Post Hoc/Faulty Causality/Non-Sequitur

By:Cindy Williams

&Sarah Madrigal

Post Hoc (Faulty Causality)

• Arguments confuse chronology with causation; it is committed when it is assumed that because one thing occurred after another, it must have occurred as a result of it.

Post Hoc Examples• COREY: “It discomforts me! Last night—mark this—I tried and tried and

could not say my prayers. And then she close her book and walks out of the house, and suddenly—mark this—I could pray again!”

• Elizabeth: “The Deputy Governor promise hangin‘ if they‘ll not confess, John. The town‘s gone wild, I think—Mary Warren speak of Abigail as though she were a saint, to hear her. She brings the other girls into the court, and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel. And folks are brought before them, and if Abigail scream and howl and fall to the floor—the person‘s clapped in the jail for bewitchin‘ her. “

• Danforth: “Then there is a prodigious guilt in the country. Are you afraid to be questioned here?”

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL_vHDjG5Wk

MLA Citation

• "Logical Fallacies." Logical Fallacies Post Hoc Fallacy Comments. N.p.,2009. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. <http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/post-hoc/>.

• Xaphan. 2014. abovetopsecret. Web. 20 Apr. 2014. <http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread993927/pg2>