Illicit Process
Type: Syllogistic FallacyForm:
Any form of categorical syllogism in which a term which is distributed in the conclusion is undistributed in a premiss.
Syllogistic Rule Violated:
In a validating form of categorical syllogism, any term that is distributed in the conclusion is distributed in the premiss in which it occurs.
Exposition:
An argument with a term distributed in the conclusion, but not in its premiss, commits a fallacy of Illicit Process. Since every categorical proposition has two terms, this means that there are two subfallacies of this fallacy, depending upon whether it is the major term or the minor term which is illicitly distributed.
Source:
Irving Copi & Carl Cohen, Introduction to Logic (Tenth Edition) (Prentice Hall, 1998), pp. 276-7.
Subfallacies:
