Argument From Fallacy - Form

Form

It has the general argument form:

If P, then Q.
P is a fallacious argument.
Therefore, Q is false.

Thus, it is a special case of denying the antecedent where the antecedent, rather than being a proposition that is false, is an entire argument that is fallacious. A fallacious argument, just as with a false antecedent, can still have a consequent that happens to be true. The fallacy is in concluding the consequent of a fallacious argument has to be false.

That the argument is fallacious only means that the argument cannot succeed in proving its consequent. But showing how one argument in a complex thesis is fallaciously reasoned does not necessarily invalidate the proof; the complete proof could still logically imply its conclusion if that conclusion is not dependent on the fallacy:

All great historical and philosophical arguments have probably been fallacious in some respect... If the argument is a single chain, and one link fails, the chain itself fails with it. But most historians' arguments are not single chains. They are rather like a kind of chain mail which can fail in some part and still retain its shape and function. —David Hackett Fischer, Historians' fallacies

Read more about this topic:  Argument From Fallacy

Famous quotes containing the word form:

    Since you saw no form when the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves, in the form of any figure -the likeness of male or female...
    Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 4:15,16.

    Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.
    Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)

    The door is opening. A man you have never seen enters the room.
    He tells you that it is time to go, but that you may stay,
    If you wish. You reply that it is one and the same to you.
    It was only later, after the house had materialized elsewhere,
    That you remembered you forgot to ask him what form the change would take.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)