Jump to content

Questionable cause

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Confusing cause and effect)

The questionable cause—also known as causal fallacy, false cause, or non causa pro causa ("non-cause for cause" in Latin)—is a category of informal fallacies in which the cause or causes is/are incorrectly identified. In other words, it is a fallacy of reaching a conclusion that one thing caused another, simply because they are regularly associated.

Questionable cause can be logically reduced to: "A is regularly associated with B; therefore, A causes B."[1]

For example: "Every time I score an A on the test its a sunny day. Therefore the sunny day causes me to score well on the test." Here is the example the two events may coincide or correlate, but have no causal connection.[2]

Fallacies of questionable cause include:

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Questionable Cause".
  2. ^ Bennett, Bo. "Questionable Cause". logicallyfallacious.com. Retrieved 2016-11-23.
[edit]