The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

demolish one of the premisses. If, then, the false
cause be reckoned in among the questions that are necessary to
establish the resulting impossibility, it will often be thought
that the refutation depends upon it, e.g. in the proof that the
‘soul’ and ‘life’ are not the same: for if coming-to-be be contrary
to perishing, then a particular form of perishing will have a
particular form of coming-to-be as its contrary: now death is a
particular form of perishing and is contrary to life: life,
therefore, is a coming to-be, and to live is to come-to-be. But
this is impossible: accordingly, the ‘soul’ and ‘life’ are not the
same. Now this is not proved: for the impossibility results all the
same, even if one does not say that life is the same as the soul,
but merely says that life is contrary to death, which is a form of
perishing, and that perishing has ‘coming-to-be’ as its contrary.
Arguments of that kind, then, though not inconclusive absolutely,
are inconclusive in relation to the proposed conclusion. Also even
the questioners themselves often fail quite as much to see a point
of that kind.
    Such, then, are the arguments that depend upon the consequent
and upon false cause. Those that depend upon the making of two
questions into one occur whenever the plurality is undetected and a
single answer is returned as if to a single question. Now, in some
cases, it is easy to see that there is more than one, and that an
answer is not to be given, e.g. ‘Does the earth consist of sea, or
the sky?’ But in some cases it is less easy, and then people treat
the question as one, and either confess their defeat by failing to
answer the question, or are exposed to an apparent refutation. Thus
‘Is A and is B a man?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then if any one hits A and B, he
will strike a man’ (singular),’not men’ (plural). Or again, where
part is good and part bad, ‘is the whole good or bad?’ For
whichever he says, it is possible that he might be thought to
expose himself to an apparent refutation or to make an apparently
false statement: for to say that something is good which is not
good, or not good which is good, is to make a false statement.
Sometimes, however, additional premisses may actually give rise to
a genuine refutation; e.g. suppose a man were to grant that the
descriptions ‘white’ and ‘naked’ and ‘blind’ apply to one thing and
to a number of things in a like sense. For if ‘blind’ describes a
thing that cannot see though nature designed it to see, it will
also describe things that cannot see though nature designed them to
do so. Whenever, then, one thing can see while another cannot, they
will either both be able to see or else both be blind; which is
impossible.
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6
    The right way, then, is either to divide apparent proofs and
refutations as above, or else to refer them all to ignorance of
what ‘refutation’ is, and make that our starting-point: for it is
possible to analyse all the aforesaid modes of fallacy into
breaches of the definition of a refutation. In the first place, we
may see if they are inconclusive: for the conclusion ought to
result from the premisses laid down, so as to compel us necessarily
to state it and not merely to seem to compel us. Next we should
also take the definition bit by bit, and try the fallacy thereby.
For of the fallacies that consist in language, some depend upon a
double meaning, e.g. ambiguity of words and of phrases, and the
fallacy of like verbal forms (for we habitually speak of everything
as though it were a particular substance)-while fallacies of
combination and division and accent arise because the phrase in
question or the term as altered is not the same as was intended.
Even this, however, should be the same, just as the thing signified
should be as well, if a refutation or proof is to be effected; e.g.
if the point concerns a doublet, then you should draw the
conclusion of a ‘doublet’, not of a ‘cloak’. For the former
conclusion also would be true, but it has not been proved; we need
a further question to show that ‘doublet’ means the same thing, in
order to satisfy any one who asks why you think your point
proved.
    Fallacies that depend on Accident are clear cases of ignoratio
elenchi when once ‘proof’ has been defined. For the same definition
ought to hold good of ‘refutation’ too, except that a mention of
‘the contradictory’ is here added: for a refutation is