4 ms·

I've found the No True Scotsman a hard one to judge. There's a grey area where both parties could argue that something is/isn't a logical fallacy. Popular/con

by SCHiM 10y ago

I've found the No True Scotsman a hard one to judge. There's a grey area where both parties could argue that something is/isn't a logical fallacy. Popular/controversial/recognizable example: Terrorists are no true believers of <faith>. Those in the 'you are committing a fallacy camp': The terrorists profess to follow the core tenets(perform the rituals, say the prayers, etc...) of <faith> and adhere to <faith>, therefore they are true believers of <faith>, therefore saying that they are not true believers of faith because of their terrorist actions is a fallacy. Those of the 'not a fallacy camp': The in/out borders of religious groups are defined by consensus, it's normative. A large group of people may feel that <trait> is actually part of true belief in <faith>, then this is a truth for them. If a <trait> were to be abstinence from violence, then obviously terrorist are not true believers of <faith>. Truly, language is too unspecific to properly pin down the meanings of normative/subjective facts. This fallacy can probably only truly be committed when one has codified a closed loop of rules, and then breaks those rules. But religion is too nebulous a subject to be clear about such things.

setr 10y ago
> therefore saying that they are not true believers of faith because of their terrorist actions is a fallacy. As I understand it, the no true scotsman boils down to "group A all do this. Person B belongs to group A, but does not do that. Only real members of A do this." So the terrorist claim wouldn't be part of the fallacy, just a difference in interpretation. The fallacy occurs not in the thesis (group A all do this), but in the operation of arguing itself, when the reaction to the counter is to repeat the thesis but now excluding the counter example. You could imagine that every counterexample was so specially treated until the generalization is true, but meaningless. The overall argument becoming trivially true: forall i in {A - B}, i has property C Where A is the whole group And B is a subset of A, having the property not-C
dvorak365 10y ago
NTS is a form of moving the goalposts. If you say "No X would do Y", and then after an X does Y move the goalposts to say "No true X would do Y", that's the fallacy. If you simply stated in the first place that "No true X would do Y", then you're off the hook as long as your definition of "true X" doesn't apply to the particular X that did Y.
- aptwebapps 10y ago
  To me, moving the goalposts and equivocation are the most pernicious fallacies in online discussions. They happen all the time, and often take more than minimal effort to dispute. It's also really easy to take them as made in bad faith.
  - ewjordan 10y ago
    > and often take more than minimal effort to dispute This is where all ability to have a rational discussion breaks down in many cases, especially when people care a lot about their initial opinions. Take an issue like evolution. You start with a source like https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/her/evolution-and-natural-selection/a/lines-of-evidence-for-evolution https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/her/evolution-an..., which outlines a pretty good case for how evolution is supported by today's evidence. It gives plenty of lines to follow if you're curious to dig deeper, and absent other factors most people would just see it as a boring science thing that's probably true and they don't care much about. But because some people are bothered by the idea, they've spent a lot of time thinking up objections. A whole lot of time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution for summaries of just some of the complaints that people have come up with. These have all been thoroughly demolished, of course, but to do so often involves a lot of really labor-intensive science. As far as science goes, that's all good - it's great to be detailed and thoroughly justify every piece of a theory, chasing any loose ends down at any cost. It's part of the job description. But casual debate about the issue is devastatingly difficult, even if everyone is acting in good faith. All someone that has a problem with evolution has to do is throw out three or four big complaints (the eye! carbon dating! transitional fossils! micro vs macro-evolution!) and all of a sudden a proper response to their 3 minute "gotcha" attempt means a good half hour sourcing high quality rebuttals and summarizing them in the thread. Which will likely each bring up three or four points which the anti-evolution person can quibble with (and they'll be able to do so quickly). Assuming you make it through that gauntlet and the person accepts that you've shot down those points, a list of ten more fresh "problems", each of which requires detailed research and attention to shoot down, is a low-effort Google search away (say https://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_are_the_to_1/ https://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_are_the_to_1/), so you can get "yeah, but!"-ted into oblivion until you're just not up to the task of responding anymore, even though you absolutely could address every complaint without difficulty, if you had the time. Like you said, moving the goalposts. When you have an almost limitless sea of low-effort objections to draw from via Google (which you do, about almost anything, as long as a lot of people have spent time coming up with them), it's easy to put up a shitscreen so thick that nobody can ever break through, and not even realize that you're acting badly. I know that rationalists very strongly believe that with enough good-faith discussion everyone's beliefs should ultimately align, and there should never be such a thing as agreeing to disagree, but I fear that in many cases the relaxation time to that state is prohibitively long.
cortesoft 10y ago
Yeah, NTS gets called all the time when it doesn't apply. It really is hard when a group is self selecting, because there is no way to reliably categorize people as in or out of the group. I find feminism to be a particularly tricky group for this; anti-feminists will find some way out there person who says they are a feminist and wants to kill all men. The anti-feminist will say, "Look, feminists want to kill all men! Feminism is horrible!" If you try to argue that this person does not represent the majority of feminists, you will be accused of No True Scotsman.
- philh 10y ago
  I note that "this person does not represent the majority of feminists" isn't No True Scotsman for any definition of feminist. Someone can be a feminist while not representing the majority of feminists. "This person is not a feminist" would be NTS for some definitions but not all.
eloisant 10y ago
That's simple. 2 possibilities: - The religion has an official leader (for example the Pope for Catholics). He (and the hierarchy below him) gets to decide who is a true Catholic and who is not, and what the rules are. The line is clear. - The religion has no official leader (Islam, protestants...). In this case you can't claim that terrorists are "not true Muslims". Pretty much anyone can self-identify as a Muslim. You can however fight against generalisations claiming for example that Muslims are terrorists, or in favor of terrorist action "by default" unless they shout their opposition loud enough.

