ETYM Old Eng. fallace, fallas, deception, French fallace, from Latin fallacia, from fallax deceitful, deceptive, from fallere to deceive. Related to Fail.
In philosophy, a type of mistake in reasoning or inference (deduction or conclusion drawn from what has been implied). In Aristotelian logic (syllogism) and in modern formal logic, there are rules for detecting and preventing fallacies, and ensuring that an inference is valid.
Fallacies in everyday reasoning can be less easy to detect. Begging the question is a fallacy that occurs when one of the premises of an argument could not be known to be true unless the conclusion were first assumed to be true. Other fallacies include fallacies of ambiguity; of arguing against a person, rather than against what the person says; and of arguing that something is true simply because there is no evidence against it.In literary criticism, either of two approaches held to be errors by certain critics. The New Criticism movement in the US held that a literary text could be criticized legitimately only in terms of its internal structures. Two followers of this tradition, W K Wimsatt and Monroe C Beardsley, argued 1954 that it was mistaken to interpret literature in terms of its emotional effects (affective fallacy) or in terms of the intentions of the author (intentional fallacy).
A misconception resulting from incorrect reasoning; SYN. false belief.