30.1Wardv3 TB rev


© Andrew C. Ward. Informal Logic, Vo1. 30, No.1 (2010),  
pp. 1-33. 

The Value of Genetic Fallacies 
 
ANDREW C. WARD 
 

Division of Health Policy and Management 
University of Minnesota 
MMC 729 Mayo 
8729 
420 Delaware 
Minneapolis, MN 55455 
U.S.A. 
ward0230@umn.edu 
 
Abstract: Since at least the 1938 pub-
lication of Hans Reichenbach’s Expe-
rience and Predication, there has been 
widespread agreement that, when dis-
cussing the beliefs that people have, it 
is important to distinguish contexts of 
discovery and contexts of justification. 
Traditionally, when one conflates the 
two contexts, the result is a “genetic 
fallacy”. This paper examines genea-
logical critiques and addresses the 
question of whether such critiques are 
fallacious and, if so, whether this viti-
ates their usefulness. The paper con-
cludes that while there may be one or 
more senses in which genealogical 
critiques are fallacious, this does not 
vitiate their value.  
 

Resume:  Depuis au moins la publica-
tion de Experience and Predication de 
Hans Reichenbach en 1938 il s’est 
grandement répandu un accord qu’il 
est important de distinguer les contex-
tes de découvertes des contextes de 
justification lorsqu’on discute des 
croyances des gens. Traditionnelle-
ment, lorsqu’on confond ces deux 
contextes, le sophisme «génétique»  
en résulte. Dans cet article on examine 
les critiques basées sur la généologie 
d’une position, les fondements de ces 
critiques, et leurs utilités même si elles 
sont fallacieuses. Bien qu’elles puis-
sent être fallacieuses, on conclut que 
ceci n’élimine pas la valeur des cri-
tiques généalogiques. 
 

Keywords: argument, context of discovery, context of justification, deduction, 
genetic fallacy, induction, informal logic. 
 

 
1. Introduction 
 

Since at least the 1938 publication of Hans Reichenbach’s Experi-
ence and Predication, and implicit in Frege’s earlier rejection of 
psychologism, there has been a widespread view that, when dis-
cussing the beliefs that people have, it is important to distinguish 
contexts of discovery and contexts of justification.1 It is true that 
                                                 
1 As Hoyningen-Huene, 1987: pp. 502-503, points out, it is possible to trace the 
distinction back even further than Frege. Giere, 1999: p. 14, in his discussion of 
Reichenbach’s distinction, makes an interesting observation. He writes, “I sug-
gest that part of the significance of the distinction for Reichenbach at this time 
was its implicit denial that characteristics of a person proposing a scientific hy-
pothesis have anything to do with the scientific validity of the hypothesis pro-



Andrew C. Ward 2 

few would nowadays accept Reichenbach’s positivistic account of 
the method of justification as a wholly formal enterprise involving 
rigorous syntactic axiomatizations. Moreover, as writers such as 
Paul Hoyningen-Huene and Thomas Nickles have pointed out2, in 
the years following 1938, the distinction that Reichenbach believed 
separated the task of psychology from the task of epistemology 
evolved into “a set of intermingled distinctions.”3 Nevertheless, the 
core idea from Reichenbach that did enter into mainstream phi-
losophy (especially philosophy of science)4 was that an important 
logical distinction exists between “the psycho-logical processes 
which occur when a scientist thinks of new ideas and the logical 
argument which exhibits the degree to which those ideas are sup-
ported by the facts and other evidential considerations.”5 For ex-
ample, Reichenbach writes that the way in which a physicist finds 
(i.e., discovers) a new theorem corresponds to the context of dis-
covery, while the way in which the physicist presents the theorem 
to the public, rationally reconstructing it to make clear how the 
facts provide justification for the theorem, corresponds to the con-
text of justification.6 
 As presented by Reichenbach, investigations into the contexts 

of discovery, unlike those into justification, belong within the 
realms of psychology, sociology, and history.7 Descriptions of the 
“processes of thinking in their actual occurrence”8 that lead to a 
person’s holding a belief may be important in understanding the 
actual reasoning processes of a person.9 Such descriptions may 
even tell us something about the sorts of problems and issues the 
person finds important, or shed insights on the traditions of prac-
tices in which the person lives and works. However, for those who 
accept the distinction between the two contexts, these descriptive 
accounts do not, by themselves, address the question of whether the 
person is justified in holding those beliefs to be true or rejecting 
                                                                                                              
posed.  This applies, in particular, to that person’s being a Jew.  Reichenbach 
seems to have made it a precondition on any scientific epistemology that it rule 
out the possibility of any distinction between, for example, Jewish and Aryan 
science.” 
2 See Hoyningengen-Huene, 1987, Hoyningen-Huene, 2006, Nickles, 1980, and 
Nickles, 1985. 
3 Hoyningen-Huene, 2006: p. 119. Also, see Kordig, p. 110, who starts his 1978 
paper with the claim that “[T]he distinction between discovery and justification 
is ambiguous.” 
4 See Siegel, pp. 297-299, for a review of some of the philosophers of science 
who agree that “maintaining a sharp distinction between … the “context of dis-
covery” and the “context of justification” is both illuminating and appropriate for 
epistemology and philosophy of science.” 
5 Nickles, 1980: p. 8. Also, see Curd, pp. 209-210.   
6 See Reichenbach, 1952: pp. 6-7. 
7 See Reichenbach, 1952: pp. 7-8. 
8 Reichenbach, 1952: p. 5.  Also, see Reichenbach, 1952: p. 382. 
9 See Handy, pp. 27-28.  



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 3 

them as false. As Reichenbach writes, there “is a great difference 
between the system of the logical interconnections of thought [the 
context of justification] and the actual way in which thinking proc-
esses are performed [the context of discovery].”10 Whereas ac-
counts in the context of justification critically (logically) assess ra-
tional reconstructions of the operations between “the starting point 
and the issue of thought-processers,”11 Reichenbach insists that the 
“manner in which logical inferences are actually made [the descrip-
tion of which falls within purview of the context of discovery] is 
strange and obscure and rarely resembles the formal method of 
logic.”12  
 In contrast with those who accept this distinction, others con-

tend that descriptive accounts of the “process of thinking” that 
leads to a person having the beliefs that she or he has are relevant 
in determining whether the person is justified in holding the belief 
to be true.13 For instance, in his The Future of an Illusion, Freud 
investigates the origin of the belief, common in human beings, that 
in the end “all good is rewarded and all evil punished, if not actu-
ally in this form of life then in the later existences that begin after 
death”. 14 What he discovers is that the belief has its origin in 
“man’s need to make his helplessness tolerable and built up from 
the material of memories of the helplessness of his own childhood 
and the childhood of the human race.”15 Freud concludes that an 
examination of its psychoanalytic origins demonstrates that the be-
lief is only a projection of deep-seated needs for security and pro-
tection, and so not a belief that one is justified in holding to be 
true.16 In this sense, the descriptive account of the belief’s psycho-
logical origin is, Freud thought, relevant to the question of whether 
the person is justified in holding the belief to be true. More re-
cently, some writers contend that gender issues are relevant in as-
sessing whether or not one is justified in holding a belief to be 
true.17 For example, writers such as Jane Flax claim that the fact 
that a belief originates with a man embedded in a patriarchal soci-
ety that institutionalizes disempowerment and alienation constitutes 
sufficient reason to reject the belief as “distorted” and unjustified.18 

                                                 
10 Reichenbach, 1952: p. 5.  
11 See Curd, p. 209, and Kantorovich, pp. 487-488. 
12 Reichenbach, 1958: p. 43. 
13 See, for example, Kuhn, p. 9, and Thagard, p. 52. 
14 Freud, p. 23. 
15 Freud, p. 23.  
16 Religion is, in this sense, an “illusion”, and so not justified. See Freud, pp. 
39ff.  Also, see Lavine, p. 333, and Pashman, pp. 57-60. 
17 See, for example, Anderson, p. 50, Burton, pp. 286ff, Crouch, 1991: pp. 
108ff., Fisher, and Flax, 1987: pp. 623ff. 
18 See Flax, 1995: pp. 217ff.  Also, see Crouch, 1991: p. 105, Grimshaw, pp. 
58ff, and Harding, pp. 40ff. 



