No True Fallacy

I’ve noticed a tendency for the charge of committing the “No True Scotsman” fallacy to be leveled at anyone who favours more restrictive definitions of something than the person leveling the charge favours. This is a misunderstanding of how the “No True Scotsman” fallacy works. Just saying something of the form “No true Scotsman would do X” is not by itself a commission of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy – though the fallacy does involve making a statement of that form. A fallacy has to be an error in inference from one statement to another; a single statement on its ownsome, involving no inference, can’t be a fallacy.

The “No True Scotsman” fallacy arises when someone uses a restrictive version of a definition in order to rebut a counterexample to a claim that was made using a less restrictive definition. So, for example:

1. SMITH: “Democracies never go to war against other democracies.”

2. JONES: “What about the war between Israel and Lebanon? They were both democracies.”

3. SMITH: “No country that commits that kind of aggression counts as a genuine democracy.”

What makes Smith guilty of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy here is not that she employs an idiosyncratically restrictive definition of “democracy” in (3). Employing an idiosyncratically restrictive definition is not by itself a fallacy, since it’s not by itself an argument. If an argument is offered for the idiosyncratically restrictive definition, that argument may of course be fallacious – or it may not. We can’t know until we look at the argument. (Merely using a term more restrictively than in ordinary usage is no proof that the more restrictive usage is wrong; sometimes ordinary usage by itself contains commitments to a more restrictive usage. For example, I think that’s true of the Socrates-Stoic-Cicero-Augustine-Aquinas-Blackstone-Spooner-Lane-MLK Jr. position that an unjust law is no true law.)

Rather, what convicts Smith of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is the fact that she treats her claim in (3), using “democracy” restrictively, as if it supported her claim in (1), where “democracy” was clearly being used non-restrictively. In other words, the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is an instance of the fallacy of equivocation. (Example of equivocation: “A bank is a safe place to deposit your paycheck; the edge of a river is a bank; therefore the edge of a river is a safe place to deposit your paycheck.” The plausibility of the premises depends on taking them to be using the term “bank” differently; the validity of the inference depends on taking them to be using the term “bank” in the same way.)

If Smith were, clearly and non-obfuscatingly, willing to reject (1) in the non-restrictive sense, and endorse it only in the restrictive sense, then although she might have an implausible definition of “democracy” – and a more vacuous opening claim than initially appeared – she would be innocent of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.

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19 Responses to No True Fallacy

  1. Irfan Khawaja October 27, 2013 at 8:20 pm #

    You’ve noticed that tendency, too?

  2. ieiunus October 27, 2013 at 8:29 pm #

    And that’s why you let the philosophers clear the murky waters of illogical confusion.

  3. martin October 28, 2013 at 5:36 am #

    The plausibility of the premises depends on taking them to be using the term “river” differently; the validity of the inference depends on taking them to be using the term “river” in the same way.

    Shouldn’t that be “bank” instead of “river”?

    • Roderick November 5, 2013 at 11:15 pm #

      Fixed; thanks!

      • Roderick December 7, 2013 at 7:12 pm #

        Ah, I only fixed one of them. Fixed both now.

  4. martin October 28, 2013 at 5:45 am #

    I put the quote in my post above in blockquote, but it isn’t displayed as a blockquote (tried Opera IE and Firefox). The blockquote tags are in the HTML though.

    • Brandon October 28, 2013 at 12:08 pm #

      That was a theme bug that I fixed.

      • martin October 28, 2013 at 5:45 pm #

        Looks a lot better. Thnx!

  5. Ryan October 28, 2013 at 12:04 pm #

    Does that apply to this: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/10/extreme-austrian-apriorism-as-the-no-true-scotsman-fallacy/ ? Or what is your take on that post?

    • RadProp October 28, 2013 at 5:10 pm #

      Ryan, it does indeed apply.

      Consider the following fallacious line of argument by (as in Roderick’s example) Smith.

      1. Smith: Markets, by virtue of their libertarian awesomeness, never end up being comprised of irrational, non-purposive behavior.
      2. Behaviorist Jones: What about when someone suffers a stroke while shopping and involuntarily drops his groceries everywhere?
      3. Smith: No true market would ever result in such an occurrence.

