Thursday, October 18, 2012

The difference between the fallacies Post hoc and Hasty generalization



Hasty generalization and Post hoc are similar fallacies that may be caused as a result of little reasoning to back claims. But they also have significant difference, because Hasty generalization refers mainly to the inconclusiveness of the argument. This fallacy might arise from too small sample being used to get in to a conclusion that involves a big population. A good example is, “students A and B speak Spanish so every student in our campus speaks Spanish.” Post hoc on the other hand describes a fallacy that might be caused due to weak reasoning used to correlate two incidents. For instance two events happening one after the other might lead someone mistakenly conclude that the first caused the second, and this makes Post hoc different fallacy.

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