A System of Logic

John Stuart Mill

Book 5, Chapter 7, Footnote #01
Another paronymous word fallacy


An example of this fallacy is the popular error that strong drink must be a cause of strength. There is here fallacy within fallacy; for granting that the words ``strong'' and ``strength'' were not (as they are) applied in a totally different sense to fermented liquors and to the human body, there would still be involved the error of supposing that an effect must be like its cause; that the conditions of a phenomenon are likely to resemble the phenomenon itself; which we have already treated of as an à priori fallacy of the first rank. As well might it be supposed that a strong poison would make the person who takes it strong.


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Sol, Book 5, Chapter 7 Fallacies of Confusion.