Association fallacy

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The association fallacy is a formal logical fallacy that asserts that properties of one thing must also be properties of another thing if both things belong to the same group. For example, a fallacious arguer may claim that "bears are animals, and bears are dangerous; therefore your dog, which is also an animal, must be dangerous."

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When it is an attempt to win favor by exploiting the audience's preexisting spite or disdain for something else, it is called guilt by association or an appeal to spite (Latin : argumentum ad odium). [1] Guilt by association is similar to ad hominem arguments which attack the speaker rather than addressing the claims, but in this case the ill feeling is not created by the argument; it already exists.

Formal version

An Euler diagram illustrating the association fallacy Euler diagram.png
An Euler diagram illustrating the association fallacy

Using the language of set theory, the formal fallacy can be written as follows:

Premise: A is in set S1
Premise: A is in set S2
Premise: B is also in set S2
Conclusion: Therefore, B is in set S1.

In the notation of first-order logic, this type of fallacy can be expressed as (∃ x  ∈  S : φ(x)) ⇒ (∀ x ∈ S : φ(x)).

The fallacy in the argument can be illustrated through the use of an Euler diagram: A satisfies the requirement that it is part of both sets S1 and S2, but representing this as an Euler diagram makes it clear that B could be in S2 but not S1.

Guilt by association

This form of the argument is as follows:

An example of this fallacy would be "My opponent for office just received an endorsement from the Puppy Haters Association. Is that the sort of person you would want to vote for?"

Examples

Some syllogistic examples of guilt by association:

Guilt by association can sometimes also be a type of ad hominem , if the argument attacks a person because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument. [2] [3]

Galileo gambit

A form of the association fallacy often used by those denying a well-established scientific or historical proposition is the so-called Galileo gambit or Galileo fallacy. [4] The argument runs thus: Galileo was ridiculed in his time for his scientific observations, but was later acknowledged to be right; the proponent argues that since their non-mainstream views are provoking ridicule and rejection from other scientists, they will later be recognized as correct, like Galileo. [5] The gambit is flawed in that being ridiculed does not necessarily correlate with being right and that many people who have been ridiculed in history were, in fact, wrong. [4] [6] Similarly, Carl Sagan opined that people laughed at such geniuses as Christopher Columbus [a] and the Wright brothers, but "they also laughed at Bozo the Clown". [8] [9] It is often committed by those whose theories reject common scientific consensus. [10]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The idea that Columbus proved that the Earth is spherical to his contemporaries is a historical misconception; [7] see Myth of the flat Earth.

Related Research Articles

Ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments that are fallacious. Often currently this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion often using a totally irrelevant, but often highly charged attribute of the opponent's character or background. The most common form of this fallacy is "A" makes a claim of "fact", to which "B" asserts that "A" has a personal trait, quality or physical attribute that is repugnant thereby going off-topic, and hence "B" concludes that "A" has their "fact" wrong – without ever addressing the point of the debate. Many contemporary politicians routinely use ad hominem attacks, some of which can be encapsulated to a derogatory nickname for a political opponent used instead of political argumentation.

An irrelevant conclusion, also known as ignoratio elenchi or missing the point, is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument whose conclusion fails to address the issue in question. It falls into the broad class of relevance fallacies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Argument from ignorance</span> Informal fallacy

Argument from ignorance, also known as appeal to ignorance, is a fallacy in informal logic. The fallacy is committed when one asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. If a proposition has not yet been proven true, one is not entitled to conclude, solely on that basis, that it is false, and if a proposition has not yet been proven false, one is not entitled to conclude, solely on that basis, that it is true. Another way of expressing this is that a proposition is true only if proven true, and a proposition is false only if proven false. If no proof is offered, then the proposition can be called unproven, undecided, inconclusive, an open problem or a conjecture. In debates, appealing to ignorance is sometimes an attempt to shift the burden of proof. The term was likely coined by philosopher John Locke in the late 17th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fallacy</span> Argument that uses faulty reasoning

A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian De Sophisticis Elenchis.

Appeal to tradition is a claim in which a thesis is deemed correct on the basis of correlation with past or present tradition. The appeal takes the form of "this is right because we've always done it this way", and is a logical fallacy. The opposite of an appeal to tradition is an appeal to novelty, in which one claims that an idea is superior just because it is new.

Poisoning the well is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864).

Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam, is an argument that concludes a hypothesis to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a type of informal fallacy, since the desirability of a premise's consequence does not make the premise true. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view.