Andrew C. Ward 4 

 The common complaint against people who want to critique 
beliefs in terms of their psychosocial genesis—to provide what is 
sometimes called a genealogical critique of a belief or a system of 
beliefs19—is that that they conflate the context of discovery for a 
belief and the context of justification for a belief. For example, in 
the course of arguing for what he calls “external realism,” John 
Searle considers various antirealist objections to external realism. 
One way of responding to the claims of the antirealist is to assess 
critically why the antirealist has the beliefs he or she does. Such a 
response falls within the context of discovery since it would pro-
vide a descriptive account of why the person has the antirealist be-
liefs. However, this is not Searle’s tack since, as he writes, “point-
ing out the psychological origins of antirealism is not a refutation 
of antirealism. It would be a genetic fallacy to suppose that by ex-
posing the illegitimate origins of the arguments against realism, we 
somehow refute the arguments.”20 What this passage from Searle 
reflects is a widely held belief about the importance of differentiat-
ing between critically assessing the psychosocial history of how a 
person came to have a belief, and critically assessing whether a 
person is justified in holding that the belief is true. This does not 
mean that there is never a close relationship between questions 
about what caused a belief (the context of discovery) and questions 
about whether the belief is justified (context of justification). As 
Larry Wright notes,21 in many everyday contexts, such as why I 
believe my car needs servicing, the cause of my belief, the annoy-
ing “clunking” sound, may also be the justification of my holding 
the belief to be true. Indeed, even more generally, for externalist 
epistemic theories, at least some of the causes of a person’s having 
a belief are important in determining whether the person’s belief is 
epistemically justified or reasonable.22 As Klement writes, “it is 
now often recognized that the causal history of a belief or position 
is sometimes relevant to its epistemic status”.23 However, for those 
who advocate what Nickles calls the logical “divorce” of the con-
text of discovery from the context of justification,24 there is no nec-
essary connection between descriptions of how a person came to 
have a belief and the person being justified in holding the belief to 
be true or false. As Siegel writes, advocates of the “divorce” thesis 
claim that the context of discovery, exemplified by psychological 
descriptions, “can tell us that a person believes a certain claim, and, 
perhaps, how that person came to believe it; but not why that belief 
                                                 
19 See Kim, p. 398, who writes that “[A] genealogy is an argument to discredit a 
belief or belief system by exposing its genesis …”  
20 Searle, p. 20. 
21 Wright, 2001: p. 99. 
22 See, for example, Bonjour, pp. 34-35, and Goldman, 1992: pp. 112ff. 
23 Klement, p. 383. 
24 See Nickles, 1985. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 5 

would count as evidence for that claim.”25 If the causal history of a 
belief is relevant to its epistemic status, it is because its role in the 
context of justification has been established independently of its 
role in the context of discovery.26 An unacceptable conflation of 
the two contexts occurs when one assumes that an account in one 
context automatically or necessarily determines the account given 
in the other context.  
 Traditionally, logic books characterize arguments that conflate 

these two contexts in this way as arguments that commit the “ge-
netic fallacy”. As Wesley Salmon writes, “[T]he error of treating 
items in the context of discovery as if they belonged to the context 
of justification is called the ‘genetic fallacy’.”27 Similarly, Abra-
ham Kaplan writes that the genetic fallacy “is the fallacy of judging 
the truth of an assertion on the basis of its source rather than by the 
evidence or argument available for it”,28 while for Hamblin the ge-
netic fallacy occurs when one confuses “temporal or historical ori-
gin with logical nature.”29 In what follows, I will examine genea-
logical critiques and address the question of whether such critiques 
are fallacious and, if so, whether this vitiates their usefulness. My 
conclusion will be that while there may be one or more senses in 
which genealogical critiques are fallacious, this does not vitiate 
their value. Properly understood, genealogical critiques play a use-
ful and important role in the process of inquiry. 
 
 
2. Background 
 

Since both genealogical critiques and genetic fallacies are kinds of 
arguments, and the subject matter of both formal and informal logic 
is, broadly, the study and evaluation of arguments,30 the natural 
starting point is with an examination of the concept of an argument 
as it occurs in formal and informal logic. Although it may seem 
that answering the question “What is an argument?” should be rela-
tively straightforward, matters are not so simple. Part of the com-
plexity is a function of the multiple meanings assigned to “informal 
logic”, and the resulting difficulty of determining whether there is a 
common sense of argument acceptable to all, or most of the differ-
ent conceptions of informal logic. As noted by Ralph Johnson,31 

                                                 
25 Siegel, p. 316. 
26 See Seigel, p. 301. 
27 Wesley Salmon, 1963: pp. 11-12.  
28 Kaplan, p. 13. Also, see Klement, p. 384, and Lavine, p. 323. For other forms 
that genetic fallacies can take, see Goudge. 
29 Hamblin, p. 45. For an account of how the meaning of “genetic fallacy” has 
changed over the years, see Klement, pp. 384ff. 
30 See Hacking, 1972: p. 3.  Also, see Hamblin, chapter 7. 
31 Johnson, 2006: p. 232.  Also, see Johnson, 1999: pp. 266-267. 



Andrew C. Ward 6 

writers have used “informal” logic to mean everything from “the 
logic of substantive concepts” to “logic minus deductive and induc-
tive logic,” to “applied epistemology.” Some writers even seem to 
believe that “there is no such thing as informal logic.”32 Neverthe-
less, amongst the majority who believe, generally, that informal 
logic, in contrast with formal logic, deals with practical, dialogical 
contexts,33 Douglas Walton’s characterization of “argument” is a 
good starting point that captures a core idea for many of the con-
ceptions of informal logic: 
 

Argument is a social and verbal means of trying to resolve, 
or at least contend with, a conflict or difference that has 
arisen between two or more parties.34 

 
It is, of course, possible to resolve conflicts and differences of 

opinions in various ways, and the definition does not distinguish 
between those different ways. For example, in some contexts, one 
way to try to resolve a conflict or difference of opinion is by ap-
pealing to the relevant laws and statutes. However, while juridical 
adjudication of conflicts and differences of opinion may make use 
of informal (or even formal) logical arguments, the adjudication is 
not itself a logical resolution. Thus, one common addition to 
Walton’s definition, though not one with which all advocates of 
dialogical approaches to arguments would be entirely comfortable, 
is to say that the way in which conflicts and differences of opinions 
are resolved in the arguments with which informal logic is con-
cerned is to present evidence to support accepting a claim. So un-
derstood, the concept of an argument in informal logic is broadly 
consonant with the concept of argument in the traditional concept 
of formal logic. Although formal logic texts vary in their wording, 
the common, underlying idea is that an argument is a finite set of 
sentences in which all but one of the sentences in the set provide 
some kind of evidential (qua logical) support for the remaining 
sentence, the conclusion, in the set.35 Thus, following the lead of 
Michael Dummett,36 Ian Hacking writes that the “right way to an-
swer the question, What is logic? is to consider transitions between 
sentences.”37   
                                                 
32 Johnson, 1999: p. 265.  
33 See, for example, Levi, p. 227. 
34 Walton, 1990: p. 411. Also, see Goodwin, 2007: pp. 69-70, Walton, 2007: p. 
114, and Walton, 2008: p. 142. 
35 See, for example, Merrilee Salmon, p. 12, Skyrms, pp. 6-11, and Wright 1995: 
p. 566.   Also, see Machina, p. 574. 
36 Dummett, pp. 432-433. 
37 Hacking, 1979: p. 290. See DeHaven, 1998: p. 1, who characterizes an argu-
ment in formal logic as “any sequence of statements that includes statements put 
forward as supporting another statement and the statement to which this support 
is given”.   Also, see Bonevac, 1999:p. 3, who writes that an “argument [in for-



