Argument from incredulity explained

Argument from incredulity, also known as argument from personal incredulity, appeal to common sense, or the divine fallacy,[1] is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition must be false because it contradicts one's personal expectations or beliefs, or is difficult to imagine.

Arguments from incredulity can take the form:

  1. I cannot imagine how F could be true; therefore F must be false.
  2. I cannot imagine how F could be false; therefore F must be true.

Arguments from incredulity can sometimes arise from inappropriate emotional involvement, the conflation of fantasy and reality, a lack of understanding, or an instinctive 'gut' reaction, especially where time is scarce.[2] They are also frequently used to argue that something must be supernatural in origin or even the contrary.[3] This form of reasoning is fallacious because one's inability to imagine how a statement can be true or false gives no information about whether the statement is true or false in reality.[4]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Carroll. Robert T.. Robert Todd Carroll. The Skeptic's Dictionary. divine fallacy (argument from incredulity). 5 April 2013.
  2. Web site: Toolkit for Thinking. 2017-10-06. 2015-07-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20150705102956/http://www.toolkitforthinking.com/critical-thinking/anatomy-of-an-argument/denial-arguments/argument-from-personal-incredulity. dead.
  3. Book: Sen, Madhucchanda. An Introduction to Critical Thinking. Pearson Education India. 2011. 9788131734568. 2016-11-26.
  4. Web site: The Argument from Incredulity: How People Explain What They Don’t Understand – Effectiviology. en-US. 2019-08-10.