Why do we keep arguing about fallacies, and why do those arguments so often go nowhere?
In their new paper “Two-Tier Fallacy Theory: A New Approach to Assessing Argument Quality”, Martin Hinton and Jean Wagemans argue that the problem isn’t just which fallacies we recognize, but how we go about identifying them in the first place.
Traditional fallacy theory tends to collapse two very different tasks into one: describing what kind of argument we are dealing with and evaluating whether that argument is acceptable. The result is familiar to anyone who has taught critical thinking or followed public debate: endless disputes over labels and little clarity about what, exactly, has gone wrong.
Hinton and Wagemans propose a refreshingly systematic solution. They introduce a two-tier procedure that first identifies an argument’s type in a strictly descriptive way by using the Periodic Table of Arguments and only then evaluates its quality via a structured set of normative questions. Fallacies, on this view, are not inherently bad forms of argument but rather specific flaws identified at clearly defined points in the assessment process.
The payoff is substantial. This approach makes fallacy judgments more transparent, more defensible, and more useful for real-world argumentation, from everyday discussions to academic debate and even AI-based argument analysis. Instead of dismissing arguments with a name, we gain a clearer picture of why they fail and how they might be improved.
For anyone interested in critical thinking, rhetoric, or the future of explainable AI, this paper offers a powerful rethinking of what fallacies are and how we should address them.
Hinton, M., & Wagemans, J.H.M. (2025). Two-tier fallacy theory: A new approach to assessing argument quality. Informal Logic, 45(4), 472-503.
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