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 7 

 A distinction often found both in discussions of formal logic 
and in discussions of informal logic is the distinction between de-
ductive and inductive arguments. Even a cursory review of the lit-
erature dealing with the distinction reveals that there is not com-
plete agreement about the way to draw the distinction,38 how useful 
the distinction truly is,39 or even whether we should treat inductive 
logic as a kind of logic at all.40 Nonetheless, one approach with 
general widespread support, and the one used in this paper, is that 
the distinction is a useful one and that categorizing an argument as 
either deductive or inductive reflects a decision about the standards 
used in evaluating the argument.41 Supposing that the standard used 
in evaluating the argument is that the premises, if true, necessitate42 
the truth of the conclusion, then the argument is a deductive argu-
ment. Moreover, if it is in fact the case that the premises, if true, 
necessitate the truth of the conclusion, then the argument is deduc-
tively valid. In contrast, supposing that the standard used in evalu-
ating the argument is that the premises, if true, make it improbable, 
but not impossible, that the conclusion is false, then the argument is 
an inductive argument.43 Analogous to the case of deductive argu-
ments, if it is in fact the case that the premises, if true, make it im-
probable that the conclusion is false, then the argument is a strong 
inductive argument. Because information added to that provided by 
the premises of an inductive argument may either strengthen or 
weaken the argument, the support that true premises provide for a 
conclusion in an inductive argument, unlike the support in deduc-
tive arguments, is non-monotonic. 
 So far then, we have identified a general concept of argument 

common to both formal and informal logic, as well as a pragmatic44 
distinction (deduction versus induction) drawn in discussions of 
both kinds of logic. How, then, does formal logic differ from in-
formal logic, and what does this difference say about the concepts 
of argument and fallacy in the two kinds of logic? Broadly, the an-
swer to this question is that informal logic and formal logic differ 
from one another both in the way in which they treat the natural 

                                                                                                              
mal logic] is a finite string of statements, called premises, together with another 
statement, the conclusion, which the premises are taken to support.” 
38 See Wilbanks. 2009. 
39 See Govier, 1987: pp. 3-4. 
40 See Goldman, 1985: p. 41, Harman, 1973: pp. 161-163, and Sainsbury, p. 9. 
41 See Govier, 1987: pp. 43-44, and Haack, p. 12.  Skyrms, p. 12, writes that de-
ductive and inductive logic “are not distinguished by the different types of argu-
ments with which they deal but by the different standards against which they 
evaluate arguments.” 
42 This glosses over a complex issues since, as Russell, p. 594, notes, there are 
“many different conceptions of possibility and its sister notion, necessity”.  Thus, 
there is some ambiguity in the concept of deductive assessment. 
43 See Skyrms, p. 7. 
44 See Machina, p. 577. 



Andrew C. Ward 8 

language sentences making up the various parts of a “real life” ar-
gument, and in the analysis of the arguments with which they deal. 
In the case of formal logic, the assumption is that it is possible to 
identify and formally characterize the logical form of the natural 
language sentences that make up the argument, in virtue of which 
there is a structural entailment relationship between the premises of 
the argument and its conclusion.45 Thus, formal logic, as noted by 
Walton, “abstracts from the content of the premises and conclusion 
of an argument”46 and focuses on the underlying logical form in-
stantiated by the natural language sentences constituting the argu-
ment. Once one identifies the formal structure of an argument, 
formal logic applies various standards to assess whether the argu-
ment is either good or bad (fallacious). Mario Bunge captures this 
conception of formal logic when, after investigating “the matter of 
the ontological commitment of logic and semantics”,47 he writes 
that logic “is no more and no less than the theory of logical form, in 
particular of the form of deductive arguments.”48 In the case of de-
ductive arguments, the traditional view of what constitutes a fallacy 
is represented by J.L. Mackie who writes that a “fallacy, in the 
strict sense, is an invalid form of argument.”49 For example, on the 
standard account, an argument expressed in a natural language that 
is a “proper” substitution instance,50 in a specified system of 
logic,51 of affirming the consequent is (formally) deductively falla-
cious precisely because it is possible for an instance of the argu-
ment form “affirming the consequent” to have all true premises and 
                                                 
45 See Elugardo and Stainton, pp. 394ff. 
46 Walton, 1990: pp. 417-418.  Also, see Sainsbury, pp. 29-32. 
47 Bunge, p. 207. 
48 Bunge, p. 208. 
49 Mackie, p. 169.  Also, see Russow and Curd, p. 97. 
50 Walton, 2008: p. 150, uses the expression “most specific form of the argu-
ment”. In particular, Walton writes that “Even if we know an argument has an 
invalid form, in need not automatically follow that the argument must be invalid. 
To be assured of that, we would also have to know that the form presented is the 
most specific form of the given argument.” Also, see Walton, 2007: p. 122. Go-
vier, 1995: p. 179, writes that we “need a paraphrase which captures all of the 
logically relevant features.” 
51 The qualification of the instance of the argument form being a proper instance, 
in a specified system of logic, is important. As Massey, pp. 492-49, and before 
him, Oliver, pp. 463ff, notes, without the appropriate qualifications, it is possible 
for an argument to instantiate the argument form of affirming the consequent but, 
nevertheless, be valid.  Thus, as Oliver, p. 463, writes, without appropriate quali-
fication, the principle “If an argument is an instance of an invalid form, it is inva-
lid”, is a false principle. Also, see Finocchiaro, 2005: p. 150.  Massey, pp. 494-
496, claims that to demonstrate that an argument is invalid, it does not suffice to 
show that it is an instance of an invalid logical form; one must also show that it 
fails to be an instance of any valid argument form.  For critical discussions of 
Massey, see Bencivenga, pp. 247ff, Govier, 1995: pp. 172-180, and Plumer, pp. 
181ff. For an extension of Massey’s argument to valid arguments, see Woods, 
1995, pp. 181ff. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 9 

a false conclusion.52 The key point for deductive fallacies is that a 
particular, natural language argument is fallacious because it is a 
“proper” substitution instance, in a specified system of logic, of an 
argument form for which, in the specified system of logic, there is 
at least one proper substitution instance with all true premises and a 
false conclusion. 
 The issue of what constitutes a fallacy is more obviously com-

plicated in the case of inductive arguments because an inductive 
argument having all true premises does not necessitate the truth of 
the argument’s conclusion. Inasmuch as the support that true prem-
ises provide for the conclusion in an inductive argument is non-
monotonic, identifying the underlying formal structure of the ar-
gument does not, by itself, give any information about whether or 
not the premises, if true, provide good evidence for the conclusion. 
Nevertheless, using the notion of a deductive fallacy as a guide, we 
can say that an inductive argument is fallacious just in case having 
all true premises does not make it improbable that the conclusion is 
false. To be sure, what this characterization fails to specify is the 
degree of improbability necessary for the inductive argument to be 
fallacious. Whereas any deductive argument that falls short of va-
lidity is deductively fallacious, there is no commensurate absolute 
dividing line for inductive fallacies. Except for the limiting case in 
which the truth of the premises of the argument has no affect on the 
improbability of the conclusion being false, all inductive arguments 
have some degree of strength. Thus, there is a subjective, epistemic 
element present in inductive fallacies not present in deductive fal-
lacies. In order to capture this subjective, epistemic element, we 
can say that when the relevant improbability is less than what the 
framer of the argument intended or is less than what the framer of 
the argument presents it as having, the conclusion lacks strong in-
ductive support. From this it follows that what makes an inductive 
argument fallacious is that the improbability of the conclusion be-
ing false, on the assumption that the premises are all true, is either 
less than one believes the improbability is, or is less than the prob-
ability one presents the argument as having.  
 Because the epistemic context in which an inductive argument 

occurs is crucial in assessing whether the inductive argument is fal-
lacious, people often distinguish the kind of logic whose subject 
matter is inductive arguments, from the kind of logic whose subject 
matter is deductive arguments, calling the former informal logic 
and the latter formal logic. However, in as much as this suggests a 
simple dichotomy, this distinction is not quite right, and what we 
really have is more of a spectrum of possible positions than a di-
chotomy. On one side of the spectrum53 are deductive arguments, 

