Description
A conceptual example:
- Person 1: "All things are either X or not X." (The correlatives: X–not X.)
- Person 2: "I define X such that all things that you claim are not X are included in X." (The suppressed correlative: not X.)
Alternatively Person 2 can redefine X in way that instead concludes all things are not X.
A simple example based on one by Alexander Bain:
- Person 1: "Things are either mysterious or not mysterious. Exactly when an earthquake will strike is still a mystery, but how blood circulates in the body is not."
- Person 2: "Everything is mysterious. There are still things to be learned about how blood circulates."
Regardless of whether Person 2's statement about blood circulation is true or not, the redefinition of "mysterious" is so broad that it omits significant contrast in the level of scientific understanding between earthquakes and blood circulation. Bain argues that if we hold the origin of the universe as equally mysterious against simple equations such as 3×4=12, it seems unimaginable what kind of concepts would be described as non-mysterious. Through redefinition "mysterious" has lost any useful meaning, he says.
The redefinition is not always so obvious. At first glance it might appear reasonable to define brakes as "a method to quickly stop a vehicle", however this permits all vehicles to be described as having brakes. Any car could be driven into a sturdy barrier to stop it, but to therefore say the car has brakes seems absurd.
This type of fallacy is often used in conjunction with one of the fallacies of definition. It is an informal fallacy.
Read more about this topic: Suppressed Correlative
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“An intentional object is given by a word or a phrase which gives a description under which.”
—Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)