Idioms, Fallacies, and Paradoxes

Appeal to the Stone

Argumentum ad lapidem is a logical fallacy that consists in dismissing a statement as absurd without giving proof of its absurdity.

Ad lapidem statements are fallacious because they fail to address the merits of the claim in dispute.

The name of this fallacy is derived from a famous incident in which Dr. Samuel Johnson claimed to disprove Bishop Berkeley's immaterialist philosophy (that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those minds) by kicking a large stone and asserting "I refute it thus." This action, which is said to fail to prove the existence of the stone outside the ideas formed by perception, is said to fail to contradict Berkeley's argument, and has been seen as merely dismissing it.