Monday, September 15, 2014

Fallacies: Post Hoc (false cause)

What is a fallacy? A fallacy is a statement in your writing that do not help you to make a claim, but rather weakens it and gives you less credibility. 

I came across an article in, In Touch magazine at the store. It was about the famous Jennifer Aniston being pregnant. 

I flipped inside the magazine to read the article. As I was reading it caught my attention that she stated, "Maybe I was not able to conceive before because it was not meant to be" (Intouch Sept. 2014). 

This brought to my attention the fallacy of false cause. What is false cause? "Assuming that because B comes after A, A cause B. 

Therefore concluding because Jennifer Aniston was not able to get pregnant and trying for a long time, it was not meant to be, because she is now pregnant at age 45. This shows how the fallacy is exemplified using the magazine article I came across. 

This argument gives her no credibility because it is an assumption of why it happened.  Although, the idea sounds very reasonable to a person with the belief in why things happen, it is still an assumption. The article is speaking about her being pregnant and she "distorts the issue" by going off and speaking about why it didn't initially happen sooner.


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