Association fallacy

From RationalWiki

“	This car weighs just under a thousand kilos. A Lotus Elise weighs in at just under a thousand kilos. That makes this car a Lotus Elise!	”
—Richard Hammond, Top Gear.

The association fallacy is an informal logical fallacy where someone will promote an opinion or philosophy by recounting the values a specific person or a group that held that opinion or philosophy. The Richard Hammond quote above may have been made in jest, to appeal to the stupidity of such associations, but it is an extremely common, and often easy fallacy to make.

This fallacy can be done in either a positive or negative (derogatory) way. In both cases, it is equally fallicious. This is best demonstrated by common examples.

Contents 1 Positive uses 2 Negative uses 3 See also 4 Footnotes

[edit] Positive uses

Positive association is called honor by association.

Example:

1. Martin Luther King was a Baptist.
2. King was a good person.
3. Therefore, Baptists are good.

In this case, the fallacy implies that the good things that people associate with Martin Luther King came from him being a Baptist. While this may, in part, be true, it is fallicious to state that all Baptists will be good, or that someone becoming a Baptist will become good.

[edit] Negative uses

Negative association is called guilt by association.

1. Stalin was an atheist.
2. Stalin had millions of people killed.
3. Therefore, atheism is evil.

With most negative uses of association fallacies, it relies on fear. In this case, many of the acts that Stalin made are inherently fearful, but it is doubtful whether he ordered them on account of his atheism^[1] or in the name communism. Even if this doubt wasn't present, to attribute the negative aspects of Stalin to these beliefs is fallicious as the beliefs themselves say nothing about mass murder. This is similar to how, in a post 9/11 world especially, moderate Muslims have been subject to unfortunate associations due to the acts of fundamentalists and Jihadists.

[edit] See also

• Godwin's Law

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ As Stalin clearly believed in himself, "atheist" may not exactly be the right term...

Articles about logical fallacies
Formal fallacies
Ad hominem	Argument by assertion	Negative proof	Non sequitur
Informal fallacies
Ad hoc	Argumentum ad nauseam	Argumentum ex culo	Argument from ignorance	Argument from incredulity	Balance fallacy
Begging the question	Correlation does not equal causation	Equivocation	False analogy	False dilemma	Moving the goalposts
No True Scotsman	One single proof
Red herrings
Argumentum ad baculum	Argumentum ad populum	Argument from adverse consequences	Association fallacy	Bullshit	Poisoning the well
My enemy's enemy	Spotlight fallacy	Straw man	Style over substance fallacy	Texas sharpshooter fallacy
Conditional fallacies
Argument from authority	Galileo gambit	Slippery slope
Fallacious argument styles
Chewbacca Defense	Gish Gallop	Ham Hightail	JAQing off