Spuriousness

There are many interesting words to describe logic in English. One of my favorites is "spurious". If you look this word up in an E-J dictionary, you might get 誤った or 偽の, but these do not capture the true meaning of the word. Spuriousness is a very specific kind of mistake.

Basically, spuriousness is the logical mistake of assuming one thing causes another when it actually does not. For example, consider these premises:

A) More crimes are committed during summer than winter.
B) More suntan lotion is used during summer than winter.

Some people might see these facts and claim that therefore, suntan lotion causes crime, or that criminals use more suntan lotion. This is "spurious logic", or assuming a causal relationship when it doesn't exist. In fact, it's more likely that both are caused by the heat - a 3rd variable not mentioned in either premise. Of course, you would need to actually run an experiment to verify that.

In essence, A and B happening around the same time doesn't necessarily mean that A causes B or B causes A. They could both be caused by C, D, E, or some combination of different factors.

To further illustrate, consider the following premises, which I have actually heard a few times:

A) Japanese have trouble pronouncing certain sounds in English.
B) Japanese look different from most people from English-speaking countries.

The spurious conclusion is that Japanese people's looking different affects their ability to pronounce those words. But actually, people from all over Asia learn to speak perfect English when they or their descendents are raised in the English-speaking world. The more logical, less spurious conclusion is that people's ability to pronounce words in any language depends on what language they speak as they grow up. This conclusion is quite an obvious one, but spurious logic sometimes leads people to accept another, incorrect conclusion instead.