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Disappointing to find a "no true Scotsman" fallacy as the top comment.

by kbd 10y ago

klausjensen 10y ago
..For those that did not know, what that means (such as myself): No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing"), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
maggit 10y ago
This is not an example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. It is instead an overt accusation that the USA is acting uncivilized with regards to this one issue, and should know better because they are otherwise civilized. If it were an example of the mentioned fallacy, the poster would have to imply that the USA is not to be considered truly civilized. But this is not what the comment says.
- kbd 10y ago
  It's implying, without argument, that having the death penalty somehow makes a country "uncivilized". That still counts as "no true Scotsman". "No civilized country..." etc. I get what you're saying. You're saying the poster isn't implying that the US is not civilized, but rather that given that it is civilized, it should know better. It still amounts to the same thing. I think you're saying it's not a "no true Scotsman" because instead of a "no true Scotsman would" it's "no true Scotsman should"? But the essence of the fallacy is that it, without argument, applies an attribute (in this case, "no death penalty") to a word ("civilized") and argues based on that unargued assertion that it isn't, or isn't acting like, that word (a Scotsman, or civilized). Edit: I'll put it this way. Here's the OP: "How can a society which calls itself "civilized" do X?" Similar to "How can a man call himself a Scotsman if he does X?". It's implying, without argument, that X is un-Scotsman-like. It's still the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, with a different sentence structure.

Disappointing to find a "no true Scotsman" fallacy as the top comment.

by kbd 10y ago

Disappointing to find a "no true Scotsman" fallacy as the top comment.

..For those that did not know, what that means (such as myself): No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing"), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing"; i.e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

maggit 10y ago

This is not an example of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. It is instead an overt accusation that the USA is acting uncivilized with regards to this one issue, and should know better because they are otherwise civilized. If it were an example of the mentioned fallacy, the poster would have to imply that the USA is not to be considered truly civilized. But this is not what the comment says.

kbd 10y ago
It's implying, without argument, that having the death penalty somehow makes a country "uncivilized". That still counts as "no true Scotsman". "No civilized country..." etc. I get what you're saying. You're saying the poster isn't implying that the US is not civilized, but rather that given that it is civilized, it should know better. It still amounts to the same thing. I think you're saying it's not a "no true Scotsman" because instead of a "no true Scotsman would" it's "no true Scotsman should"? But the essence of the fallacy is that it, without argument, applies an attribute (in this case, "no death penalty") to a word ("civilized") and argues based on that unargued assertion that it isn't, or isn't acting like, that word (a Scotsman, or civilized). Edit: I'll put it this way. Here's the OP: "How can a society which calls itself "civilized" do X?" Similar to "How can a man call himself a Scotsman if he does X?". It's implying, without argument, that X is un-Scotsman-like. It's still the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, with a different sentence structure.