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Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

Author	David Hackett Fischer
Country	United States
Subject	General history, Logical fallacies
Published	1970 (HarperCollins)
Pages	386
ISBN	978-0060904982
OCLC	185446787
Dewey Decimal	901/?.8
LC Class	D16 .F53
Text	Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought at Internet Archive

Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought is a 1970 book by David Hackett Fischer.

Structure

Inquiry

Fallacies of question framing

• Baconian fallacy: a simple minded view of induction, it "consists in the idea that a historian can operate without the aid of preconceived questions, hypotheses, ideas, assumptions, theories, paradigms, postulates, prejudices, presumptions, or general presuppositions of any kind".
• Fallacy of many questions
• Fallacy of false dichotomous questions
• Fallacy of metaphysical questions: "an attempt to resolve a nonempirical problem by empirical means". The author includes "why" questions, "for the adverb "why" is slippery and difficult to define. Sometimes it seeks a cause, sometimes a motive, sometimes a reason, sometimes a description, sometimes a process, sometimes a purpose, sometimes a justification".
• Fallacy of fictional questions: counterfactuals, by definition, can never be empirically tested.
• Fallacy of semantical questions: "sterile disputes about word usage and not about the past happenings to which the words are supposed to refer".
• Fallacy of declarative questions: confusing declarative and interrogative statements. The historian has a point to make and collects data to support his expectations. See also cherry picking and confirmation bias.
• Fallacy of counterquestions: when analyzing and rebutting an earlier work, limiting yourself to the same assumptions and systems used by the original author.
• Fallacy of tautological questions
• Fallacy of contradictory questions
• Fallacy of "potentially verifiable" questions: an attempt to divide history in "theoretical" and "experimental", which, according to the author, can only lead to weaken both aspects.

Fallacies of factual verification

• Fallacy of the pseudo proof
• Fallacy of the irrelevant proof
• Fallacy of the negative proof
• Fallacy of the presumptive proof: "advancing a proposition and shifting the burden of proof or disproof to others".
• Fallacy of the circular proof
• Fallacy of the prevalent proof: what "every schoolboy knows" sometimes isn't true.
• Fallacy of the possible proof: when the historian limits himself or herself "to a discussion of the possibility of error in the evidence at hand" instead of performing an estimate of the probability in favor and against the piece of evidence in question by researching the appropriate sources. Historical evidence is often incomplete or can come from hearsay, but the possibility of its being false doesn't imply that it should be dismissed: an analysis that compares it with other, similar evidence could prove its probable authenticity.
• Fallacy of the hypostatized proof: in historical context, when a model or interpretation replaces the event it aims to represent.
• Fallacy of the appositive proof: while making a comparison, misrepresenting one side to make the difference appear clearer or to prove a point.
• Fallacy of misplaced literalism: a particular case of quoting out of context, when the original quote isn't to be taken literally.
• Fallacy of misplaced precision
• Fallacy of partial proof: in a series of events or facts, unwarrantedly claiming that proving one of them establishes the validity of a related fact or of the whole series.

Fallacies of factual significance

• Holist fallacy: the attempt to apply an holistic method to history, make sense of history, discover the meaning of the past. Common among historiographers.
• Fallacy of essences
• Prodigious fallacy: mistaking the sensational for the significant.
• Furtive fallacy
• Moralistic fallacy: cherry picking morally constructive facts.
• Pragmatic fallacy: cherry picking facts that serve a social cause.
• Aesthetic fallacy: cherry picking facts that are beautiful or make for a more engaging reading.
• Quantitative fallacy
• Antinomian fallacy: the opposite of the quantitative fallacy.
• Fortuitous fallacy: let randomness select the facts.

Explanation

Fallacies of generalization

• Fallacies of statistical sampling: hasty generalization, sampling bias, selection bias.
• Fallacy of the lonely fact: extreme case of hasty generalization.
• Fallacy of statistical special pleading
• Fallacy of statistical impressionism: the interpretation given isn't supported by the data.
• Fallacy of statistical nonsense: statistics that are irrelevant in context, or not compared to a control group as a reference point, or where the data is not consistent, or simply that contain methodological errors.
• Fallacies of statistical probability
  • "[T]he error of assuming that the most probable distribution will occur, exactly, in any given instance"
  • Gambler's fallacy
• Ecological fallacy
• Fallacy of false extrapolation: when a correct statistical analysis is used to extrapolate data too far beyond its range (e.g., predictions far into the future).
• Fallacy of false interpolation: unwarrantedly estimating an unknown middle point between two known points.
• Fallacy of the insidious generalization: using generalizations "without recognizing their existence or controlling their content". The author points out that in order to be able to use words that imply a generalization ("few," "some," "most," "many," "singular," "typical," "exceptional," "common," "customary," "normal," "regular," "recurrent," "periodic," "widespread," "often") an accurate quantification is required.
• Fallacy of the double-reversing generalization: a form of bet-hedging, consist of a mixture of slothful induction, if-by-whiskey and argument to moderation.
• Fallacy of the overwhelming exception