                                                 
52 See Haack, pp. 22-23. 
53 See Walton, 2007: p. 14, and Walton, 2008: p. 13. 



Andrew C. Ward 10 

which are fallacious just in case they are deductively invalid. A 
step removed from this are inductive arguments where, although 
the structure is identified by uncovering the logical forms of the 
natural language sentences making up the arguments, analysis must 
take account both of probabilistic rules of evidence and the epis-
temic context of the argument.54 Further along on the spectrum are 
inductive arguments whose analysis does not require identifying 
the logical forms, if any, of the natural language sentences making 
up the arguments. This is the sense of informal logic captured in 
Johnson’s claim that the “province of informal logic is argumenta-
tion, or as I prefer, the practice of argumentation.”55 For these in-
ductive arguments, the relevant rules are, as Wright notes, rules of 
conversation “governing moves in a forensic language game sub-
serving dialectical goals, notably persuasion.”56 While such rules 
may bear some similarity to probabilistic rules of evidence, in fact 
they may be quite different.57 Because they serve as broad norms 
for dialectical systems58 in which argumentation occurs, such rules 
are more like what Jaakko Hintikka calls “strategic rules” and 
much less like the “definitory rules” that characterize much of what 
we typically think of as logic.59 Finally, at the far end of the spec-
trum relative to valid deductive arguments, are those inductive ar-
guments (recalling that an argument is inductive because it is being 
evaluated according to the standard that the truth of some claims 
provide non-conclusive evidence for the truth of another claim) in 
which there is no evidential link between the premises and the con-
clusion.  
 Within this general framework, although informal logic deals 

with the evaluation of inductive arguments, analyses of inductive 
arguments that assume the existence of and therefore focus on the 
logical form of the natural language sentences constituting the ar-
guments and, concomitantly, use relatively formal methods of as-
sessment, are more akin to formal logical analyses than those 
analyses that lack this focus. In contrast, analyses of inductive ar-
guments that focus on arguments understood as speech acts gov-
erned by rules in forensic language games subserving dialogical 
goals are, typically, much further removed from the methods used 

                                                 
54 See Yezzi. 
55 Johnson, 1999: p. 272. 
56 Wright, 1995: p. 567. 
57  For example, Eemeren and Houtlosser, 2006: p. 15, write that in “pragma-
dialectics, the critical norms of reasonableness authorizing the speech acts in 
various stages of a critical discussion are accounted for in a set of dialectical 
rules.”  In contrast with the broadly functionalist character of pragma-dialectics, 
see Goodwin, pp. 83-87. 
58 See Hamblin, pp. 255ff.  
59 Hintikka, pp. 36-39. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 11 

in formal logic.60 For these kinds of inductive arguments, fallacies 
are, as noted by Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser, “distor-
tions in an argumentative exchange”61 in which there occur “dis-
cussion moves that violate in a particular way a particular rule for 
critical discussion that applies to a particular stage of the discus-
sion.”62 The upshot is that for both deductive and the various kinds 
of inductive arguments, and so too for formal and informal logic, 
the common concept of fallacy is that the premises fail, in one way 
or another, to provide the needed (relevant) evidence for the con-
clusion. Of course, what counts as the “needed evidence”, as well 
as what counts as a failure, will vary depending on whether the ar-
gument is deductive or, if inductive, what kind of inductive argu-
ment it is. For example, in the case of arguments understood as 
speech acts governed by rules in forensic language games subserv-
ing dialogical goals, failures of evidence (and so what constitutes a 
fallacy) are determined by the rules of the relevant language game.  
Still, the underlying idea, as suggested by Polycarp Ikuenobe, is 
that, broadly, a fallacy is “an error in the method of justification 
that results in a failure to provide relevant evidence to satisfy cer-
tain standards of adequate proof.”63 However, since errors in justi-
fication can occur in different ways, this characterization of a fal-
lacy certainly does not count as a “theoretical unification” or a the-
ory of fallacies, but only as a general remark about a common 
characteristic of all fallacies. 
  
 
3. The Genetic Fallacy 
 

Given the distinction between deductive and inductive fallacies 
outlined above, how do genealogical critiques commit the genetic 
fallacy? To answer this question, let us look at a simple, sample 
genealogical argument. Suppose I claim that someone is closely 
monitoring all my daily activities. You, though, reject that claim 
(that is, you assert that my claim is false) because you believe 
(truly, as it happens) both that I am a paranoid schizophrenic and 
that my claim about someone closely monitoring all my daily ac-
tivities is largely a result of my being a paranoid schizophrenic. 
Thus, it is possible to express your genealogical critique of my 
claim in the following way: 
 

                                                 
60 This is consonant with the claim in Govier, 1987: p. 14, that informal logicians 
contend that “the appraisal of natural language arguments requires something 
other than translation into a technical formal language and application of formal 
rules to test validity.” Also, see Johnson1999: p. 268. 
61 Eemeren and Houtlosser, 2007: p. 244. 
62 Eemeren and Houtlosser, 2003: p. 389. 
63 Ikuenobe, p. 190. 



Andrew C. Ward 12 

P1. Andy claims that someone is closely monitoring all 
his daily activities. 

P2. The principal reason that Andy claims that someone is 
closely monitoring all his daily activities is because 
he is a paranoid schizophrenic, and the belief that 
someone is closely monitoring all his daily activities 
is a symptom of that schizophrenia.64 

C. Therefore, Andy’s claim that someone is closely moni-
toring all his daily activities is false. 

 
 The critic of genealogical critiques would say that even if we 

assume that the two premises are true, the fallacy exemplified by 
this argument comes from supposing that the truth of the two prem-
ises provides support for the truth of the conclusion. As already 
noted though, there are two different ways to understand “support”; 
on the one hand, the support could be deductive, while on the other 
hand, it could be inductive. If the critic of the argument claims that 
the genealogical critique is a deductive argument, and so evaluates 
it according to deductive standards, then the question is whether the 
argument is valid or invalid. The full answer to whether the argu-
ment is valid or invalid depends on an account of how to determine 
the logical form of the natural languages making up the argument, 
a specification of criteria for when an argument form is a valid or 
invalid argument form, and an application of the criteria to the ar-
gument form of the genealogical critique. Unfortunately, even if 
the sentences in the genealogical critique did not include inten-
sional contexts (e.g., “claims that …”), determining the logical 
form of a natural language sentence (or even if a natural language 
sentence has a single logical form) is a contentious matter.65 For 
instance, some writers (e.g., Donald Davidson) believe that the goal 
of specifying “the” logical structure of a sentence is really part of a 
more general project of specifying the truth conditions for the lan-
guage of which the sentence is a part.66 Not only does this make the 
discovery of a sentence’s logical form part of a very complex em-
pirical investigation, but, as Richard Grandy notes, if one “attempts 
to identify logical form with definition of truth, one must be pre-
pared to accept the existence of a multiplicity of forms relative to 
diverse metalanguages with different vocabularies and logics.”67 
Moreover, as intimated by Mark Sainsbury, the aim of segregating 

                                                 
64 See the list of symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia prepared by the Mayo 
Clinic Staff at 
 http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/paranoid-
schizophrenia/DS00862/DSECTION=symptoms. 
65 See Burge, pp. 201-206. 
66 See, for example, the discussion in LePore and Ludwig.  Also, see Evans, pp. 
199-209, and Jackson, pp. 350ff. 
67 Grandy, p. 163. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 13 

formal validity in natural languages from other kinds of assess-
ments of arguments threatens to ignore how our non-formal, per-
haps vague notions of what counts as a good argument places con-
straints on assignments of logical forms.68 Still, even with these 
(and other assorted) difficulties, and with no worked out theoretical 
account of logical form, suppose that it happens, as a matter of fact, 
that all my daily activities are, unbeknownst to you who made the 
genealogical critique, really being closely monitored by people 
who are concerned about my well-being. In other words, suppose 
that the conclusion of the genealogical critique is actually false 
(even though both of the premises are, ex hypothesi, true). Inas-
much as the two premises being true and the conclusion false cap-
tures what Gerald Massey calls the “trivial logic-indifferent method 
of proving invalidity”,69 we can say, even with the caveats already 
made, that the argument is invalid and, consequently, deductively 
fallacious. 
 In contrast, if the critic of the argument claims that the genea-

logical critique is an inductive argument, then the question is 
whether the truth of the premises makes the improbability of the 
conclusion being false less than one believes the improbability is, 
or less than the probability one presents the argument as having. As 
already noted, there is not a univocal concept of an inductive ar-
gument. An argument is an inductive argument because of a deci-
sion to assess the argument according to whether the premises, if 
true, make it improbable, but not impossible, that the conclusion is 
false. However, because there are different ways to implement this 
assessment (e.g., quasi-formally or using rules in forensic language 
games subserving dialogical goals), it follows that there are several 
different ways for an argument to be an inductive argument. Thus, 
a full accounting of whether the sample genealogic critique is a 
strong inductive argument needs to assess, carefully and fully, the 
critique using each of the implementations of the inductive assess-
ment of the critique. Such a detailed analysis, even for the rela-
tively simple case of the sample genealogical critique, lies beyond 
the scope of this paper.  
 Nevertheless, even though it involves a bit of “hand-waving”, 

it does seem plausible to claim that, under ordinary circumstances, 
the sample genealogical argument, when assessed according to in-
ductive criteria, is weak. More specifically, even if the premises are 
true, under ordinary circumstances the truth of the premises, by 
themselves, seem to have a relatively weak evidential relation to 
the conclusion, and so do not make it improbable that the conclu-
sion is false. After all, if I truly am a paranoid schizophrenic, and 
this is known to people having an interest in my welfare, then my 

