Converse Accident
Steven Barbone
We applaud Gov. Fallin in her efforts to stop the influx of Syrian refugees into the United States and into the state of Oklahoma.
State representative Casey Murdock
The fallacy of converse accident (CA) occurs in much the same way as the fallacy of hasty generalization (see Chapter 84).
Not unlike its other related fallacy, accident (see Chapter 67), which applies a general principle to a particular case to which it does not apply, CA instead generalizes over some cases, or even over one particular case, to make a more sweeping conclusion. This fallacious way of thinking is especially noxious since it often grounds racist, sexist, or other prejudiced beliefs. For example, soon after the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2016, it was revealed that one of the attackers had a Syrian passport. Based on this one particular case, many governors in the United States announced that they would try to block any Syrian refugees from settling in their states. These governors are guilty of CA. Note: it may be true that some Syrian refugees are dangerous terrorists, but it is unlikely that all or even most are dangerous terrorists. These governors have generalized fallaciously from one particular case to many cases.Converse Accident 331
CA is an informal fallacy, but we can still present it in a general form:
(1) There is one p that is an example of Q.
(2) Therefore all p’s are Q’s.
It should be obvious to most readers how to detect or to avoid this fallacy. Thinking of any counter-example will usually suffice to reveal this fallacy’s error. Can you imagine or discover one p that is not a Q? If so, the fallacy is revealed. A good critical thinker, then, examines sweeping claims and tests them with counter-examples.
Here’s a test to show how disproving a CA works. Let’s agree that this fallacy is boring and not very exciting to read about. From this alone, we might conclude that all other fallacies covered in this book are boring and not very exciting to read about. It’s up to the reader to discover whether this is an example of the fallacious reasoning that is converse accident.