| Dictionary: post hoc |
[Latin, short for post hoc, ergō propter hoc, after this, therefore because of this : post, after + hoc, neuter of hic, this.]
| Philosophy Dictionary: post hoc ergo propter hoc |
(Latin, after this, so because of this) The fallacy of arguing that because one event happened after another, it happened because of it.
| WordNet: post hoc |
The noun has one meaning:
Meaning #1:
the logical fallacy of believing that temporal succession implies a causal relation
Synonym: post hoc ergo propter hoc
| Wikipedia: Post hoc ergo propter hoc |
Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because (on account) of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one." It is often shortened to simply post hoc and is also sometimes referred to as false cause, coincidental correlation or correlation not causation. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc, in which the chronological ordering of a correlation is insignificant.
Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection. Most familiarly, many superstitious religious beliefs and magical thinking arise from this fallacy.
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The form of the post hoc fallacy can be expressed as follows:
When B is undesirable, this pattern is often extended in reverse: Avoiding A will prevent B.
From Attacking Faulty Reasoning by T. Edward Damer:[1]
"I can't help but think that you are the cause of this problem; we never had any problem with the furnace until you moved into the apartment." The manager of the apartment house, on no stated grounds other than the temporal priority of the new tenant's occupancy, has assumed that the tenant's presence has some causal relationship to the furnace's becoming faulty.
From With Good Reason by S. Morris Engel:[2]
More and more young people are attending high schools and colleges today than ever before. Yet there is more juvenile delinquency and more alienation among the young. This makes it clear that these young people are being corrupted by their education.
A class of examples is sometimes called the "Rooster syndrome", for "giving credit to the rooster crowing for the rising of the sun". The MMR vaccine controversy is a recent example of this logical fallacy, where the onset of autism symptoms follow childhood MMR vaccination but are not caused by it.[3]
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Post hoc ergo propter hoc". Read more |
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