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Illicit minor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Illicit minor is a logical fallacy committed in a categorical syllogism that is invalid because its minor term is undistributed in the minor premise but distributed in the conclusion.
This fallacy has the following argument form:
- All A are B.
- All A are C.
- Therefore, all C are B.
Example:
- All cats are felines.
- All cats are mammals.
- Therefore, all mammals are felines.
The minor term here is mammal, which is not distributed in the minor premise "All cats are mammals," because this premise is only defining a property of possibly some mammals (i.e., that they're cats.) However, in the conclusion "All mammals are felines," mammal is distributed (it is talking about all mammals being felines). It is shown to be false by any mammal that is not a feline; for example, a dog.
| Argument from fallacy | Fallacy of modal logic | Masked man fallacy | Appeal to probability
|
|
|---|---|
| Fallacy of propositional logic: | |
| Affirming a disjunct | Affirming the consequent | Commutation of Conditionals Denying a conjunct | Denying the antecedent | Improper Transition |
|
| Fallacy of quantificational logic: | |
| Existential fallacy | Illicit Conversion | Quantifier shift | Unwarranted contrast | |
| Syllogistic fallacy: | |
| Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise | Negative conclusion from an affirmative premise Exclusive premisses | Necessity | Four-term Fallacy | Illicit major | Illicit minor | Undistributed middle |
|
| Other types of fallacy | |
- This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Philosophy, which is licensed under the GFDL.
