general fallacy of irrelevance. As with all of Aristotle's original fallacies, its application has widened to include all arguments, not just refutations or those occurring in the context of a debate.
The ignorance involved is either ignorance of the conclusion to be refutedeven deliberately ignoring itor ignorance of what constitutes a refutation, so that the attempt misses the mark. It is often known by the Latin name "ignoratio elenchi", which is a translation of Aristotle's Greek phrase for "ignorance of refutation". This fallacy is one of Aristotle's thirteen fallacies identified in his pioneering work On Sophistical Refutations, which dealt with fallacious refutations in debate. By extension, it applies to any argument in which the premisses are logically irrelevant to the conclusion. This frequently occurs during debates when there is an at least implicit topic, yet it can be easy to lose track of it.
In the context of argumentation, a red herring is something which distracts the audience from the issue in question. Thus, in general, a "red herring" is anything that can be used to distract attention 5. According to one story 3, dragging a dried, smoked herring, which is red in color, across the trail of the fox would throw the hounds off the scent 4. The name of this fallacy comes from the sport of fox hunting. Subfallacies: Appeal to Consequences, Bandwagon Fallacy, Emotional Appeal, Genetic Fallacy, Guilt by Association, Straw Man, Two Wrongs Make a Right Etymology: Taxonomy: Logical Fallacy > Informal Fallacy > Red Herring Alias 1: Befogging the Issue, Diversion, Ignoratio Elenchi 2, Ignoring the Issue, Irrelevant Conclusion, Irrelevant Thesis
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