sophism

Etymology 1

From Middle English sophim, from Old French soffime, sofime, sofisme, sophisme, from Latin sophisma (“fallacy, sophism”), from Ancient Greek σόφῐσμᾰ (sóphisma), from σοφίζω (sophízō) + -μα (-ma).

noun

1. (uncountable, historical) The school of the sophists in antiquity; their beliefs and method of teaching philosophy and rhetoric.
   Within the framework of democracy a new ideology, born of sophism, took root and proclaimed the rights of the individual in all spheres, political as well as moral. 1958, Sophie Trenkner, The Greek Novella in the Classical Period, page 15
   Empiricism has its roots in Greek and Roman sophism and skepticism, and continues through Kant and American pragmatism. 2003, Murray Leaf, “Ethnography and Pragmatism”, in Alfonso Morales, editor, Renascent Pragmatism: Studies in Law and Social Science, page 92
   Sophistic teachers did not, in general, consciously aim at corrupting the young or turning them against their parents, but the radical skepticism and moral relativism of later sophism indirectly achieved something like this. 2009, Richard M. Berthold, Dare to Struggle: The History and Society of Greece, page 75
2. (countable) A flawed argument, superficially correct in its reasoning, usually designed to deceive.
3. (countable) An intentional fallacy.
4. (uncountable) Sophistic, fallacious reasoning or argumentation.
   What! No demonstration of the Being of God! No abstract arguments! No proofs a priori! Are these, which have hitherto been so much insisted on by philosophers, all fallacy, all sophism? Can we reach no further in this subject than experience and probability? 1779, David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Etymology 2

noun

1. Archaic spelling of Sufism.