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Illicit Transference
A fallacy of illicit transference is an informal fallacy occurring when an argument assumes there is no difference between a term in the ''distributive'' (referring to every member of a class) and ''collective'' (referring to the class itself as a whole) sense. There are two variations of this fallacy: * Fallacy of composition – assumes what is true of the parts is true of the whole. This fallacy is also known as "arguing from the specific to the general." :''Since Judy is so diligent in the workplace, this entire company must have an amazing work ethic.'' * Fallacy of division – assumes what is true of the whole is true of its parts (or some subset of parts). :''Because this company is so corrupt, so must every employee within it be corrupt.'' While fallacious, arguments that make these assumptions may be persuasive because of the representativeness heuristic. See also * Ecological fallacy * Existential fallacy * Fallacy of the undistributed middle * Ontogeny recapitulates p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Informal Fallacy
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. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the fallacies of composition and division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into categories. One approach sometimes found in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fallacy Of Composition
The fallacy of composition is an informal fallacy that arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. A trivial example might be: "This tire is made of rubber, therefore the vehicle of which it is a part is also made of rubber." This is fallacious, because vehicles are made with a variety of parts, most of which are not made of rubber. The fallacy of composition can apply even when a fact is true of every proper part of a greater entity, though. A more complicated example might be: "No atoms are alive. Therefore, nothing made of atoms is alive." This is a statement most people would consider incorrect, due to emergence, where the whole possesses properties not present in any of the parts. This fallacy is related to the fallacy of hasty generalization, in which an unwarranted inference is made from a statement about a sample to a statement about the population from which it is drawn. The fallacy of compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fallacy Of Division
A fallacy of division is an informal fallacy that occurs when one reasons that something that is true for a whole must also be true of all or some of its parts. An example: # The second grade in Jefferson Elementary eats a lot of ice cream # Carlos is a second-grader in Jefferson Elementary # Therefore, Carlos eats a lot of ice cream The converse of this fallacy is called fallacy of composition, which arises when one fallaciously attributes a property of some part of a thing to the thing as a whole. If a system as a whole has some property that none of its constituents has (or perhaps, it has it but not as a ''result'' of some constituent's having that property), this is sometimes called an '' emergent'' property of the system. The term ''mereological fallacy'' refers to approximately the same incorrect inference that properties of a whole are also properties of its parts. History Both the fallacy of division and the fallacy of composition were addressed by Aristotle in '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Representativeness Heuristic
The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty. It is one of a group of heuristics (simple rules governing judgment or decision-making) proposed by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1970s as "the degree to which n event(i) is similar in essential characteristics to its parent population, and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated". Heuristics are described as "judgmental shortcuts that generally get us where we need to go – and quickly – but at the cost of occasionally sending us off course." Heuristics are useful because they use effort-reduction and simplification in decision-making. When people rely on representativeness to make judgments, they are likely to judge wrongly because the fact that something is more representative does not actually make it more likely. The representativeness heuristic is simply described as assessing similarity of ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecological Fallacy
An ecological fallacy (also ecological ''inference'' fallacy or population fallacy) is a formal fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data that occurs when inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inferences about the group to which those individuals belong. "Ecological fallacy" is a term that is sometimes used to describe the fallacy of division, which is not a statistical fallacy. The four common statistical ecological fallacies are: confusion between ecological correlations and individual correlations, confusion between group average and total average, Simpson's paradox, and confusion between higher average and higher likelihood. Examples Mean and median An example of ecological fallacy is the assumption that a population mean has a simple interpretation when considering likelihoods for an individual. For instance, if the mean score of a group is larger than zero, this does not imply that a random individual of that group is more likely to have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Existential Fallacy
The existential fallacy, or existential instantiation, is a formal fallacy. In the existential fallacy, one presupposes that a class has members when one is not supposed to do so; i.e., when one should not assume existential import. Not to be confused with the 'Affirming the consequent', which states "A causes B; B, therefore A". One example would be: "''Every unicorn has a horn on its forehead''". It does not imply that there are any unicorns at all in the world, and thus it cannot be assumed that, if the statement were true, somewhere there is a unicorn in the world (with a horn on its forehead). The statement, if assumed true, implies only that if there were any unicorns, each would definitely have a horn on its forehead. Overview An existential fallacy is committed in a medieval categorical syllogism because it has two universal premises and a particular conclusion with no assumption that at least one member of the class exists, an assumption which is not established by the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fallacy Of The Undistributed Middle
The fallacy of the undistributed middle () is a formal fallacy that is committed when the middle term in a categorical syllogism is not distributed in either the minor premise or the major premise. It is thus a syllogistic fallacy. Classical formulation In classical syllogisms, all statements consist of two terms and are in the form of "A" (all), "E" (none), "I" (some), or "O" (some not). The first term is distributed in A statements; the second is distributed in O statements; both are distributed in "E" statements, and none are distributed in I statements. The fallacy of the undistributed middle occurs when the term that links the two premises is never distributed. In this example, distribution is marked in boldface: # All Z is B # All Y is B # Therefore, all Y is Z B is the common term between the two premises (the middle term) but is never distributed, so this syllogism is invalid. B would be distributed by introducing a premise which states either All B is Z, or Some B is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the study of the entirety of an organism's lifespan. Ontogeny is the developmental history of an organism within its own lifetime, as distinct from phylogeny, which refers to the evolutionary history of a species. Another way to think of ontogeny is that it is the process of an organism going through all of the developmental stages over its lifetime. The developmental history includes all the developmental events that occur during the existence of an organism, beginning with the changes in the egg at the time of fertilization and events from the time of birth or hatching and afterward (i.e., growth, remolding of body shape, development of secondary sexual characteristics, etc.). While developmental (i.e., ontogenetic) processes can influence sub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
