4 ms·

Isn't "no true Scotsman" an appeal to national identity?

• deleted 10y ago
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• dietrichepp 10y ago
  No it's not. It's a redefinition of terms to exclude counterexamples. I could say "no sandwich is vegetarian" and you show me a grilled cheese sandwich and I say "no true sandwich is vegetarian." The problem is that people have been passing around a cheat sheet of logical fallacies, but using the mental version of a regex to try and match them. This is not a reliable technique for identifying fallacies. Usually, you would want to recognize them by their content, not their form, and it's essential to know the difference between formal and informal fallacies.
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  • SherlockeHolmes 10y ago
    Thank you for the great post! I especially agree with your second paragraph. I admit that my post constitutes a mixture of ethos, pathos, and logos - as opposed to being perfectly aligned with logical stipulations.