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Reductio ad absurdum, painting by John Pettie exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884. In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or apagogical argument, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.
Proof without words of the arithmetic progression formulas using a rotated copy of the blocks.. An arithmetic progression or arithmetic sequence is a sequence of numbers such that the difference from any succeeding term to its preceding term remains constant throughout the sequence.
Homunculus fallacy – using a "middle-man" for explanation; this sometimes leads to regressive middle-men. It explains a concept in terms of the concept itself without explaining its real nature (e.g.: explaining thought as something produced by a little thinker – a homunculus – inside the head simply identifies an intermediary actor and ...
A contronym is a word with two opposite meanings. For example, the word original can mean "authentic, traditional", or "novel, never done before". This feature is also called enantiosemy, [1] [2] enantionymy (enantio-means "opposite"), antilogy or autoantonymy. An enantiosemic term is by definition polysemic.
An early occurrence of proof by contradiction can be found in Euclid's Elements, Book 1, Proposition 6: [7] If in a triangle two angles equal one another, then the sides opposite the equal angles also equal one another. The proof proceeds by assuming that the opposite sides are not equal, and derives a contradiction.
[3] An antithesis must always contain two ideas within one statement. The ideas may not be structurally opposite, but they serve to be functionally opposite when comparing two ideas for emphasis. [4] According to Aristotle, the use of an antithesis makes the audience better understand the point the speaker is trying to make. Further explained ...
An explanation involving circumstantial evidence becomes more likely once alternative explanations have been ruled out. Circumstantial evidence allows a trier of fact to infer that a fact exists. [1] In criminal law, the inference is made by the trier of fact to support the truth of an assertion (of guilt or absence of guilt).
Abductive reasoning, also known as "inference to the best explanation", starts from an observation and reasons to the fact explaining this observation. An example is a doctor who examines the symptoms of their patient to make a diagnosis of the underlying cause. Analogical reasoning compares two similar systems. It observes that one of them has ...