ARGUMENTUM AD ANTIQUUM / ARGUMENTUM AD ANTIQUITATEM

(APPEAL TO AGE)
The Latin for Appeal to Age is argumentum ad antiquitatem.
The Appeal to Age fallacy goes in the opposite direction from the Appeal to
Novelty fallacy by arguing that when something is old, then this somehow enhances the
value or truth of the proposition in question (https://www.thoughtco.com/appeal-to-age-
fallacy-250345).
Examples of the Appeal to Age Fallacy
One common use of an Appeal to Age fallacy is when trying to justify something which
can't be defended on actual merits, like, for example, discrimination or bigotry:
1. It's standard practice to pay men more than women so we'll continue adhering to
the same standards this company has always followed.
2. Dog fighting is a sport that's been around for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Our ancestors enjoyed it and it has become part of our heritage.
3. My mother always put sage in the turkey stuffing so I do it too.
Alternative Names:

 argumentum ad antiquitatem
 Appeal to Tradition
 Appeal to Custom
 Appeal to Common Practice
 ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM
(APPEAL TO INAPPROPRIATE AUTHORITY)

An appeal to the testimony of an authority outside the authority's special field of

expertise.
AD VERECUNDIAM as the name of a fallacy, historically those phrases were
mainly used to describe appealing to any authority's judgment, relevant or otherwise, for
use as evidence in an argument. These terms were not initially used specifically to
denote the fallacy of appealing to evidence provided by an irrelevant or ill-suited
authority.
You appeal to authority if you back up your reasoning by saying that it is
supported by what some authority says on the subject. Most reasoning of this kind is not
fallacious, and much of our knowledge properly comes from listening to authorities.
However, appealing to authority as a reason to believe something is fallacious
whenever the authority appealed to is not really an authority in this particular subject,
when the authority cannot be trusted to tell the truth, when authorities disagree on this
subject (except for the occasional lone wolf), when the reasoner misquotes the
authority, and so forth. Although spotting a fallacious appeal to authority often requires
some background knowledge about the subject or the authority, in brief it can be said
that it is fallacious to accept the words of a supposed authority when we should be
suspicious of the authority’s words.
Example:
The moon is covered with dust because the president of our neighborhood association
said so.
This is a Fallacious Appeal to Authority because, although the president is an
authority on many neighborhood matters, you are given no reason to believe the
president is an authority on the composition of the moon. It would be better to appeal to
some astronomer or geologist. A TV commercial that gives you a testimonial from a
famous film star who wears a Wilson watch and that suggests you, too, should wear
that brand of watch is using a fallacious appeal to authority. The film star is an authority
on how to act, not on which watch is best for you.
 FALLACY OF ACCIDENT
We often arrive at a generalization but don’t or can’t list all the exceptions. When
we then reason with the generalization as if it has no exceptions, our reasoning contains
the Fallacy of Accident. This fallacy is sometimes called the “Fallacy of Sweeping
Generalization.”
Example:
People should keep their promises, right? I loaned Dwayne my knife, and he said he’d
return it. Now he is refusing to give it back, but I need it right now to slash up my
neighbors who disrespected me.
People should keep their promises, but there are exceptions to this generalization as in
this case of the psychopath who wants Dwayne to keep his promise to return the knife.
(https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#Accident)

I.  Accident: the fallacy of applying a general rule to a particular case whose

special circumstances render the rule inapplicable.
A. The fallacy of accident results from using a statement which has a qualified
meaning as if it had no qualification whatsoever.
1. E.g., "Thou shalt not kill; therefore, you should not try to control termites in
your home or fight for your country."
2. E.g., "All persons are created equal, so since you made a C in this class,
you haven't been working as hard as you should."
Even though people are supposedly created equal politically, it does not
follow that they are created equal in academic pursuits."
B. The fallacy of accident arises from believing the general premiss which has a
qualified meaning applies in all circumstances without restriction.
1. "The U.S. is a true democracy; therefore, children and criminals should be
allowed to vote."
2. "People are defined as rational animals.  Therefore, you should spend
more time reasoning and thinking rather than enjoying yourself with what
you do."
C. Recognition of this fallacy sometimes leads to the statement, "It is the exception
that proves the rule."
D. The generalization used in the premise is sometimes termed "a glittering
generality."
II. The informal structure of accident is as follows.