                                                 
68 See Sainsbury, pp. 332-334. 
69 Massey, 1981: p. 494. 



Andrew C. Ward 14 

being a paranoid schizophrenic is likely to make it more, not less 
likely that my daily activities are being closely monitored. Notice 
that this does not mean that an expanded version of the genealogi-
cal critique, in which we include other premises, needs also be a 
weak inductive argument. For example, suppose that we include 
the premises that I have no close friends, that there are no people 
very much interested in my welfare, and that my being a paranoid 
schizophrenic is a relatively recent phenomenon. The addition of 
these premises, on the assumption that the added premises are true, 
would increase the improbability that the conclusion is false. As 
noted earlier, an assessment of the strength of an inductive argu-
ment depends on the epistemic context of the argument; this means 
that inductive arguments, unlike deductive arguments, are, in this 
respect, non-monotonic. However, whether it is possible to recon-
struct a related, but different, stronger inductive argument is beside 
the point in the case of the present, sample genealogic critique. On 
the assumption that the framer of the argument presented it in good 
faith as an attempt to demonstrate the improbability of the conclu-
sion being false, then because the premises, if true, do not, under 
ordinary circumstances, make it as improbable that the conclusion 
is false as the framer believes, it follows that the genealogical ar-
gument is inductively fallacious. The upshot is that if either validity 
or (sufficiently) strong inductive support is at least one of the im-
portant criteria by which we judge the merits of an argument, then 
it appears that people who use genealogical critiques are, at the 
very least, often purveyors of bad arguments.  
 For at least two different reasons though, appearances are mis-

leading. If we take the proffered example as typical of genealogical 
critiques, then the problem with such critiques is not, at least di-
rectly, the evidential link (deductive or inductive) between the 
premises and the conclusion, and so not a problem either of validity 
or of inductive strength. To see this, consider the general form of 
genealogical critiques suggested, at least in part, by the sample ge-
nealogical argument: 
 
 
 
 
 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 15 

 
So expressed, it is important to distinguish two questions from one 

another, and answer each. The first question is whether genealogi-
cal critiques formulated in this way are fallacious. On the assump-
tion that the example considered earlier is typical of  
genealogical critiques, the answer to this question is “yes”, cri-
tiques formulated in this way are usually fallacious. Genealogical 
critiques are fallacious in the deductive sense and, usually, in the 
inductive sense of fallacy. Contrary to the claim of the genealogical 
critique, it is not the case either that, when evaluated by deductive 
criteria, the conclusion must be true if the premises are all true, or 
when evaluated by inductive criteria (that may be quasi-formal or 
dialogical), that it is improbable that the conclusion is false if the 
premises are all true. 
 However, one possible response for advocates of genealogical 

critiques is that this criticism applies only to genealogical critiques 
that are incompletely stated. For example, in the case of the sample 
genealogical critique, suppose that we added the premise “Anytime 
that being a paranoid schizophrenic is the principal reason for why 
a person makes a particular claim, then that claim is false.” In this 
case, the revised genealogical critique is valid. Moreover, if the ar-
gument is valid, then, assessed by inductive criteria, the argument 
is inductively strong as well. After all, since, in a valid argument, 
the truth of the premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion, 
then it also follows that the truth of the premises makes it improb-
able (in fact, impossible) that the conclusion is false. The general 
point then, reflecting a variation of what David Hitchcock calls 
“methodological deductivism”,70 is that it is possible to turn any 
invalid genealogical critique into a valid genealogical critique (and 
so too, a strong inductive genealogical critique) by treating the 
original argument as enthymematic and adding the “appropriate” 
universal premise.  
 The problem, though, is that the validity of the argument (and 

so too the inductive strength of the argument when assessed by in-
                                                 
70 See Hitchcock, p. 63. 

Formulation 1 
Claim: C is a claim made by some person. 
Genealogical Critique: Concerning the claim that 
C, it is possible to construct an argument having as 
one of its premises the reasons that led to the cri-
tiqued person making the claim that C, where the 
premises of this new argument logically imply that C 
is false.  This entails that the critiqued person is not 
justified in making the claim that C. 

 



Andrew C. Ward 16 

ductive criteria) comes at the cost of the soundness of the argu-
ment. Although it may be the case in a particular instance that the 
claim of a paranoid schizophrenic, made principally because the 
person is a paranoid schizophrenic, is false, this is not generally 
and unqualifiedly the case. Analogously, adding the premise may 
mean that the argument, when evaluated according to inductive cri-
teria, is inductively strong (since the truth of the premises necessi-
tate the truth of the conclusion), but this comes at the cost of in-
cluding a premise in the argument that is not true. Of course, in the 
case of an inductive argument, the premise could be something 
weaker than a universal generalization. For example, one could add 
the premise “Most times that being a paranoid schizophrenic is the 
principal reason for why a person makes a particular claim, then 
that claim is false.”71 However, since we can imagine cases in 
which it is not the case that the paranoid schizophrenic’s claim, 
though principally a result of the schizophrenia, is false, it is diffi-
cult to assess whether it is true in most cases that such a claim is 
false. For example, short of definitional fiat, it seems implausible to 
assume that the belief forming mechanism associated with being a 
paranoid schizophrenic (even if one could narrowly individuate the 
mechanism in this way) is highly anti-reliable, something that 
would, if true, warrant the needed premise. At the very least, 
whether the beliefs of a paranoid schizophrenic, caused principally 
by the schizophrenia, are false (or likely to be false), seems to be 
tied tightly to the specifics of the case. This suggests that without 
considerably more information, such a reformulated argument 
would not have the strength that the framer of the argument be-
lieved or intended it to have. If there were no good, independent 
reasons to accept the additional premises as true, the appropriate 
response would be to concede that if the premises were all true it 
would be improbable that the conclusion is false, but that without 
good reasons to accept the truth of the premises, there is no good 
reason to accept the conclusion as true. In either case then, while it 
may be possible to augment the sample genealogical argument, and 
so turn it into a deductively valid or formally72 strong inductive ar-
gument, such augmentation typically comes at the cost of requiring 
the use of a false premise or a premise we cannot simply assume is 
true. Thus, such augmentation, without independent justification 
for accepting the truth of the premises, either does not increase the 
likelihood that the conclusion is true, or does so in a way in which 
there is no justification for believing that the likelihood has been 
increased. In the latter case, as C.L. Hamblin notes, the argument 

                                                 
71 See Klement, p. 387, for a version of this premise making use of a reliabilist 
theory of epistemology. 
72 The qualification highlights that a different story is needed when the inductive 
argument is assessed according to dialectical criteria. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 17 

