Talk:Non sequitur

I'm not quite sure that this page contains the best examples of this fallacy. Saying

1. If p then q
2. q
3. therefore p

is certainly a fallacy, but its formal name seems to be illicit conversion.

The last example on the page is a much better illustration of non sequitur: "If I wear my new shirt, all the girls will think I'm sexy." A non sequitur is more like making up a syllogism with no basis for the initial statement.

So let p="I wear my new shirt", and q="all the girls think I'm sexy". The syllogism is

1. If p then q
2. p
3. therefore q

The syllogism is valid, but the first statement is unsupported.

Likewise, "If there were no God, there wouldn't be flowers." That's another non sequitur.

Is a rewrite in order?

Kazim 11:12, 31 August 2006 (MST)