Appeal to consequences


Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam, is an argument that concludes a hypothesis to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion and is a type of informal fallacy, since the desirability of a premise's consequence does not make the premise true. Moreover, in categorizing consequences as either desirable or undesirable, such arguments inherently contain subjective points of view.
In logic, appeal to consequences refers only to arguments that assert a conclusion's truth value without regard to the formal preservation of the truth from the premises; appeal to consequences does not refer to arguments that address a premise's consequential desirability instead of its truth value. Therefore, an argument based on appeal to consequences is valid in long-term decision making and abstract ethics, and in fact such arguments are the cornerstones of many moral theories, particularly related to consequentialism. Appeal to consequences also should not be confused with argumentum ad baculum, which is the bringing up of 'artificial' consequences to argue that an action is wrong.

General form

An argument based on appeal to consequences generally has one of two forms:

Positive form

It is closely related to wishful thinking in its construction.
;Examples
Appeal to force is a special instance of this form.
This form somewhat resembles modus tollens but is both different and fallacious, since "Q is undesirable" is not equivalent to "Q is false".
;Example
"If the six men win, it will mean that the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and improperly admitted in evidence and the convictions were erroneous... This is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right that these actions should go any further." Lord Denning in his judgment on the Birmingham Six.

In law

In law, an argument from inconvenience or argumentum ab inconvenienti, is a valid type of appeal to consequences. Such an argument would seek to show that a proposed action would have unreasonably inconvenient consequences, as for example a law that would require a person wishing to lend money against a security to first ascertain the borrower's title to the property by inquiring in every single courthouse in the country.