sophism

noun4

1. •
   A flawed argument, superficially correct in its reasoning, usually designed to deceive.

   • The hope of improvement is a quality at once so strong and so excellent in the human mind, that I, for one, disapprove of any sophism—or, if you will, argument—that tends to repress it. — 1831
2. •
   An intentional fallacy.
3. •
   Sophistic, fallacious reasoning or argumentation.

   • 30 Oct 1980, H. Dieter Zeh, letter to John Archibald Wheeler. I expect that the Copenhagen interpretation will some time be called the greatest sophism in the history of science, but I would consider it a terrible injustice if—when some day a solution should be found—some people claim that ‘this is of course what Bohr always meant’, only because he was sufficiently vague.
4. •
   (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