ABSTRACT
Causal analyses are probably the most common and controversial variety of argument in social and economic issues. Causal analysis can be highly eloquent and powerful; its skillful practitioners typically draw from a repository of cultural literacy, marshaling historical or socioeconomic data and assuming the ability of readers or listeners to follow an extended line of argument that develops a sequence of historical or social causes and effects. Moreover, causal analysis is susceptible to an entire, distinct repertory of fallacious and deceptive reasoning, as will be surveyed here. So as a critical reader, listener, and writer, student need to learn to make well-reasoned judgments about which causal arguments are logical and which are fallacious. In contrast to post hoc, in which a causal relation between two events is claimed where there is none provable, in the reductive fallacy there might be such a relation, but there are probably other significant causes as well.
