Fallacy Of Division

The fallacy of division is a logical error in which one claims that the parts of a whole must have the same characteristics as the whole. An example of this would be to claim that because a team is undefeated, each of the members of the team must be unbeatable individually.

In economics, if one sector of the economy is doing well it does not follow that each company in that sector is doing well; to claim otherwise would be a fallacy of division.

If all the parts of a whole must share in a property in order for the whole to have that property, then it is not a fallacy to note that any individual part has that same property as the whole. As an example, if all of the parts of an object must be invisible for the object as a whole to be invisible, one can assume that a part of an invisible object is itself invisible.

The opposite of the fallacy of division is the fallacy of composition.