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ZeusAres42

Yes, even a debate can entail one that involves aspects of argumentation itself. Some of the things I would like to tackle here are:

1. What exactly constitutes as being a fallacy?
2. Can fallacies ever be valid?
   
3. What would constitute as the deceptive exploitation of fallacies? 
   
4. Common cognitive biases in relation to being new to the term fallacy? 
   

Now, the answers I will give myself are:

1. What exactly constitutes as being a fallacy? - With respect here, I would say that we first need to be aware that there are two types of fallacies - formal and informal fallacies. The definition that I ascribe to is that regardless of where they are informal or formal they are an error in reason and/or argumentation. What a fallacy is NOT is a factual error, which I have noticed from my own experience that some people accuse others of fallacies when they actually just made a factual error. Further, from my current research, I haven't yet come across any researcher that has ever said that a fallacy is a factual error.
   
2. Can fallacies ever be valid? - Now, because I have stated that I ascribe to the definition that a fallacy is an error in reason it would be illogical of me to say that fallacies can be valid. That being said, however, there is such thing called "fallacy labels" such as "ad hominem," "strawman," "red herring," etc. And it with regard to these "fallacy labels" I concur with the notion that there are many exceptions to these labels in which case the arguments aren't legitimately fallacious.  Just because someone sees an argument that looks like what could be a slippery slope, for instance, doesn't mean that the argument is necessarily fallacious. In order to assess the fallacious and validity, one needs to take into account everything that is being said before they can justifiably call it a fallacy and attach a label to it.
   
3. What would constitute as the deceptive exploitation of fallacies? - I will contend that yes, some of them can be such as "poisoning the well." "loaded questioning," etc. However, in these cases, it is not arguer themselves committing the fallacy albeit they are being somewhat dishonest and unethical; it is, in fact, the audience that are committing the fallacy if they believe what the arguer is saying based merely on arguers exploitative tactics.
4. Common cognitive biases in relation to being new to the term fallacy? - The only cognitive bias I am familiar here from my own experience and the fact that I used to be one that used to do this is where once you become new to the concept of fallacies and the "labels" attached to them you can become susceptible to seeing them everywhere. You end up seeing ad hominems everywhere, appeal to authority everywhere, etc and then dismiss any and all arguments as being faulty based purely on seeing one or more of "fallacy labels" in an argument without actually examining what's being said and the given circumstances at the time.
   

References/Further reading:

• Fallacies
• Fallacies (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Now, what are your thoughts?

Akhenaten

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to look for evidence in favour of one's controversial hypothesis and not to look for disconfirming evidence, or to pay insufficient attention to it. This is the most common kind of Fallacy of Selective Attention.