Argumentum ad ignorantiam
The argumentum ad ignorantiam ( Latin for " argument that appeals to ignorance") is a logical fallacy in which a thesis is declared wrong simply because it has not yet been proven, or, conversely, a thesis is declared correct, simply because it has not yet been refuted. The fallacy is drawn without any factual arguments. The person making the argument sees his lack of imagination or his ignorance as sufficient to refute or confirm a thesis.
A modification of this is the “argument from personal disbelief”: The fact that a thesis appears subjectively to be unbelievable or improbable is seen as a sufficient condition for rejecting a thesis, in the place of which another, subjectively preferred one is set as applicable.
The basic scheme is: the lack of evidence for an assertion is taken as evidence that another assertion is instead true, or, alternatively, a personal bias is assumed as evidence or refutation. This is not a valid conclusion in the sense of formal logic .
The argument from ignorance or the argument from personal disbelief must not be confused with the reductio ad absurdum , which is a valid method in which a logical contradiction is used to refute a thesis.
example
An example of how a thesis is supported by the lack of refutation is Kent Hovind's bet against the theory of evolution, in which he promises $ 250,000 to anyone who can prove that God was not involved in the creation of life. Refuting statements of this kind is, however, in principle impossible.
To parody this bet, followers of the religious parody Flying Spaghetti Monster held a similar bet in which they offered a million dollars for empirical evidence that Jesus was not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Similar to Hovind's bet, it is absolutely impossible to prove to the contrary and win the bet.
Web links
- Douglas Walton: The Appeal to Ignorance, or Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam (PDF, English, 90 kB)