Philosophy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for those interested in the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
For example,
"When responding to the interviewer's question regarding Kwanza, the senator didn't say anything about Hannuka, therefore he must be an anti-Semite."
While Hannuka and Kwanza occur during similar times of the year and are both holidays, failure to include Hannuka in a discussion about Kwanza does not provide additional insight about the responder's stance on the unmentioned topic.
I want to say "Failure-to-mention fallacy" but that isn't a thing.
This, on first glance, appears to be a non sequitur. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_(logic)) But that's a really broad category.
A more important underlying issue is that this is a type of informal fallacy here. What that means is that we can argue about whether a fallacy occurred or whether the person critiquing it was making a legitimate point (See here for more on this issue).
