Irrelevant conclusion

Overview

Ignoratio elenchi is one of the fallacies identified by Aristotle in his Organon. In a broader sense he asserted that all fallacies are a form of ignoratio elenchi.

Samuel Johnson's unique "refutation" of Bishop Berkeley's immaterialism, his claim that matter did not actually exist but only seemed to exist, has been described as ignoratio elenchi: during a conversation with Boswell, Johnson powerfully kicked a nearby stone and proclaimed of Berkeley's theory, "I refute it thus!" (See also argumentum ad lapidem.)

A related concept is that of the red herring, which is a deliberate attempt to divert a process of enquiry by changing the subject. Ignoratio elenchi is sometimes confused with straw man argument.

Etymology

The phrase ignoratio elenchi is . Here elenchi is the genitive singular of the Latin noun elenchus, which is . The translation in English of the Latin expression has varied somewhat. Hamblin proposed "misconception of refutation" or "ignorance of refutation" as a literal translation, John Arthur Oesterle preferred "ignoring the issue", and Irving Copi, Christopher Tindale and others used "irrelevant conclusion".

References

Works cited

References

1. Bishop Whately, cited by [[John Stuart Mill]]: ''A System of Logic''. London Colchester 1959 (first: 1843), pp. 542.
2. Aristotle. (1878). "The Organon, or Logical treatises, of Aristotle". George Bell and Sons.
3. (24 September 2009). "Ignoratio Elenchi". Introduction to Logic.
4. Davies, Arthur Ernest. (1915). "A Text-Book of Logic". R. G. Adams and company.
5. {{Harvnb. Bate. 1977
6. Bagnall, Nicholas. ''Books: Paperbacks'', [[The Sunday Telegraph]] 3 March 1996
7. {{Harvnb. Boswell. 1986
8. Patrick J. Hurley. (2011). "A Concise Introduction to Logic". Cengage Learning.
9. [[Henry Liddell. "A Greek-English Lexicon".
10. [[Charles Leonard Hamblin]]. (1970). "Fallacies". [[Methuen Publishing.
11. Christopher W. Tindale. (2007). "Fallacies and Argument Appraisal". Cambridge University Press.