Appeal to consequences - Wikipedia
Jump to content
Search
Search
Donate
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Donate
Create account
Log in
Appeal to consequences
25 languages
العربية<br>Български<br>Brezhoneg<br>Català<br>Ελληνικά<br>Español<br>Euskara<br>فارسی<br>Suomi<br>Français<br>עברית<br>Magyar<br>Italiano<br>日本語<br>한국어<br>Lietuvių<br>Norsk bokmål<br>Pälzisch<br>Polski<br>Português<br>Русский<br>ไทย<br>Українська<br>Tiếng Việt<br>中文
Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Logical fallacy
This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.<br>Find sources: "Appeal to consequences" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Appeal to consequences , also known as argumentum ad consequentiam (Latin for "argument to the consequence"), is an argument that concludes a hypothesis (typically a belief) to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences.[1] This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a type of informal fallacy, since the desirability of a premise's consequence does not make the premise true. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view.
In logic, appeal to consequences refers only to arguments that assert a conclusion's truth value (true or false) without regard to the formal preservation of the truth from the premises; appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's consequential desirability (good or bad, or right or wrong) instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is valid in long-term decision making (which discusses possibilities that do not exist yet in the present) and abstract ethics, and in fact such arguments are the cornerstones of many moral theories, particularly related to consequentialism. Appeal to consequences also should not be confused with argumentum ad baculum, which is the bringing up of 'artificial' consequences (i.e. punishments) to argue that an action is wrong.
General form<br>[edit]
An argument based on appeal to consequences generally has one of two forms:[2]
Positive form<br>[edit]
If P, then Q will occur.<br>Q is desirable.<br>Therefore, P is true.<br>It is closely related to wishful thinking in its construction.
Examples<br>"Real estate markets will continue to rise this year: home owners enjoy the capital gains."
"Humans will travel faster than light: faster-than-light travel would be beneficial for space travel."
Negative form<br>[edit]
If P, then Q will occur.<br>Q is undesirable.<br>Therefore, P is false.<br>Appeal to force (argumentum ad baculum) is a special instance of this form.
This form somewhat resembles modus tollens but is both different and fallacious, since "Q is undesirable" is not equivalent to "Q is false".
Example<br>"If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further." Lord Denning in his judgment on the Birmingham Six.
In law<br>[edit]
In law, an argument from inconvenience or argumentum ab inconvenienti, is a valid type of appeal to consequences. Such an argument would seek to show that a proposed action would have unreasonably inconvenient consequences, as for example a law that would require a person wishing to lend money against a security to first ascertain the borrower's title to the property by inquiring in every single courthouse in the country.[citation needed]
See also<br>[edit]
Affirming the consequent
Appeal to fear
Appeal to worse problems
Argumentum ad hominem – circumstantial form
Pascal's wager
The Rhetoric of Reaction
Utilitarianism
Notes<br>[edit]
^ "Fallacy: Appeal to Consequences of a Belief". www.nizkor.org. Archived from the original on 2019-12-22. Retrieved 2016-10-29.
^ "Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Consequences". fallacyfiles.org. Archived from the original on 2022-02-13. Retrieved 2022-02-23.
Common fallacies (list)<br>Formal<br>In propositional logic<br>Affirming a disjunct
Affirming the consequent
Conflation
Denying the antecedent
Argument from fallacy
Masked man
Mathematical fallacy
In quantificational logic<br>Existential
Illicit conversion
Proof by example
Quantifier shift
Syllogistic fallacy<br>Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise
Negative conclusion from affirmative premises
Exclusive premises
Existential
Necessity
Four terms
Illicit major
Illicit minor
Undistributed middle
Informal<br>Equivocation<br>Equivocation
False equivalence
False attribution
Moral equivalence
Conflation
Quoting out of context
Loki's Wager
No true Scotsman
Semantic...