The animistic fallacy is the
informal fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallac ...
of arguing that an event or situation necessarily arose because someone intentionally acted to cause it.
While it could be that someone set out to effect a specific goal, the fallacy appears in an argument that states this ''must'' be the case.
The name of the fallacy comes from the
animistic belief that changes in the physical world are the work of conscious spirits.
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Examples
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he bec ...
in his book ''
Knowledge and Decisions'' (1980) presents several arguments as examples of the animistic fallacy:
* that people earn wealth always because of superior choices
* that central planning is necessary to prevent chaos in society
Sowell repeatedly dismisses the necessity that order comes from design, and notes that fallacious animistic arguments tend to provide explanations that require comparatively little time to implement. In this light he contrasts the
six-day creation of the world described in the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...
to the development of life over billions of years described by
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
.
See also
*
Anthropomorphism
*
Argument from ignorance
Argument from ignorance (from la, argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ''ignorance'' represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it h ...
*
Pathetic fallacy
*
Reification (fallacy)
Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physica ...
*
Resistentialism
Resistentialism is a jocular theory to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans ...
*
Teleological argument
The teleological argument (from ; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world w ...
References
Causal fallacies
Anthropomorphism
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