Irrelevant conclusion

An irrelevant conclusion,Bishop Whately, cited by John Stuart Mill: A System of Logic. London Colchester 1959 (first: 1843), pp. 542. also known as and under other names, is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument whose conclusion fails to address the issue in question. It falls into the broad class of relevance fallacies.

The irrelevant conclusion should not be confused with formal fallacy, an argument whose conclusion does not follow from its premises; instead, it is that despite its formal consistency it is not relevant to the subject being talked about.

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:Bagnall, Nicholas. Books: Paperbacks, The Sunday Telegraph 3 March 1996 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", while Irving Copi, Christopher Tindale and others used "irrelevant conclusion".

Irrelevant conclusion

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