Rule or general statement p  is true in circumstances x.

Rule or general statement is true in circumstances y.

III.  The rule or general statement in the fallacy of accident can be of several different
kinds.
A. Aphorism: a concise statement of a truth, a maxim, or an adage. E.g., "Honesty
is the best policy," or "A new broom sweeps clean."
B. Cliché: a trite or overworked expression. E.g., "No pain, no gain," or "Go for it!"
C. Moral principles, empirical generalizations, and presuppositions are also
generalizations often used as premises in the fallacy of accident.
(https://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/accident.html)
 HASTY GENERALIZATION
(CONVERSE ACCIDENT)
A Hasty Generalization is a Fallacy of Jumping to Conclusions in which the
conclusion is a generalization.
Example:
I’ve met two people in Nicaragua so far, and they were both nice to me. So, all people I
will meet in Nicaragua will be nice to me.
In any Hasty Generalization the key error is to overestimate the strength of an argument
that is based on too small a sample for the implied confidence level or error margin. In
this argument about Nicaragua, using the word “all” in the conclusion implies zero error
margin. With zero error margin you’d need to sample every single person in Nicaragua,
not just two people.
Converse Accident
If we reason by paying too much attention to exceptions to the rule, and
generalize on the exceptions, our reasoning contains this fallacy. This fallacy is the
converse of the Accident Fallacy. It is a kind of Hasty Generalization, by generalizing
too quickly from a peculiar case.
Example:
I’ve heard that turtles live longer than tarantulas, but the one turtle I bought lived only
two days. I bought it at Dowden’s Pet Store. So, I think that turtles bought from pet
stores do not live longer than tarantulas.
The original generalization is “Turtles live longer than tarantulas.” There are exceptions,
such as the turtle bought from the pet store. Rather than seeing this for what it is,
namely an exception, the reasoner places too much trust in this exception and
generalizes on it to produce the faulty generalization that turtles bought from pet stores
do not live longer than tarantulas
(https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#HastyGeneralization).
 ARGUMENTUM AD IGNORANTIAM
The Fallacy of Appeal to Ignorance comes in two forms: (1) Not knowing that a
certain statement is true is taken to be a proof that it is false. (2) Not knowing that a
statement is false is taken to be a proof that it is true. The fallacy occurs in cases where
absence of evidence is not good enough evidence of absence. The fallacy uses an
unjustified attempt to shift the burden of proof. The fallacy is also called “Argument from
Ignorance.”
Example:
Nobody has ever proved to me there’s a God, so I know there is no God.
This kind of reasoning is generally fallacious. It would be proper reasoning only if the
proof attempts were quite thorough, and it were the case that, if the being or object were
to exist, then there would be a discoverable proof of this. Another common example of
the fallacy involves ignorance of a future event: You people have been complaining
about the danger of Xs ever since they were invented, but there’s never been any big
problem with Xs, so there’s nothing to worry about
(https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#AppealtoIgnorance).

FALSE DILEMMA
A reasoner who unfairly presents too few choices and then implies that a choice
must be made among this short menu of choices is using the False Dilemma Fallacy, as
does the person who accepts this faulty reasoning.
Example:
A pollster asks you this question about your job: “Would you say your employer is drunk
on the job about (a) once a week, (b) twice a week, or (c) more times per week?
The pollster is committing the fallacy by limiting you to only those choices. What
about the choice of “no times per week”? Think of the unpleasant choices as being the
horns of a bull that is charging toward you. By demanding other choices beyond those
on the unfairly limited menu, you thereby “go between the horns” of the dilemma, and
are not gored. The fallacy is called the “False Dichotomy Fallacy” or the “Black-or-
White” Fallacy when the unfair menu contains only two choices, and thus two horns.
(https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#FalseDilemma)