Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, is a formal fallacy, committed by reasoning in the form:
- If P, then Q.
- Q.
- Therefore, P.
An argument of this form is invalid, i.e., the conclusion can be false even when statements 1 and 2 are true. Since P was never asserted as the only sufficient condition for Q, other factors could account for Q (while P was false).
The name affirming the consequent derives from the premise Q, which affirms the "then" clause of the conditional premise.
Read more about Affirming The Consequent: Examples
Famous quotes containing the words affirming the, affirming and/or consequent:
“A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of “spirit” over matter.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“In the first place, all books that get fairly into the vital air of the world were written by the successful class, by the affirming and advancing class, who utter what tens of thousands feel though they cannot say.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One of the many to whom, from straightened circumstances, a consequent inability to form the associations they would wish, and a disinclination to mix with the society they could obtain, London is as complete a solitude as the plains of Syria.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)