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Examples, some are ridiculous: Someone refuses to buy a lab grown diamond because 'all diamonds are blood diamonds'.

We cannot buy a sports car because 'the trunks of sports cars are too small', even though this sports car has a larger than average trunk.

Someone refuses to drink wine because 'wine comes from France', even though this particular wine is from Chile.

Edwin Ashworth
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OrigamiEye
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1 Answers1

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This is simply the association fallacy.

from Wikipedia:

An association fallacy is an informal inductive fallacy of the hasty-generalization or red-herring type and which asserts, by irrelevant association and often by appeal to emotion, that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another.

Two types of association fallacies are sometimes referred to as guilt by association and honor by association.

Edwin Ashworth
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  • I'd like to see more answers before I accept because I think that "by irrelevant association and often by appeal to emotion" do not apply in this case. – OrigamiEye Nov 14 '17 at 12:12
  • 'Irrelevant association' is the nub of your question. 'Often' allows for 'not always'. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '17 at 12:16
  • Who decides an association is irrelevant? Maybe the wine drinker won't drink because wine is associated with France and they hate all things French. The same for diamonds, by buying any diamond it shows there is a market for diamonds, thus feeding a demand for blood diamonds. – OrigamiEye Nov 14 '17 at 12:37
  • You specified 'a general argument that upon inspection does not apply'. That means that someone has to be deciding that the association is irrelevant (here, pragmatics means that 'irrelevant to the argument' must be understood) / misleading. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 14 '17 at 20:47