Post Hoc Kassi Hall

Definition: Post hoc Relating to or being the fallacy of arguing from temporal sequence to a causal relation. Event B followed after event A, therefore A caused B.

Universal Example I broke a mirror last week. Since then many unlucky things have happened, so the mirror I broke must have actually given me seven years of bad luck. The thought that coincidental, characteristically bad things were caused by breaking a mirror is demonstrative of the post hoc fallacy because a superstitious person assumes their bad luck sprouts from a completely unrelated event, such as breaking a mirror or spilling salt.

PICTURE EXAMPLE

Example 1 from The Crucible Giles: It discomfits 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! [Act 1, page 186.] After his wife stopped reading some ‘suspicious’ book, Giles claims to have regained his ability to pray again. Because there was no logic in assuming that his wife’s book of choice hindered his prayer, or that because he was only able to pray after she’d stopped reading, Giles is using pos hoc in this statement.

Example 2 from The crucible “Mary Warren: But what does she mumble? You must re-member, Goody Proctor. Last month - a Monday, I think - she walked away, and I thought my guts would burst for two days after. Do you remember it?” [Act 2, Page 195] Mary Warren says that Sarah Good has been mumbling things and Elizabeth says that she may do so, then Mary Warren says that she must be saying something akin to a curse because the last time she turned Sarah away at the door she later became ill. In saying so, without any proof as to what Good was actually mumbling, Mary Warren’s logic was post hoc.

Sources "Post Hoc." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.