Abstract-Concrete Fallacy

4951172 commented on the word Abstract-Concrete Fallacy

A fallacy that assumes that an abstract entity dictates or authorizes or causes the attributes or characteristics or outcome or situation of a concrete entity, usually done when assuming conceptual limits or boundaries with physical limits or boundaries.

An example of this is blaming a government for starving a group of people, if the government has no influence on this group of people and there are no real-life laws affecting this group of people, then it can be seen as fallacious to assume that starvation dictates the attitudes and characteristics of the written laws of the government. Just because an entity might not be aware of an issue doesn’t mean the entity is guilty of neglecting an issue. A simplified form of an example of this could be “If starving (concept) happens and if something doesn’t reduce the amount of starving, then starving has caused this something to neglect starvation and therefore this something is guilty of neglecting starvation”. The fallacy in the last sentence quote assumes that starving caused the “something” to neglect reducing starvation, though from what is concluded, there is no known correlation between the cause of starving and the effect that “something” has on it. A lack of correlation between two interoexistential (between or among entities of existence and non-existence) entities.

The difference between the fallacy of misplaced correctness and the Abstract-Concrete fallacy is that this fallacy also assumes that the abstract entity has concrete authority over the concrete entity, this fallacy is a hyponym of the fallacy of misplaced correctness, a type of fallacy of misplaced correctness.

Hence in the example, the concept of starvation is not just assumed to be the same as starvation itself or the lack of actions related to or about starvation but that this concept has the authority to hold concrete entities accountable for a lack of partaking actions. Another example is that just because the concept of life is mentioned doesn’t mean that life happens, or that simply the mentioning of the concept of life authorizes for life to happen.

January 29, 2025