“will be quite useless” in establishing the conclusion so long as no 
one knows whether the premises are true.73 The important point 
here, regarding conflations of the context of discovery and the con-
text of justification, is that we have framed the problem with ge-
nealogical critiques independently of the possible conflation of the 
two contexts. If there are problems with genealogical critiques, 
they are not exclusively problems caused by conflating the context 
of discovery and the context of justification. 
 The second question is whether it would follow, even if the 

genealogical critique were a valid or inductively strong argument, 
that the critiqued person was not justified in holding the belief. It is 
here that the conflation of contexts of discovery and justification, 
which is the traditional criticism of genealogical critiques (and the 
reason that people refer to them as genetic fallacies), comes to the 
fore. Presumably, people who advocate genealogical critiques be-
lieve that successful logical implications translate into constraints 
on psychological inferences (reasoning). In particular, suppose that 
we follow Walton and say that reasoning “is the making or granting 
of assumptions called premises (starting points) and the process of 
moving toward conclusions (end points) from these assumptions by 
means of warrants.”74 Given this characterization, one interpreta-
tion of genealogical critiques is that they use the elements in the 
reasoning (inferring) process of a person to form an argument 
whose conclusion is the negation of the person’s claim. Subject to 
the caveats noted above, since the resulting argument is invalid or 
inductively weak, this demonstrates that one or more inferential 
warrants have been violated and, consequently, that it is not the 
case that person’s claim is justified. The important point here is the 
movement from information about the psychological processes (in-
ference) that led to the claim (context of discovery), to a recon-
structed valid or inductively strong argument (context of justifica-
tion), back to an assertion about the permissibility of the person’s 
inference. Thus, the genealogical critique uses both the context of 
discovery and the context of justification, and supposes that each 
context either provides information for, or places constraints on, 
the other. 
 We have now reached the central concern of those who believe 

that genealogical critiques are fallacious. The problem, put quite 
simply, is that genealogical critiques treat inference and implication 
conditionally; implication is conditional on inference, and infer-
ence is conditional on implication. However, according to Gilbert 
Harman,75 it is one thing to say that the truth of the premises of an 
argument imply the conclusion of that argument, and it quite an-

                                                 
73 Hamblin, p. 236. Also, see Pinto, pp. 117-118. 
74 Walton, 1990: p. 403.  
75 Harman, p. 18.  Also, see Wesley Salmon, p. 12. 



Andrew C. Ward 18 

other thing to say that if you believe that certain propositions are 
true, you should (or may) infer that another proposition is true. Im-
plication is a logical relationship between premises and a conclu-
sion in an argument, whereas inference is a relationship between 
asserted premises and an asserted conclusion in argumentation.76 
For Harman, and so too people who worry that genealogical cri-
tiques conflate the context of discovery with the context of justifi-
cation, implication is a logical relationship between premises and a 
conclusion, whereas inference is a psychological transition from 
one set of claims/beliefs77 to another (possibly new) set of 
claims/beliefs based on or drawn from the old claims/beliefs.78 Re-
flecting the legacy of logical positivism’s and the ordinary lan-
guage movement’s bifurcation of epistemology and psychology,79 
in Harman’s view the question of whether an implication is correct 
or incorrect does not have any direct bearing on the question of 
whether you should (or may) infer that the conclusion is true. As 
Alvin Goldman writes, logic, at least when that logic is deductive 
or the more formal portion of inductive logic, “is completely silent 
about cognitive states; its subject matter is wholly different.”80 In 
the case of inference, which is a psychological phenomenon, the 
question is whether the non-logical, psychological-causal relation-
ship between the origins of the claims/beliefs in the premises, and 
the claim/belief in the conclusion is an appropriate psychological-
causal relationship.81 In contrast, in the case of implication, the 
question is whether the right logical (and so evidential) relationship 
exists between the premises and the conclusion. What this means is 
that inference, as a psychological activity, has to do with the con-
text of discovery, while implication, as a logical (evidential) rela-
tionship between premises and a conclusion, has to do with the 
context of justification.  
 Given this distinction, and the sharp line drawn between them, 

the principal problem of genealogical critiques is that they run to-
gether the context of discovery with context of justification rather 
than keeping them separate. The standards of logical implication 
say nothing about what inferences are permissible, let alone what 
inferences one should or should not draw. Conversely, the stan-
dards of inference, being psychological-causal in nature, say noth-

                                                 
76 See Goldman, 1999: pp. 134-136. 
77 I am, in this paper, assuming a strong connection between claims and beliefs; 
claims are expressions of beliefs. However, the more one understands claims as a 
kind of assertion, there are good reasons to think that claims are not (at least not 
with qualification) expressions of beliefs. See, for example, Dummett, p. 311 and 
Milne, pp. 269ff. 
78 See Winters, p. 202. 
79 Goldman, 1985: p. 30. 
80 Goldman, 1985: p. 42.  Also, see Johnson, 1999: p. 270. 
81 See Goldman, 1985: pp. 33, 36, and Goldman, 1999: p. 29. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 19 

ing about what implications are valid or inductively strong. As 
Goldman remarks, rules “for good argumentation should be distin-
guished from rules for good arguments”.82 Arguably, this confla-
tion of (logical) implication with (cognitive) inference is what 
really lies behind saying that the fallaciousness of genealogical cri-
tiques rests in their conflating contexts of discovery (inference) 
with contexts of justification (implication).83 This also explains 
why some people84 classify genetic fallacies under the more gen-
eral rubric of “fallacies of relevance”85; unless one is willing to ac-
cept some kind of psychologism, the context of discovery is not 
relevant to the context of justification. Significantly, this also 
places the traditional account of so-called genetic fallacies, under-
stood as conflations of contexts of justification with contexts of 
discovery, squarely in the realm of mistakes in the applications of 
formal or quasi-formal implication.  
 Perhaps though, this is not the whole story and advocates of 

genealogical critiques really have a different target. Although often 
framed in a way that might suggest otherwise, perhaps the true 
purpose of genealogical critiques is to undermine, indirectly, 
claims by criticizing the arguments people would use in support of 
their claims if asked to provide such an argument. Here, at least, 
advocates of genealogical critiques have moved away from conflat-
ing the contexts of discovery and justification, and have focused 
directly on the context of justification. So understood, genealogical 
critiques have a different structure: 
 

                                                 
82 Goldman, 1999: p. 135. 
83 This also fits with Cohen and Nagel’s, p. 388, characterization of genetic fal-
lacies as occurring when one supposes that “an actual history of any science, art, 
or social institution can take the place of a logical analysis of … [an argument’s] 
structure.” 
84 See, for example, Engel, pp. 198-199. 
85 See Klement, p. 385, who writes that the “genetic fallacy is usually seen as 
falling in the category of fallacies of relevance”.  



Andrew C. Ward 20 

 
 Given this characterization, the feature to notice is that if we 

were to assess an argument’s merit only in terms of whether or not 
the premises, if true, either necessitate the truth of the conclusion or 
make it improbable that the conclusion is false, then a genealogical 
critique does not directly address the question of an argument’s 
merit. For example, suppose that Jason claims that all dolphins are 
fish, and that, when asked to justify this claim, offers the following 
argument: 
 

P1. Every animal that lives in the ocean is a fish. 
P2. Dolphins are animals that live in the ocean. 
 C. Therefore, dolphins are fish. 

 
 At this point it is possible to construct a genealogical critique 

of Jason’s claim that dolphins are fish by asserting that the reason 
Jason claims that the first premise, that every animal living in the 
ocean is a fish, is true, is that people who knew nothing about dol-
phins were his teachers. These people mistakenly taught Jason that 
every animal living in an ocean is a fish. We can even suppose that 
this sort of critique does provide a good reason for supposing that 
the first premise in the argument is false. All this can be true, and 
yet none of this has any bearing on whether or not Jason’s argu-
ment is valid. Moreover, since, in fact, the argument is valid, then 
the argument is a “good one” if only assessed either according to 
deductive criteria or according to inductive criteria (keeping impli-
cation and inference separate in the case of inductive assessment). 
Thus, if the goodness of an argument is only a function of whether 
the argument is either valid or inductively strong (again, keeping 

Formulation 2 
 

Argument:  If asked to do so, person A would support 
her or his claim that C with the argument P1, P2, …,  Pn 
therefore C 
Genealogical Critique:  Concerning the set of prem-
ises {P1, P2, …, Pn}, there is at least one member of the 
set held true because of its origin (cause), and it is pos-
sible to construct an argument making use of this fact 
whose conclusion is that at least one member of the set 
{P1, P2, … Pn} is false.  Thus, because at least one 
member of {P1, P2, … Pn} is false, the truth of C does 
not follow from {P1, P2, … Pn}. This entails that the 
critiqued person is not justified in making the claim 
that C. 

