Animistic fallacy

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The animistic fallacy is the informal fallacy of arguing that an event or situation necessarily arose because someone intentionally acted to cause it.[1] While it could be that someone set out to effect a specific goal, the fallacy appears in an argument that states this must be the case.[1] The name of the fallacy comes from the animistic belief that changes in the physical world are the work of conscious spirits.[citation needed]

## Examples[edit]

Thomas Sowell in his book Knowledge and Decisions (1980) presents several arguments as examples of the animistic fallacy:[1]

* that people earn wealth always because of superior choices
* that central planning is necessary to prevent chaos in society

Sowell repeatedly dismisses the necessity that order comes from design, and notes that fallacious animistic arguments tend to provide explanations that require comparatively little time to implement. In this light he contrasts the six-day creation of the world described in the Bible to the development of life over billions of years described by evolution.

## See also[edit]

* Anthropomorphism
* Argument from ignorance
* Pathetic fallacy
* Reification (fallacy)
* Resistentialism
* Teleological argument

## References[edit]

1. ^ a b c Sowell, Thomas (1996). Knowledge and decisions (3rd ed.). Basic Books. pp. 97–100. ISBN 978-0-465-03738-4.

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Common fallacies (list)

Formal|

| In propositional logic|

* Affirming a disjunct
* Affirming the consequent
* Denying the antecedent
* Argument from fallacy
* Masked man
* Mathematical fallacy

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In quantificational logic|

* Existential
* Illicit conversion
* Proof by example
* Quantifier shift

Syllogistic fallacy|

* Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise
* Negative conclusion from affirmative premises
* Exclusive premises
* Existential
* Necessity
* Four terms
* Illicit major
* Illicit minor
* Undistributed middle

Informal|

| Equivocation|

* Equivocation
* False equivalence
* False attribution
* Quoting out of context
* Loki's Wager
* No true Scotsman
* Reification

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Question-begging|

* Circular reasoning / Begging the question
* Loaded language
* Leading question
* Compound question / Loaded question / Complex question
* No true Scotsman

Correlative-based|

* False dilemma
* Perfect solution
* Denying the correlative
* Suppressed correlative

Illicit transference|

* Composition
* Division
* Ecological

Secundum quid|

* Accident
* Converse accident

Faulty generalization|

* Anecdotal evidence
* Sampling bias
* Cherry picking
* McNamara
* Base rate / Conjunction
* Double counting
* False analogy
* Slothful induction
* Overwhelming exception

Ambiguity|

* Accent
* False precision
* Moving the goalposts
* Quoting out of context
* Slippery slope
* Sorites paradox
* Syntactic ambiguity

Questionable cause|

* Animistic
* Furtive
* Correlation implies causation
* Cum hoc
* Post hoc
* Gambler's
* Inverse
* Regression
* Single cause
* Slippery slope
* Texas sharpshooter

Appeals|

* Law/Legality
* Stone / Proof by assertion

| Consequences|

* Argumentum ad baculum
* Wishful thinking

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Emotion|

* Children
* Fear
* Flattery
* Novelty
* Pity
* Ridicule
* In-group favoritism
* Invented here / Not invented here
* Island mentality
* Loyalty
* Parade of horribles
* Spite
* Stirring symbols
* Wisdom of repugnance

Genetic fallacy|

| Ad hominem|

* Appeal to motive
* Association
* Reductio ad Hitlerum
* Godwin's law
* Reductio ad Stalinum
* Bulverism
* Poisoning the well
* Tone
* Tu quoque
* Whataboutism

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* Authority
* Accomplishment
* Ipse dixit
* Poverty / Wealth
* Etymology
* Nature
* Tradition / Novelty
* Chronological snobbery

Other fallacies
of relevance|

| Arguments|

* Ad nauseam
* Sealioning
* Argument from anecdote
* Argument from silence
* Argument to moderation
* Argumentum ad populum

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* Cliché
* I'm entitled to my opinion
* Ignoratio elenchi
* Invincible ignorance
* Moralistic / Naturalistic
* Motte-and-bailey fallacy
* Rationalization
* Red herring
* Two wrongs make a right
* Special pleading
* Straw man

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