Overgeneralization & Rule Misapplication

Abstractions about applying a general rule where it doesn't hold — fallacies like the fallacy of accident and special pleading, confirmation paradoxes like Hempel's and the raven paradox, and broken inheritance contracts like refused bequest.

5 abstractions in this family — domain-specific abstractions that sit near one another in structural-signature space (k-means over structural-signature embeddings). Each is shown with its short description.

• Fallacy of Accident — The inferential mistake of applying a general rule mechanically to a case that satisfies its terms but lies outside its intended scope — treating a defeasible generalisation, carrying an implicit ceteris paribus clause, as an exceptionless universal.
• Hempel's Paradox — Expose that treating confirmation as yes/no forces the absurd conclusion that a white shoe confirms 'all ravens are black' via the contrapositive — dissolved by grading confirmation, so a non-black non-raven confirms only by a vanishing likelihood ratio.
• Raven Paradox Of Confirmation
• Refused Bequest — Flag an inheritance edge as broken when a subclass accepts a parent's implementation but refuses part of its contract — stubbing, throwing, or silently mishandling inherited members — because that refusal is exactly the Liskov substitutability violation the is-a declaration promised not to make.
• Special Pleading — The fallacy of exempting a favored case from a general standard the arguer just invoked, without a principled basis — a consistency violation under self-serving direction, exposed by asking whether the arguer would grant the same exception to an opponent.