Affirming the consequent
Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark,") and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken,") even though the converse may not be true. This arises when a consequent ("the room would be dark") has one or more other antecedents (for example, "the lamp is not plugged in" or "the lamp is in working order, but is switched off"). Converse errors are common in everyday thinking and communication and can result from, among other causes, communication issues, misconceptions about logic, and failure to consider other causes.
Words
This table shows the example usage of word lists for keywords extraction from the text above.
Word | Word Frequency | Number of Articles | Relevance |
---|---|---|---|
converse | 6 | 787 | 0.377 |
consequent | 4 | 629 | 0.258 |
lamp | 4 | 1427 | 0.235 |
affirming | 3 | 318 | 0.208 |
fallacy | 3 | 337 | 0.207 |