 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 21 

implication and inference separate in the case of inductive assess-
ment), then the genealogical critique does not say anything about 
whether the argument is a good one. Put a bit differently, the ge-
nealogical critique, on this new construal, does not distinguish 
valid arguments from invalid arguments. Mutatis mutandis, as long 
as we insist on a sharp separation of implication and inference in 
the case of inductive assessment, the genealogical argument does 
not distinguish strong inductive arguments from weak inductive 
arguments. Instead, on this new construal, if the genealogical cri-
tique of an argument has any force, it is only as it pertains to 
whether all the premises of the argument are true, not to whether 
the premises logically imply (inductively or deductively) the con-
clusion. Therefore, let us turn directly to the question of what merit 
genealogical critiques have viz. a viz. the question of whether the 
premises of an argument are all true. 
 Even when restricted to the issue of whether the premises of an 

argument are all true, it initially seems that a genealogical critique 
of an argument need not be particularly worrisome to an advocate 
of that argument. For example, suppose Jason claims that the cube 
root of 27 is greater than 2, and when asked to justify his claim, 
offers the following argument: 
 
 

P1. The cube root of 27 is 3. 
P2. 3 is greater than 2. 
 C. Therefore, the cube root of 27 is greater than 2. 

 
 Let us further suppose that you happen to know a rather inter-

esting fact about Jason—viz., that the principal reason Jason be-
lieves that the cube root of 27 is 3 is because of an early childhood 
head trauma. Jason hitting his head as a child is the cause of his 
belief that the cube root of 27 is 3. If now, rather perversely per-
haps, you set out to offer a genealogical critique of Jason’s argu-
ment, you might offer something like the following: 
 

P1. The principal reason that Jason claims that the cube 
root of 27 is 3 is because of an early childhood head 
trauma he suffered. 

P2. Any claim caused principally by an early childhood 
head trauma is false. 

 C. Therefore, it is false that the cube root of 27 is 3. 
 

 Here, though, we are back to the point made earlier in connec-
tion with the first formulation of genealogical critiques. Although 
the argument is deductively valid (and, by default, inductively 
strong as long as a sharp distinction is made between implication 
and inference in the case of inductive assessment), there is no good 



Andrew C. Ward 22 

reason to accept the truth of the premise asserting that any claim 
caused principally by an early childhood head traumas is false. In-
deed, if it is in fact true that the only reason that Jason claims that 
the cube root of 27 is 3 is because of an early childhood head 
trauma he suffered, then the truth of 3 being the cube root of 27 
demonstrates that the premise is, in fact, false. Thus, although the 
argument may be valid, and so too inductively strong as long as a 
sharp distinction is made between implication and inference in the 
case of inductive assessment, it is not sound.  
 Again, though, as we did earlier, we could treat the genealogi-

cal critique as an inductive argument (assess it exclusively by in-
ductive criteria) and weaken the second premise to something like, 
“Most claims caused principally by an early childhood head trauma 
are false”. If true, this premise, in conjunction with the premise 
stating that the principal reason that Jason claims that the cube root 
of 27 is 3 is because of an early childhood head trauma he suffered, 
would make it improbable that the conclusion was false. However, 
what justification is there for accepting the truth of the premise that 
most claims caused exclusively by an early childhood head trauma 
are false? This is an assertion whose truth depends on complex em-
pirical investigations; it may be true, but it is not obviously true. Of 
course, we could emphasize the conditional nature of the conclu-
sion by saying that it is improbable that the conclusion is false if 
the premises are true, and that we do not know whether all the 
premises are true. However, this does not provide any justification 
for claiming, without the appropriate conditionalizing, that it is im-
probable that the conclusion is false. In this case, we are back to 
Hamblin’s point, noted earlier, that so long as one does not know 
(or, following Pinto, have justifiable reason to believe86) that all the 
premises are true, the argument will be useless in establishing the 
truth of the conclusion.87 Thus, even if we reconstruct the genea-
logical critique as an inductive argument, unless we have inde-
pendent justification for accepting the truth of the premises of the 
genealogical argument, the “use value” of the argument is at best 
problematic, and at worst very weak. 
 
 
4. The real function of genealogical critiques 
 

It is just at this point that the advocate of genealogical critiques 
may want to pull up short. It is altogether possible that an advocate 
of genealogical critiques is willing to concede that such critiques 
are either invalid or, when made valid by the addition of one or 
more premises, unsound. Moreover, it is quite possible that such an 

                                                 
86 See Pinto, pp. 118-120. 
87 Hamblin, p. 236. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 23 

advocate is also willing to concede that genealogical critiques are 
either inductively weak or inductively strong (excepting the limit-
ing case of unsound, valid genealogical critiques) only if one ac-
cepts the truth of premises for which there is little or no evidential 
support. Nonetheless, the advocate of genealogical argument may 
also go on to insist that all of this misses the point of genealogical 
critiques. Although the purpose genealogical critiques is to under-
mine a person’s claim by critiquing the argument a person would 
provide, if asked, in support of his or her claim (and, again, this 
places genealogical critiques squarely back in the context of justifi-
cation), this can be understood in at least two different ways. On 
the one hand, we can understand genealogical arguments as deduc-
tively demonstrating that a particular claim is false because of facts 
about its origins. As has already been shown though, the problem 
with this understanding of genealogical critiques is that genealogi-
cal critiques are most often either invalid, or, because their validity 
depends on being reconstructed with a patently false universal 
premise, unsound. Thus, even if genealogical arguments avoid con-
flating contexts of discovery with contexts of justification, they are 
still either invalid or unsound, and so may be dismissed as lacking 
anything other than, perhaps, rhetorical value.  
 However, there is another, more modest understanding of the 

role played by genealogical critiques. According to this more mod-
est understanding, the purpose of genealogical critiques is to call 
into question the assumption made by the person making the argu-
ment to support his or her claim that all the premises of the pre-
sented argument are true. The genealogical critique seeks to ac-
complish this task by presenting an inductively strong argument 
whose conclusion is that either at least one of the premises of the 
critiqued argument is false, or there is at least one premise for 
which we do not have any justifiable reason to assume its truth. 
What differentiates this inductively strong argument from its valid 
counterpart is that while the valid form of the genealogical critique 
makes use of a universal premise for which there are good reasons 
to think it is false (thus making the argument unsound), the induc-
tively strong argument makes use of a weaker premise whose truth 
is possible, though perhaps not known. The advocate of the genea-
logical critique is thereby focusing on the conditional nature of cri-
tiqued argument. Yes, if we accept the premises of the argument, 
then depending on whether we assess the argument by deductive or 
inductive standards, the argument is a good one; it is either valid or 
inductively strong. However, because of the genealogical critique, 
we have justification for claiming that either at least one of the 
premises of the critiqued argument is false, or there is at least one 
premise for which we do not have any justifiable reason to assume 
its truth. If at least one of the premises is false, then there is no jus-
tification for accepting the conclusion of the critiqued argument 



Andrew C. Ward 24 

until we have answered the challenge of the genealogical critique 
by either showing that the troublesome premise is, in fact, true, or 
we have replaced the troublesome premise with one whose truth is 
not in doubt. Alternatively, if there is at least one premise for 
which we do not have any justifiable reason to assume its truth, 
then there is no justification for accepting the conclusion of the cri-
tiqued argument until the truth-value of the troublesome premise is 
established. If the truth-value turns out to be false, either the person 
will have to give up the argument in support of the claim, thereby 
undermining the claim, or the person will have to replace the trou-
blesome premise with a different one whose truth is not problem-
atic. If it is possible to establish the truth of the premise, then the 
person is justified in making the claim. That does not mean that the 
genealogical critique was useless; the genealogical critique still led 
to a more careful consideration about the truth of a claim (the trou-
blesome premise) whose truth was not obvious. Thus, on this more 
modest version, the conclusion of a genealogical critique is not that 
a held belief is false, but rather that the truth of the conclusion is 
less than what the person making the claim believes it to be.  
 If we understand genealogical critiques in this more modest 

way, then even if genealogical critiques are invalid, and so falla-
cious in the framework of deductive logic, they often can have an 
important part to play the in the broader practice of inquiry. Sup-
pose, for instance, that it turns out that some of our fears and de-
sires either incline us to accept as true, claims that are not true, or 
to accept, uncritically, certain of our claims as true. If we can show 
that an advocated argument is using one or more of these claims as 
a premise, then it seems that we ought to take seriously a genea-
logical critique of that argument.88 What the genealogic critique 
does is to call into question whether we ought to accept as true the 
claims that we make when constructing an argument. In doing this, 
the genealogical critique demonstrates why even though the cri-
tiqued argument may be deductively valid or inductively strong, 
there is less justification for accepting the truth of the conclusion of 
the argument than what the person making the argument believes 
there is. Thus, in its focus on the acceptability of the truths of the 
premises of an argument for a claim, the modest genealogical cri-
tique remains entirely within the context of justification and avoids 
the category mistake that comes from conflating the context of jus-
tification with the context of discovery. At the same time, this un-
derstanding of genealogical critiques rejects an entirely formalized 
“logic of justification” that focuses exclusively on the forms of ar-
guments. The historical context, psychological genesis and devel-
opment, and socio-political-economic conditions that underlie the 

                                                 
88 See Hanson, 1967a: p. 323, who writes that philosophy of science should 
properly concern itself with the ideas behind scientific discoveries.   



