Fallacy of ACCENT ► AMBIGUITY

ACCIDENT

1. Accident and Fallacy of Accident

In the context of fallacy analysis, the term accident does not have its ordinary meaning of “crash » or « mishap » (Linguee)
Accident is taken in its philosophical meaning, which contrasts accident with essence. A being is characterized by a set of essential features that determine its place in a scientific classification. Its generic features express its genus and its specific difference indicates its species.
Unlike “is a mammal”, which is always true of all dogs, the truth of the accidental predicate “is tired” depends on the circumstances, it may be true of a dog at a given time but it becomes false as soon as the dog’s condition changes.

The fallacy of accident is the first on Aristotle’s list of fallacies independent of discourse, see Ffallacies 2: Aristotle’s foundational list.
The idea is that a valid syllogistic inference develops within the same category (domain), for example, the class of animals: “Socrates is a man, man is a mammal, so Socrates is a mammal. »
The following fallacious inference develops from an accident « Socrates is white, white is a color, so Socrates is a color« .

The fallacy of accident occurs when an accidental characteristic of a being is mistaken for an essential one. In a definition, the corresponding defect is defining a being by a feature that belongs to it only accidentally.
For example, “wanders off in the middle of the road” is a relevant definite description, that allows for an unambiguous reference to a dog, but is not a defining feature of « dog”.
Similarly, from an essentialist point of view, “is a good time for having a nap” is not a defining feature of “afternoon”, see two-term reasoning.

2. The Ad Accidens Counter-Argument

Charging someone with committing the dialectical fallacy of accident is possible only if the accuser can refer to a solid and stabilized categorization, corresponding to a set of essentialist definitions, see definition 1. In ordinary speech, accusing someone of committing a fallacy of accident is just a counterargument, which opens a stasis of definition and can be defeated itself.
The ethical value of a profession is evaluated based on an examination of the moral worth of its values and practices. In a classical democratic regime, a politician can be either honest or dishonest without ever ceasing to be a politician. Dishonesty is not a prerequisite for becoming a politician; it is an accidental feature. “He is an honest politician” is not an oxymoron, “He is a dishonest politician” is not necessarily true. For those who share this view of things and people, characterizing political activity as an intrinsically dishonest activity, is committing the fallacy of accident. The person blamed for committing the fallacy might retort that his argument is based on an inductive generalization, from “a number of politicians we all know very well”, or on the actual structural condition of our political system, not on any transcendental organization of things.

The argument from the opposites plays with the « essential vs. accidental » character of the differences between two categories of beings, “boys can go out at night, so girls should not, well, you know, girls are different from boys”. This argument is refuted by demoting the difference from essential to accidental. The same strategy applies to the distinction between a fact’s definition, and its circumstantial, contextual characteristics.

Dissociated from the strict Aristotelian ontology, the “essence vs. accident” opposition corresponds to the distinction between central traits and peripheral traits, and, in everyday life, to the distinction between important and the incidental traits.
In the absence of backing by an accepted ontology, the so-called fallacy of accident functions as a refutation that argues from the incidental nature of an element, and finally corresponds to a strategy of minimizing the disputed character.