      The above indeed would be an instance of the No True Scotsman Fallacy, but, as Roderick explained, it is not simply because of the more restrictive claim in (3). The fallacy is in that Smith treats her claim in (3), using “markets” restrictively, as if it supported her claim in (1), where “markets” was clearly being used non-restrictively. But that is NOT what apriorist Austrians are doing with their more restrictive definition of “markets.”

      Instead, Austrian apriorists, including even Brennan’s “Austrian Dude,” reason as follows:

      A. Apriorist Smith: Markets, by definition, are never comprised of irrational, non-purposive behavior.
      B. Behaviorist Jones: What about when someone suffers a stroke while shopping and involuntarily drops his groceries everywhere?
      C. Apriorist Smith: No true market, by the definition I already told you I’m conducting my analysis with, is comprised of such events. Such events are taken into account by market participants when deciding upon actions, but it is the purposive actions themselves, and not the non-purposive events, that we refer to when we say “market.”

      In this case, the claim in (C), which uses “markets” restrictively is NOT treated as if it supported a claim in (A) where “markets” is used non-restrictively. This is because “markets” was being used restrictively from the very beginning! And there’s nothing inherently wrong with restrictive definitions. So Austrian apriorists (including even “Austrian Dude”) are innocent of the No True Scotsman Fallacy, and Brennan’s accusation totally misfires.

  6. djr October 28, 2013 at 10:06 pm #

    Ah, so you mean that that no *true* “No True Scotsman” fallacy would simply appeal to a restrictive definition without equivocation.

    You’re right, of course (which isn’t to say that this isn’t a common fallacy, perhaps especially among the would-be philosophically sophisticated). But for all the arguments I’ve encountered that are guilty of one or another variety of self-referential inconsistency, this one is nifty for the opposite effect.

  7. JOR October 30, 2013 at 10:46 am #

    Like other fake fallacies (e.g. false equivalence) the design purpose and general use of No True Scotsman calls is to attack non-fallacious arguments one doesn’t like without actually engaging them. This is not new; it has always been thus.

  8. Ross October 30, 2013 at 2:56 pm #

    Roderick, are you making a joke when saying above that the equivocation is on “river” rather than “bank”? I don’t get it.

    • Roderick November 5, 2013 at 11:18 pm #

      It was a joke, but by the universe on me, not by me.

  9. Dimitri October 30, 2013 at 5:35 pm #

    I used to use the “no democracies go to war” thing all the time…until some charitable soul pointed out that Imperial Germany, as well as France and Britain, were democracies at the time of World War One.

    • Gary Chartier October 30, 2013 at 6:27 pm #

      Really? What’s your definition of “democracy”? The emperor possessed supreme executive power under the 1871 constitution, and the emperor wasn’t democratically accountable.

      • martin October 31, 2013 at 5:47 pm #

        Apparently, Wilhelm had to ask the Reichstag at least two times for money to fund the war:

        On August 4th, 1914, a few days after the outbreak of World War I, the vote for war credits came up before the German Reichstag. The entire Social Democratic delegation, consisting of 110 members, voted for the credits, despite the Party’s anti-militarist stand up to that time. At the Party fraction meeting on August 3rd, fifteen deputies led by Karl Liebknecht, had opposed the vote, but in keeping with the discipline of the Party, they too voted for the credits the next day. Four months later, on December 2nd, Liebknecht raised a lone hand against the war budget.

        http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/w/ww1/germany.htm

  10. Neverfox October 31, 2013 at 4:36 pm #

    Thank you for writing this. I also see this often, and now I have something to link to.

    One quick clarification needed about why your example is a fallacy:

    Rather, what convicts Smith of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is the fact that she treats her claim in (3), using “democracy” restrictively, as if it supported her claim in (1), where “democracy” was clearly being used non-restrictively.

    What about (1) make it “clearly” the case that it’s being used non-restrictively? Is it because unqualified use of a term in an argument is assumed to refer to the meaning given by ordinary usage? I mean, Smith might have had the restrictive meaning in mind all along and was just making himself more clear with (3) after realizing that his conversation partner wasn’t getting his meaning. That wouldn’t appear to rise to the level of fallacy unless Smith is committed to supporting the meaning given by ordinary usage by the way he presented (1).

    • Neverfox October 31, 2013 at 4:39 pm #

      Oops. *herself, *her, *she

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