Fallacies of narration

• Fallacy of anachronism
• Fallacy of presentism
• Antiquarian fallacy: the converse of presentism, happens when the historian loses himself or herself in the reverence for past events, disconnecting completely from the present.
• Fallacy of tunnel history: first conceptualized by J. H. Hexter, it's committed when history is depicted as composed of parallel, sealed "tunnels" (e.g., military history, economic history, Jewish history) that link the past to the present but never influence each other.
• Fallacy of false periodization: "assigning inappropriate temporal limits to a historical problem".
  • Fallacy of hectohistory: a particular case of the false periodization, is the tendency of counting by centuries and forcing on them a unique pattern.
• Telescopic fallacy: "reduc[ing] an extended trend to a momentary transformation."
• Interminable fallacy: the opposite of the telescopic fallacy, it's a form of false extrapolation.
• Fallacy of archetypes: believing that history is the eternal repetition of fixed, mythical models or patterns that transcend time. He cites Mircea Eliade's hierophany and eternal return as the brightest philosophical examples of this fallacy, and the historians Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee as two of its main supporters.
• Chronic fallacy: this fallacy, which concerns the narrative structure of a historical writing, happens when the historian feels compelled to tell all the necessary facts in a strict chronological order. To deliver effective explanations the historian must organize the narrative around the "pattern of change", which often requires reporting the events in an order that is not chronological.
• Static fallacy: any attempt to explain an historical matter, an inherently dynamic subject, as an unfolding of a single static idea, plan, or model that exists outside of time.
• Fallacy of presumptive continuity and the fallacy of presumptive change: viewing history as a narrative of unity and consensus or as a continuous struggle between social groups are two of the most common biases in historical narration. The author uses as examples the American schools of consensus history and progressive history, respectively.
• Genetic fallacy: here the author focuses on a particular instance of the broadly defined genetic fallacy, i.e., replacing the analysis of the subject with the analysis of its source (its history, its becoming). He cites the New Criticism sharp separation of the study of a work of art with the study of its history as an example of the correct approach.
  • Ethical historicism: converting history into morality, which is also a variant of the is-ought fallacy where "history" replaces "is". The consequence of this belief is that "whatever is becoming, is right". It can be linked to the just-world hypothesis (e.g., the "idea that America's rise to power and prosperity is a measure of its moral excellence"). The classical expression of this fallacy is the historicism of Hegel, Schiller, Schelling.
• Didactic fallacy: the attempt to extract a specific lesson from history and apply it, as is, to present issues.

Fallacies of causation

• Fallacy of post hoc, propter hoc
• Fallacy of cum hoc, propter hoc
• Fallacy of pro hoc, propter hoc: the mistake of identifying as a cause of a particular event something that happened after it, thus violating causality.
• Reductive fallacy
  • Confusion of necessary with sufficient cause
• Fallacy of indiscriminate pluralism: the converse of the reductive fallacy. The number of causes is not defined and/or their weight is not assigned.
• Fallacy of identity: when it is assumed that a cause and its effect must share a resemblance, as exemplified by the doctrine of signatures, or at least a degree of proportionality, e.g. big consequences can only be the result of a big cause.
• Fallacy of absolute priority: "the false assumption that logic requires a unique and irreversible order between any two concepts or propositions, so that if A presupposes B, the converse cannot be true. This ignores the possibility that there may be two factors which continually modify each other".
• Fallacy of the mechanistic cause: codified by Robert Morrison MacIver, this fallacy assumes that the causes of an event can be analysed independently, that is rejects the idea that causal elements can interact with each other and with their larger environment; in other words, it implies that the result in a complex system is exactly the sum of its parts. Often this fallacy goes hand in hand with the use of counterfactual hypotheses to show how the event would be different by removing one or more causes, or by moving the causes to different contexts.
• Fallacy of reason as cause: confusing a logical deduction ("Cromwell died because all men die, and Cromwell was a man.") with a causal proposition ("Cromwell died because he caught intermittent fever").
• Fallacy of responsibility as cause: stems from the human need to find someone to blame. The first step is assuming that every event has a human cause (a form of pathetic fallacy), the second that the act was intentional, the third one is attaching a moral judgement.

