Concensus Gentium

Consensus Gentium is Latin for "agreement of the people." Such an argument rests its conclusion on the fact that people believe the conclusion. If there is universal agreement of the truth of a proposition, then, the argument goes, the proposition is likely to be true. Of course, the fact that people hold a particular belief, even if universally believed, is an insufficient warrant or justification for the belief. It was once universally held that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that the Sun orbited around it. The fact that people believed this proposition, did not make it true.