When reasoning goes wrong, it does not always go wrong for the same reason.
Sometimes the problem lies in the argument itself: a fallacy is involved. At other times, the problem lies in the way information is processed: cognitive biases intervene. But these two categories do not exhaust the possible sources of error.
It may be useful to distinguish at least seven broad groups:
- Argumentative fallacies
Defects in the structure, relevance, or use of arguments: false dilemmas, ad hominem attacks, begging the question, unjustified generalisations, and so on. - Cognitive biases
Systematic tendencies in mental processing that may distort judgements and inferences: confirmation bias, availability bias, anchoring, overconfidence, among others. - Existential biases
Deep assumptions about oneself and one’s relationship with reality that may function as implicit premises: seeing oneself as especially rational, morally good, unusually fortunate, or experiencing one’s own continued existence as if it were the natural state of things.This category was developed in more detail here: - Epistemic vices
Personal dispositions that hinder the search for or revision of knowledge: dogmatism, closed-mindedness, obstinacy, intellectual negligence, or resistance to acknowledging error. - Motivations and interests
Reasoning is not always aimed solely at finding out what is true. It may also serve to protect identity, preserve social status, defend self-interest, reduce dissonance, or justify a previously desired conclusion. - Epistemic and representational limitations
It is possible to reason reasonably well and still begin from an inadequate representation of reality: insufficient information, poorly defined concepts, linguistic ambiguity, measurement errors, imperfect memory, limited computational capacity, excessive complexity, or incomplete causal models. - Informational and social environment
Error does not necessarily originate within the individual. Propaganda, information selection, echo chambers, incentives, group pressure, or certain institutional structures influence which information reaches us, which claims are rewarded, and which beliefs become costly to maintain.
These categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. An environment may create incentives to defend a particular position; those incentives may encourage motivated reasoning; motivated reasoning may reinforce confirmation bias; selective use of evidence may ultimately be expressed through a fallacious argument. Identifying a fallacy in an argument may therefore reveal only the final visible stage of a much deeper process.
The value of this classification lies less in assigning every error to a single box than in broadening the question. When confronted with a defective conclusion, it is not enough to ask: “What is wrong with this argument?” It is also worth asking: “What made this argument seem reasonable in the first place?” The answer may lie in the argument itself, in cognition, in the model a person holds of themselves, in their epistemic character, in their interests, in the limits of the available information, or in the environment that favours some beliefs over others.
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