Are you Loading the Facts to Upset Yourself?

"In this blog, I introduce a fallacy to the list of "Cardinal Fallacies" in Logic-Based Therapy. I call this fallacy the Fact-Loading Fallacy because it involves embedding a value judgment (often unintentionally) in a premise of emotional reasoning that is supposed to report a fact. This fallacy can conceal, augment, legitimize, and sustain the self-disturbing effects of other fallacies in people's emotional reasoning."

"What Is Emotional Reasoning? Emotional reasoning is the reasoning people do when they upset themselves about problems of living. It consists of two premises. One of these premises is a report or description of an intentional object. It is an empirical premise; that is, a premise that can be confirmed by observation or inference from observation. The other premise is a rule that tells a person how to evaluate this object."

"For example, Rule: If I lose my job, then evaluate it as the worst thing in the world. Report: I lost my job. Conclusion: it's the worst thing in the world. This reasoning is fallacious because its Rule clearly commits the fallacy of awfulizing. It exaggerates just how bad the job loss is by telling you to evaluate it as even worse than earthquakes, tsunamis, and mass murder!"

The Fact-Loading Fallacy occurs when an empirical report premise of emotional reasoning covertly contains a value judgment. Emotional reasoning in Logic-Based Therapy consists of an empirical report about an intentional object and an implicit evaluative rule that directs judgment. When the report itself is loaded with evaluation, it masks and legitimizes other fallacies such as awfulizing and catastrophizing, amplifying self-disturbance. Logic-Based Therapy aims to reveal hidden evaluative rules and to replace fallacious premises with rational, observationally confirmable premises, thereby reducing exaggerated, self-destructive evaluations and restoring clearer, more accurate appraisal of problems of living.

Read at Psychology Today