Fallacy of Composition

-An informal fallacy(fallacy whose premises do not support its conclusion. A defect
in reasoning)
-So, the fallacy of composition is an error in reasoning that arises in the content of
an argument
-People commit this error when they draw conclusions about the whole from truths
about its constituent parts, without having a justification for doing so.

-they think without justification that what is true of the parts of something must
also be true of the whole those parts compose.

Ex.
Atoms are invisible to the naked eye
My body is made up of atoms
Therefore, I am invisible

-The argument seems attractive, but the style of argument is like saying that because
atoms are invisible to the naked eye, then that makes me invisible

-Without sufficient justification, we cannot infer that the whole has the same
qualities as its parts simply because the parts have that quality.

Ex. 3 + 7 = 10

It's true that the number three and the number seven are both odd numbers. We
might say that three and seven have the characteristic of being odd. Each is also a
part of the number ten. Three plus seven equals ten. But we cannot say that the
number ten is odd simply because its parts, three and seven, have that quality. If we
did, we would commit the fallacy of composition.

So, we just learned about the fallacy of composition, or the error in reasoning that
comes about when one infers that the whole has the same qualities as its constituent
parts.

It is important, however, to note that this style of reasoning doesn't always lead to
false conclusions.

Ex.
Premise one: Every part of my cat is composed of matter.
Conclusion: Therefore, my cat is composed of matter.

And that argument leads

to a true conclusion.
The fallacy only arises when we don't have a good reason to infer that the whole has
the same qualities as its parts.

Fallacy of Cause and Effect (Fallacy of questionable cause)

-Correlation does not imply causation

-This fallacy is committed when a person assumes that one event must cause
another just because the events occur together.
- The mistake being is that the causal conclusion is being drawn without adequate
justification

A and B occur together.

Therefore A is the cause of B
- This an example of confusing cause and effect. Just because something normally
happens does not mean it always does