Fallacy of division


A fallacy of division is the error in logic that occurs when one reasons that something that is true for a whole must also be true of all or some of its parts.
An example:
  1. The second grade in Jefferson elementary eats a lot of ice cream
  2. Sarah is a second-grader in Jefferson elementary
  3. Therefore, Sarah eats a lot of ice cream
The converse of this fallacy is called fallacy of composition, which arises when one fallaciously attributes a property of some part of a thing to the thing as a whole.
If a system as a whole has some property that none of its constituents has, this is sometimes called an emergent property of the system.
The term mereological fallacy refers to approximately the same incorrect inference that properties of a whole are also properties of its parts.

History

Both the fallacy of division and the fallacy of composition were addressed by Aristotle in Sophistical Refutations.
In the philosophy of the ancient Greek Anaxagoras, as claimed by the Roman atomist Lucretius, it was assumed that the atoms constituting a substance must themselves have the salient observed properties of that substance: so atoms of water would be wet, atoms of iron would be hard, atoms of wool would be soft, etc. This doctrine is called homoeomeria, and it depends on the fallacy of division.

Examples in statistics

In statistics an ecological fallacy is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data where inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inference for the group to which those individuals belong. The four common statistical ecological fallacies are: confusion between ecological correlations and individual correlations, confusion between group average and total average, Simpson's paradox, and other statistical methods.