Editing Fallacy of composition (section)

{{Short description|Fallacy of inferring on the whole from a part}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2020}}
The '''fallacy of composition''' is an [[informal fallacy]] that arises when one [[inference|infers]] that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. A trivial example might be: "This tire is made of rubber; therefore, the vehicle of which it is a part is also made of rubber." That is fallacious, because vehicles are made with a variety of parts, most of which are not made of rubber. The fallacy of composition can apply even when a fact is true of every [[proper part]] of a greater entity, though. A more complicated example might be: "No [[atoms]] are [[Life|alive]]. Therefore, nothing made of atoms is alive." This is a statement most people would consider incorrect, due to [[emergence]], where the whole possesses properties not present in any of the parts.

The [[fallacy]] of composition is related to the fallacy of [[hasty generalization]], in which an unwarranted inference is made from a statement about a sample to a statement about the population from which the sample is drawn. The fallacy of composition is the [[Converse (logic)|converse]] of the [[fallacy of division]].