A politician asserts: 'Either you support our emergency national surveillance bill or you are siding with violent criminals.' What fallacy is committed?
Answer and explanation
Correct answer: D. False dilemma artificially restricting legitimate options
- Step 1: The politician forces an extreme, false binary choice: endorse invasive surveillance or be labeled an ally of criminals. Ignoring intermediate, nuanced positions on civil liberties and security constitutes a false dilemma (false dichotomy). Answer: False dilemma artificially restricting legitimate options. Why not the others: "Equivocation regarding terms" relies on using an ambiguous word in different senses within the same logical argument; "Post hoc causal confusion" assumes that because event B followed event A, event A caused event B; "Genetic origin error" judges a claim based entirely on its origin rather than its substantive validity.
Practise more Informal Fallacies and Reasoning Flaws.
Free questions with an explanation for every one, and full timed State Certificate of Language Proficiency (KPG) English mock tests.
More Informal Fallacies and Reasoning Flaws questions
- A spokesperson remarks: 'Our competitor claims their electric vehicle is safer, but their CEO was once investigated for insider trading.' Wh…
- An editorial asserts: 'If we lower the legal voting age to sixteen, next children will be allowed to drive trucks, and soon toddlers will ru…
- A doctor notes: 'The patient drank herbal tea every morning and recovered from pneumonia; therefore, the herbal tea cured the pneumonia.' Wh…
- A critic argues: 'Those who favor public transit subsidies want to completely ban private automobiles and confiscate all personal cars.' Wha…
- A philosopher argues: 'Capital punishment is completely justified because the state has the moral authority to execute murderers.' What fall…
- A mayor states: 'Why are journalists questioning municipal road contracts when ocean plastics are destroying marine life on the other side o…