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A false dichotomy is an informal fallacy consisting of a supposed dichotomy which fails one or both of the conditions: it is not jointly exhaustive and/or not mutually exclusive. In its most common form, two entities are presented as if they are exhaustive, when in fact other alternatives are possible.
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For example, oxygen is necessary for fire. But one cannot assume that everywhere there is oxygen, there is fire. A condition X is sufficient for Y if X, by itself, is enough to bring about Y. For example, riding the bus is a sufficient mode of transportation to get to work.
An example is a probabilistically valid instance of the formally invalid argument form of denying the antecedent or affirming the consequent. [ 12 ] Thus, "fallacious arguments usually have the deceptive appearance of being good arguments, [ 13 ] because for most fallacious instances of an argument form, a similar but non-fallacious instance ...
Zeno's arguments may then be early examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum, also known as proof by contradiction. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one."
An example of binary opposition is the male-female dichotomy. A post-structuralist view is that male can be seen, according to traditional thought, as dominant over female because male is the presence of a phallus, while the vagina is an absence or loss. John Searle has suggested that the concept of binary oppositions—as taught and practiced ...
A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise.
Other examples include Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) and Samuel Butler's Erewhon (1872), which uses an anagram of "nowhere" as its title. [2] [5] This, like much of utopian literature, can be seen as satire; Butler inverts illness and crime, with punishment for the former and treatment for the latter. [5]