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Notes on Logic:

Informal, Deductive, and Inductive

Conditional Statements Not Fallacies

Monday, 26. June 2006, 13:56:53

Wikipedia, the normally exceptionally good free online encyclopedia, is still under development in many areas, including logic.

The following example is given for the fallacy of hasty generalization or Converse Accident. (Normally, "Converse Accident" is not capitalized, but I have adopted the practice so that persons unfamiliar with the fallacy do not mistake the name for a descriptive phrase.) The entry is ...

If we allow people with glaucoma to use medical marijuana
then everyone should be allowed to use marijuana.

"Converse Accident," Wikipedia (May 26, 2006) URL=<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Converse_accident>.

Arguments need at least one premise and one conclusion, but in this example only one conditional statement is present. The antecedent of the conditional (the first part, "(If) we allow people with glaucoma to use medical marijuana") is not stated or positively declared to be true, unlike a premise in an argument; nor is the consequent of the conditional (the second part, "(then) everyone should be allowed to use marijuana") stated or positively declared to be true, unlike a conclusion in an argument. The claim is simply that the consequent is in some way dependent upon the antecedent.

So conditional statements or, as they are sometimes termed, hypothetical statements are not explicitly arguments, but, as the Wikipedia entry might be more charitably be interpreted, conditional statements are sometimes used to summarize arguments.

Exaggeration and False GeneralityAd Hominem and Insults

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