argument from ignorance

This is the argument from ignorance: just because Alexander doesn't know the answer, no answer can ever be found. Unfortunately, logical arguments aren’t like gambling. It is also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam (Latin for “argument from ignorance”) and is a type of informal fallacy. Abstract: The argument from ignorance is characterized with examples and shown to be sometimes persuasive but normally fallacious. In other words, it’s based on the mistaken assumption that a lack of evidence is evidence. An appeal to ignorance is an argument for a conclusion based on a lack of evidence. Argument from ignorance (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 has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. It’s saying that if something isn’t known that justifies claiming that some other unknown conclusion must therefore be justified instead. Argument from ignorance, or argumentum ad ignorantiam, infers that a proposition is true from the fact that it is not proven to be false (or alternatively, that a proposition is false because it is not proven to be true). There are two forms of the argument―see the Forms, above―depending on whether the argument is affirmative or negative: Affirmative: The conclusion is true because there is no evidence against it. What is the argument from ignorance fallacy? Description. Appeal to Ignorance This fallacy occurs when you argue that your conclusion must be true, because there is no evidence against it. Namely, they are invalid because they set up a logical structure in which the conclusion does not follow necessarily from the premises. The same isn’t true in logic. Appeal to ignorance is a logical fallacy in which someone argues either for or against something because there is no contradicting evidence. There are lots of other examples of this overarching type of fallacy, such as denying the antecedent, correlation fallacies, guilt by association, arguments from ignorance, etc., but they all have the same problem. Argument from ignorance (from Latin: 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 has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. Appeal to ignorance is also known as argument from ignorance, in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence" and becomes "a fallacy in informal logic." This is also called a negative proof fallacy. 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