Inference and fallacy

Sophistisch looks like the German for « sophisticated » and means something close to its opposite. It describes an argument that is clever in its form and empty in its substance: eine sophistische Unterscheidung is drawn to win a point, not to see anything more clearly. English kept that older sense only in the rare « sophistical »; « sophisticated » moved from « adulterated » to « refined », and German never followed it there. A sophisticated argument, in the approving sense, is ausgefeilt or differenziert; a sophisticated machine is ausgeklügelt. Call a colleague’s reasoning sophistisch in a seminar and you have not complimented it — you have come close to accusing it of Rabulistik. The rest of this page supplies the names that make such an accusation precise, from der Zirkelschluss to das falsche Dilemma.