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' fallaciesRead more about this topic: Argument From Fallacy
Famous quotes containing the word form:
“Being cultured is the least expensive form of respectability.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Touch me not.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in John, 20:17.
Spoken to Mary Magdalene, after Jesus has risen from the dead and made himself known to her. The words are best known in the Latin form in which they appear in the Vulgate: Noli me tangere.
“I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attachd to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native western form of manliness.”
—Walt Whitman (18191892)