UGC NET Questions (Paper – 1)

The fallacy of division arises when an arguer illegitimately infers that because a group or whole has a certain property, each individual member or component must also have that property. This overlooks the possibility that properties of the whole need not be shared by its parts. Logical evaluation requires examining whether the transfer of attributes is warranted in each case. Therefore the mistaken inference described in the stem is called the fallacy of division.

Option A:
Option A, composition, is the reverse error of assuming that what is true of parts must be true of the whole. While related, it moves in the opposite direction and so does not match the stem.

Option B:
Option B is correct because division specifically covers the inference from whole to part that fails to distinguish collective and distributive properties. For example, from “the team is famous” it does not follow that every player is famous.

Option C:
Option C, false cause, involves incorrectly identifying a causal relationship between events, which is unrelated to the whole–part misreasoning noted here.

Option D:
Option D, equivocation, rests on the ambiguous use of a term in different senses within an argument, not on illegitimate distribution of a property from whole to parts.