Fallacies of motivation

• Pathetic fallacy
  • Anthropomorphism and anthropopathism
• Apathetic fallacy: denying human rationality. Committed, according to the author, by the doctrines of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud.
• Idealist fallacy: reducing the complexity of the human mind to pure rationality. Reducing history to the history of rational thought.
• Fallacy of the one-dimensional man: reducing the complexity of the human mind to a single driving aspect (e.g., power, according to Hobbes).
• Fallacy of the universal man: assuming that all humans in all times and all places are basically the same.
• Fallacy of the mass man: who commits this fallacy "confuses anonymity with impersonality". It is common, when lumping together a large number of individuals into so called masses, to think of them as a de-humanized, homogenized horde.
• Fallacy of the man-mass: the converse, that is taking a well-known individual and using his name to describe a collective with seemingly similar characteristics.
• Historians' fallacy

Fallacies of composition

• Fallacy of composition
• Fallacy of division
• Fallacy of difference: identified by Ralph Barton Perry, it is committed when attempting a genus–differentia definition, but only focusing on the difference and leaving aside the genus. The example Perry brings is the "reduction of puritanism to what is merely puritan, as, for example, theocracy".
• Converse fallacy of difference: mistakenly considering a quality of a group as differentiating, unique, when in fact that quality is not limited to that group at all.
• Fallacy of ethnomorphism: from the Greek ἔθνος ethnos "folk, people, nation" and μορφή morphē "shape, form" (cf. anthropomorphism), is "the conceptualization of the characteristics of another group in terms of one's own".
• Fallacy of ethnocentrism: "is committed by a historian who exaggerates the role of his own group in its interaction with other groups".
• Fallacy of elitism
• Fallacy of racism
• Fallacy of cross grouping: "consists in the conceptualization of one group type in terms of another".
  • National history: while not a fallacy per se, it becomes one when the historian uses the nation-state as the (sole) unit of analysis for cultural, social, religious issues that can't be neatly delimited by frontiers.

Fallacies of false analogy

• Fallacy of the insidious analogy: here the author complains about the use of metaphorical imagery to promote, voluntarily or not, the writer's biases. This is a common issue given how common analogies are in historical writing in particular and language in general.
• Fallacy of the perfect analogy: when an analogy is mistaken for identity.
  • Fallacy of evaluation by analogy: since A and B are similar in some aspects, and A as a whole is considered good, then B as a whole is good too. This is an error since a conclusive value judgement of B as a whole can't be inferred by the limited aspects in which it is similar to A.
• Fallacy of the false analogy: here the author uses the same, generic name of the chapter title to describe a very precise type of error, that is when the quality x that is supposedly similar in A and B isn't actually the same. This fact is commonly obfuscated by semantic ambiguity.
• Fallacy of the absurd analogy: when the analogy fails to satisfy the relevance criterion.
• Fallacy of the multiple analogy: when a simple, direct analogy fails to lead from A to B, and further analogies are required to bridge the gap. These additional analogies are often implied by using semantic ambiguity.
• Fallacy of the holistic analogy: "It is an attempt to construct an analogical inference from some part of history to the whole of history".
• Fallacy of proof by analogy: when using analogy without, or as a substitute to, empirical tests.
• Fallacy of prediction by analogy: when one of the parts of an analogy is in the future it can't be put to test. The author suggests two possible alternatives to analogy for forecasting: a careful use of extrapolation from known trends, and "If, then" (i.e., conditional) prepositions.

Argument

Fallacies of semantical distortion

• Fallacy of ambiguity
  • Fallacy of etceteration: when, instead of a complete enumeration, the writer chooses to use "etc.", often as a mean to disguise insufficient proof or poor research.
• Fallacy of amphiboly
• Fallacy of figures: when the writer employs a figure of speech, but it's left unclear if it's meant to be taken literally or not.
• Fallacy of accent
  • Innuendo
• Fallacy of equivocation
• Fallacy of quibbling: a form of equivocation that happens when in a debate two (or more) arguers don't use the same key term in the same sense.
• Black-or-white fallacy:

1. every distinction is arbitrary
2. different shades of grey become black and white -> false dichotomy

related to vagueness (continuum fallacy / sorites paradox). See Opposite (semantics)#Gradable antonyms ( Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum (hot, cold). ) --- but can happen between red and yellow too. See False dilemma#Black-and-white thinking ???

Fallacies of substantive distraction

• Fallacy of argument ad verecundiam
• Fallacy of argument ad hominem
• Fallacy of argument ad crumenam
• Fallacy of argument ad baculum
• Fallacy of argument ad temperantiam
• Fallacy of argument ad antiquitam
• Counterfallacy of argument ad novitam
• Fallacy of argument ad consequentiam
• Fallacy of argument ad nauseam
• Fallacist's fallacy

External links

• Google Books link