Association Fallacy

As Association fallacy ( English association fallacy , dt about. Fallacy of the Association ) is a kind of inductive fallacy called, in which a score or validity attribution is inadmissible transferred to a claim or thing, in the form of a false generalization or diversion of the actual issue. It is an argument ad hominem , which says nothing about the matter in question and which can also be used successfully in front of third parties ( Argumentum ad populum ).

shape

Association fallacy uses irrelevant associations and often emotional reasoning to assert or insinuate that the properties of one object or person are inherent in others . Two people or things should therefore have properties in common because they are somehow connected with each other or can be related. Two variants are Guilt by association (dt. Guilt through association ) and honor by association (dt. Honor through association ).

Research from the University of Leuven showed that test subjects treated two people similarly when they were connected by a separate event.

Guilt by association

Guilt by association aims at the rejection of a point of view by listing negative circumstances associated with the point of view and which relate to its origin or historical aspects. If the circumstances refer to the person of the opponent, there may also be deception ad hominem . Typically, the associated circumstances are secondary and have no evidential value with regard to the actual point of view. As a result, the reasoning is illogical, but sometimes convincing.

Arnold vander Nat from Loyola University Chicago cites as an example:

“When X argued that the tax he was proposing was fair to all residents of the community, he conveniently forgot to mention that the idea of the tax originally came from the local government official who, as we all know, was convicted of embezzlement last year. What do you think of the proposal now? "

The reasoning has the form:

	Proposition A is associated with Issue F.
	The audience disapproves of F.
So should apply	The audience disapproves of proposal A.

The Reductio ad Hitlerum is a special form when a term or technique is used during the Nazi era. Because of the emotional charge of NS comparisons, it also has a strong associative and distracting effect.

Honor through association

The argumentative reversal of guilt through association is honor through association , whereby the positive quality of a person or an object is transferred to other people or objects through other similarities.

A special form that is often used by people who question established scientific or historical points of view is the so-called Galileo Gambit . It is argued that Galileo Galilei also laughed at first in his time, but his statements were later confirmed. This suggests that their own statements are also correct. The reasoning is flawed because either there is no correlation at all between the truthfulness of one's own statements and the fact that they are not taken seriously, or the statistical average is rather negative.

Individual evidence

^ Thomas Bivins: Just The Facts 1o1: Public Relations Writing: The Essentials of Style an Format. Content Technologies, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4902-9370-7 .
^ ^A ^b John Mauk, John Metz: Inventing Arguments. Cengage Learning, 2016, p. 53.
↑ ^a ^b John Louis Lucaites, Isaac West, Chris Gilbert, Brian Amsden: Recognizing Micro Structural Fallacies in reasoning and Public Advocacy. Indiana University Bloomington , 2012.
↑ Jonathan Haber : Association Fallacy. In: Huffington Post. June 6, 2016.
^ ^A ^b Q. Ashton Acton (Ed.): Issues in Psychology and Psychiatry - Special Fields. Scholarly Editions, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4901-1064-6 , p. 97.
^ T. Edward Damer: Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments. Wadsworth, 2009, ISBN 978-0-495-09506-4 , p. 112.
↑ Stephanie J. Coopman, James Lull: Public Speaking: The Evolving Art. Cengage Learning, 2015, ISBN 978-1-285-43282-3 , p. 337.
↑ George W. Rainbolt, Sandra L. Dwyer: Critical Thinking: The Art of Argument. Cengage Learning, ISBN 978-1-285-19719-7 , pp. 82 f.
^ Arnold vander Nat: Guilt by Association fallacy. In: Simple Formal Logic with Common-Sense Symbolic Techniques. Routledge, 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-99745-4 , p. 298.
↑ Loren Collins: Bull Spotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation. Prometheus Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1-61614-634-4 .

[1] Thomas Bivins: Just The Facts 1o1: Public Relations Writing: The Essentials of Style an Format. Content Technologies, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4902-9370-7 .

[Mauk-2] A ^b John Mauk, John Metz: Inventing Arguments. Cengage Learning, 2016, p. 53.

[Lucaites-3] John Louis Lucaites, Isaac West, Chris Gilbert, Brian Amsden: Recognizing Micro Structural Fallacies in reasoning and Public Advocacy. Indiana University Bloomington , 2012.

[Huffpost-4] Jonathan Haber : Association Fallacy. In: Huffington Post. June 6, 2016.

[Acton-5] A ^b Q. Ashton Acton (Ed.): Issues in Psychology and Psychiatry - Special Fields. Scholarly Editions, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4901-1064-6 , p. 97.

[6] T. Edward Damer: Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments. Wadsworth, 2009, ISBN 978-0-495-09506-4 , p. 112.

[7] Stephanie J. Coopman, James Lull: Public Speaking: The Evolving Art. Cengage Learning, 2015, ISBN 978-1-285-43282-3 , p. 337.

[8] George W. Rainbolt, Sandra L. Dwyer: Critical Thinking: The Art of Argument. Cengage Learning, ISBN 978-1-285-19719-7 , pp. 82 f.

[9] Arnold vander Nat: Guilt by Association fallacy. In: Simple Formal Logic with Common-Sense Symbolic Techniques. Routledge, 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-99745-4 , p. 298.

[10] Loren Collins: Bull Spotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation. Prometheus Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1-61614-634-4 .