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 25 

acceptance of an argument’s premises may be, and often are, rele-
vant in assessing the soundness of the argument, and so assessing 
whether there is less justification for accepting the truth of the con-
clusion of the argument than what the person making the argument 
believes that it is.  In this sense, advocates of modest genealogical 
critiques are able to address Lorraine Code’s concern: 
 

 The positivistic separation of the contexts of discovery 
and justification produces the conclusion that even though 
information gathering (discovery) may sometimes be con-
taminated by the circumstantial peculiarities of everyday 
life, justificatory procedures can effectively purify the final 
cognitive product—the knowledge—from any such taint.”89 

 
 Equally important, and implicit in the above comments, genea-

logical critiques also have a place in dialogical conceptions of ar-
gumentation. Recall the point made earlier that it is possible to un-
derstand inductive arguments as speech acts governed by rules in 
forensic language games subserving dialogical goals.90 For these 
kinds of inductive arguments, fallacies are “distortions in an argu-
mentative exchange”91 in which there occur “discussion moves that 
violate in a particular way a particular rule for critical discussion 
that applies to a particular stage of the discussion.”92 In this con-
text, the role of genealogical critiques is to call attention to possible 
violations in the rules for critical discussion that result from un-
critically accepting the truths of claims made in the discussion. The 
genealogical critique, when taken seriously, asks the parties in-
volved in the activity of argumentation to “stand back” and criti-
cally assess whether the rules governing the activity of argumenta-
tion are being followed and whether there are good reasons for ac-
cepting (if only provisionally) the truth of the various claims that, 
in part, constitute the activity. Thus, the value of genealogical cri-
tiques is not limited to the more traditional, non-dialogical concep-
tions of argument and implication; the value also extends to 
pragma-dialectical conceptions of argumentative discourse. 
   
5. Conclusion 
 

In summary, there are at least three important characteristics of the 
revised, modest genealogical critique. First, the genealogical cri-
                                                 
89 Code, p. 26.  
90 This is consonant with the claim in Govier, 1987: p. 14, that informal logicians 
contend that “the appraisal of natural language arguments requires something 
other than translation into a technical formal language and application of formal 
rules to test validity.” Also, see Johnson1999: p. 268. 
91 Eemeren and Houtlosser, 2007: p. 244. 
92 Eemeren and Houtlosser, 2003: p. 389. 



Andrew C. Ward 26 

tique often focuses on specific dispositional tendencies of people to 
accept or reject beliefs, and not principally on characteristics of the 
beliefs themselves. Suppose, for example, that I am naturally dis-
posed to mistrust anything about the environment that a U.S. Re-
publican party member says. Based on this disposition, I make a 
variety of claims relating to U.S. Republican party views about en-
vironmental policies. Here, because my claims reflect a reactionary 
disposition on my part to Republican claims, the purpose of a ge-
nealogical critique is to show that people ought to be careful in 
their acceptance of what I say and advocate concerning U.S. Re-
publican party environmental views. Importantly, it does not fol-
low from this that my claims about U.S. Republican party envi-
ronmental views are false. All that follows is that there may be 
good inductive evidence to support the view that one or more of the 
premises I would use in arguments supporting my claims are false, 
and that before either accepting or rejecting my claims, we need to 
consider this evidence. So understood there is an important similar-
ity between the (proper) role of genealogical arguments and Alan 
Brinton’s rhetorical view of ad hominem arguments. For Brinton, a 
good ad hominem argument criticizes the character of a person (the 
person’s deliberative ethos) and so calls into question whether the 
claims of a person should carry the weight that they are given.93 
Analogously, the purpose of genealogical critiques of my claims is 
to provide inductive arguments that challenge, but do not necessar-
ily refute the arguments I would, if asked, offer in support of my 
claims about U.S. Republican party environmental views.  
 Second, even within this modest framework, the goal of genea-

logical critiques is too often overstated94. The critique, by itself, 
does not conclusively undermine an argument95, nor does it throw 
the value of an entire tradition of inquiry into question. More than 
this, the justification called into question is not some kind of ab-
stract, idealized justification, but rather the justification that a par-
ticular person (or group of people) has for making the claims he or 
she does in support of a conclusion. Consider, for example, case of 
physicians or medical researchers using financial support from the 
pharmaceutical industry to conduct biomedical research. A com-
mon worry is that this kind of relationship can, or at least could 
create a “conflict of interest” for those physicians or medical re-
searchers. The U.S. Institute of Medicine defines a conflict of in-
terest as “a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional 
judgment or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly in-
                                                 
93 See Brinton, pp. 51-52, 56ff.  Also, see Hinman, pp. 340, for whom the link 
between ad hominem arguments and genealogical critiques is explicit. 
94 See Crouch, 1993: p. 229, who writes that the genetic fallacy has been “used 
to discredit not only individual arguments used by philosophers, but entire ap-
proaches to issues.”  
95 See Handy, p. 28. 



The Value of Genetic Fallacies 27 

fluenced by a secondary interest.”96 This, though, is precisely the 
kind of context in which a genealogical critique is appropriate. If a 
particular group of researchers is funded by a pharmaceutical com-
pany and then publishes results that support the use of a product of 
that pharmaceutical company, then a genealogical critique, pointing 
out how published research results can sometimes be influenced by 
the research’s funding, is altogether appropriate. Such a critique 
does not entail that the published results are incorrect; the function 
of the critique is to draw attention to the need for a more critical 
evaluation of the claims made by the researchers (as well as to their 
applications of research methodology) used in support of the con-
clusions they draw from their research. What is important to keep 
in mind is that even if the genealogical critique reveals reasons for 
supposing that the arguments given by the researchers in support of 
their claims are unsound, it does not follow that one cannot in prin-
ciple give a sound argument in support of those claims. Again, the 
point to emphasize is that genealogical critiques are not “whole-
sale” refutations of the truth of claims; genealogical critiques are 
local, not global. For this reason, one needs to deploy and use ge-
nealogical arguments on a case-by-case basis.  
 Finally, the real value of the modest genealogical critique is in 

its role of reminding us that our prejudices—whatever their cause 
or character—sometimes lead us to accept as true what isn’t, and to 
unquestioningly accept ideas and practices that should give us 
pause.97 For example, studies have shown that the “vigorous mar-
keting of newer, more costly agents [pharmaceuticals] compared 
with virtually no marketing for older, off-patent drugs” leads pre-
scribing physicians and patients to prefer those drugs.98 However, 
clinical trial data and evidence-based recommendations do not sup-
port the practice as necessarily reducing adverse outcomes. Often, 
only an uncritical acceptance of the vigorous marketing leads to the 
prescribing practice or patient demand. A genealogical critique of 
arguments that a person or group of people might give to support a 
particular prescribing practice, or a particular patient preference, 
can uncover these facts about product marketing and the psychol-
ogy of patients who use the products. Such a critique could not 
only help the health and finances of patients, it could benefit a so-
ciety where the fair and equitable control of health care costs is im-
portant. Here, in its more modest home, the genealogical critique 
plays a useful and welcome role. 

                                                 
96 Steinbrook, p. 2160. 
97 Also, see Crouch, 1991: pp. 114 – 115.  
98 Fischer and Avorn, p. 1854. 



Andrew C. Ward 28 

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