Appeal to ignorance

What it is

Claims something is true because it has not been proven false, or false because it has not been proven true. Absence of evidence is not, by itself, evidence either way (though a thorough search that found nothing can count).

Related

• Argument from personal incredulity fallacy
  Both turn a gap in knowledge, ours or everyone's, into a conclusion about the world.
• Shifting the burden of proof fallacy
  Appeals to ignorance work by demanding that others disprove a claim, which reverses the burden of proof.
• Argument from silence fallacy
  Both infer something from missing evidence; the argument from silence applies it to a source that does not mention a thing.
• Feature-positive effect bias
  We notice what is present far more than what is absent, which makes "no evidence against" feel like "evidence for".

References

• Wikipedia: Appeal to ignorance en.wikipedia.org
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies iep.utm.edu
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies plato.stanford.edu
• Wikipedia: List of fallacies en.wikipedia.org
• Purdue OWL: Logical fallacies owl.purdue.edu

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