Argument to moderation —also known as the false compromise, argument from middle ground, fallacy of gray, middle ground fallacy, or golden mean fallacy—is the fallacy that the truth is always in the middle of two opposites.

Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. It is also called argument to logic, the fallacy fallacy, the fallacist's fallacy, and the bad reasons fallacy.

An argumentum ad crumenam argument, also known as an argument to the purse, is the informal fallacy of drawing conclusions based on the speaker's financial status. The term generally refers to the assumption that having wealth is indicative of insight or virtue, and that poverty denotes the opposite.

<i>Reductio ad Hitlerum</i> Logical fallacy

Reductio ad Hitlerum, also known as playing the Nazi card, is an attempt to invalidate someone else's argument on the basis that the same idea was promoted or practised by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party. Arguments can be termed reductio ad Hitlerum if they are fallacious. Contrarily, straightforward arguments critiquing specifically fascist components of Nazism like Führerprinzip are not part of the association fallacy.

Tu quoque is a discussion technique that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by attacking the opponent's own personal behavior and actions as being inconsistent with their argument, so that the opponent appears hypocritical. This specious reasoning is a special type of ad hominem attack. The Oxford English Dictionary cites John Cooke's 1614 stage play The Cittie Gallant as the earliest known use of the term in the English language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Informal fallacy</span> Form of incorrect argument in natural language

Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the form of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their content and context. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually appear to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas N. Walton</span> Canadian academic and author (1942–2020)

Douglas Neil Walton was a Canadian academic and author, known for his books and papers on argumentation, logical fallacies and informal logic. He was a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and before that (2008–2014), he held the Assumption Chair of Argumentation Studies at the University of Windsor. Walton's work has been used to better prepare legal arguments and to help develop artificial intelligence.

Appeal to the stone, also known as argumentum ad lapidem, is a logical fallacy that dismisses an argument as untrue or absurd. The dismissal is made by stating or reiterating that the argument is absurd, without providing further argumentation. This theory is closely tied to proof by assertion due to the lack of evidence behind the statement and its attempt to persuade without providing any evidence.

Henry Johnstone Jr. (1920–2000) was an American philosopher and rhetorician known especially for his notion of the "rhetorical wedge" and his re-evaluation of the ad hominem fallacy. He was Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University (1952–1984) and began studying Classics in the late 1970s. He was the founder and longtime editor of the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric and edited the Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum is a fallacious argument which is based on claiming a truth or affirming something is good or correct because many people think so.

An argument from authority is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority figure is used as evidence to support an argument.

References

  1. ↑ Curtis, G. N. "Emotional Appeal". Appeal to Hatred (AKA, Argumentum ad Odium)
  2. ↑ Labossiere, Michael C. (12 June 2014). "Fallacy: Guilt By Association". The Nizkor Project. Archived from the original on 4 October 2018. Retrieved 12 June 2014.
  3. ↑ Damer, T. Edward (21 February 2008). "6: Fallacies that Violate the Relevance Criterion". Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments (6th ed.). Cengage Learning. p. 112. ISBN   978-1-111-79919-9.
  4. 1 2 Collins, Loren (30 October 2012). Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation. Prometheus Books. pp. 27–28. ISBN   978-1-61614-635-1.
  5. ↑ Amsden, Brian. "Recognizing Microstructural Fallacies" (PDF). p. 22. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 July 2019. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  6. ↑ Gorski, David (28 March 2005). The Galileo Gambit. Archived from the original on 28 February 2018.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  7. ↑ Dear, I. C. B.; Kemp, Peter, eds. (2007-01-01). "Columbus, Christopher". The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199205684.001.0001/acref-9780199205684-e-633. ISBN   978-0-19-920568-4 . Retrieved 2024-11-17.
  8. ↑ Shapiro, Fred R. (2006). The Yale Book of Quotations . Yale University Press. pp.  660. ISBN   9780300107982.
  9. ↑ Sagan, Carl (1979). Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science . Random House. p.  64. ISBN   9780394501697.
  10. ↑ Johnson, David Kyle (2018-05-09), Arp, Robert; Barbone, Steven; Bruce, Michael (eds.), "Galileo Gambit", Bad Arguments (1 ed.), Wiley, pp. 152–156, doi:10.1002/9781119165811.ch27, ISBN   978-1-119-16578-1 , retrieved 2024-02-03

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