Illicit minor is a formal fallacy committed in a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its minor term is undistributed in the minor premise but distributed in the conclusion.
This fallacy has the following argument form:
- All A are B.
- All A are C.
- Therefore, all C are B.
Example:
- All cats are felines.
- All cats are mammals.
- Therefore, all mammals are felines.
The minor term here is mammal, which is not distributed in the minor premise "All cats are mammals," because this premise is only defining a property of possibly some mammals (i.e., that they're cats.) However, in the conclusion "All mammals are felines," mammal is distributed (it is talking about all mammals being felines). It is shown to be false by any mammal that is not a feline; for example, a dog.
Example:
- Pie is good.
- Pie is unhealthy.
- Thus, all good things are unhealthy.
Famous quotes containing the words illicit and/or minor:
“The anger
that my friends
planted in my heart
when they somehow found
a hole in it
ran off
like an illicit lover
as soon as I saw my man.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)