by SCHiM 10y ago

setr 10y ago

> therefore saying that they are not true believers of faith because of their terrorist actions is a fallacy. As I understand it, the no true scotsman boils down to "group A all do this. Person B belongs to group A, but does not do that. Only real members of A do this." So the terrorist claim wouldn't be part of the fallacy, just a difference in interpretation. The fallacy occurs not in the thesis (group A all do this), but in the operation of arguing itself, when the reaction to the counter is to repeat the thesis but now excluding the counter example. You could imagine that every counterexample was so specially treated until the generalization is true, but meaningless. The overall argument becoming trivially true: forall i in {A - B}, i has property C Where A is the whole group And B is a subset of A, having the property not-C

dvorak365 10y ago

NTS is a form of moving the goalposts. If you say "No X would do Y", and then after an X does Y move the goalposts to say "No true X would do Y", that's the fallacy. If you simply stated in the first place that "No true X would do Y", then you're off the hook as long as your definition of "true X" doesn't apply to the particular X that did Y.

aptwebapps 10y ago
To me, moving the goalposts and equivocation are the most pernicious fallacies in online discussions. They happen all the time, and often take more than minimal effort to dispute. It's also really easy to take them as made in bad faith.
- ewjordan 10y ago
  > and often take more than minimal effort to dispute This is where all ability to have a rational discussion breaks down in many cases, especially when people care a lot about their initial opinions. Take an issue like evolution. You start with a source like https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/her/evolution-and-natural-selection/a/lines-of-evidence-for-evolution https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/her/evolution-an..., which outlines a pretty good case for how evolution is supported by today's evidence. It gives plenty of lines to follow if you're curious to dig deeper, and absent other factors most people would just see it as a boring science thing that's probably true and they don't care much about. But because some people are bothered by the idea, they've spent a lot of time thinking up objections. A whole lot of time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution for summaries of just some of the complaints that people have come up with. These have all been thoroughly demolished, of course, but to do so often involves a lot of really labor-intensive science. As far as science goes, that's all good - it's great to be detailed and thoroughly justify every piece of a theory, chasing any loose ends down at any cost. It's part of the job description. But casual debate about the issue is devastatingly difficult, even if everyone is acting in good faith. All someone that has a problem with evolution has to do is throw out three or four big complaints (the eye! carbon dating! transitional fossils! micro vs macro-evolution!) and all of a sudden a proper response to their 3 minute "gotcha" attempt means a good half hour sourcing high quality rebuttals and summarizing them in the thread. Which will likely each bring up three or four points which the anti-evolution person can quibble with (and they'll be able to do so quickly). Assuming you make it through that gauntlet and the person accepts that you've shot down those points, a list of ten more fresh "problems", each of which requires detailed research and attention to shoot down, is a low-effort Google search away (say https://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_are_the_to_1/ https://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_are_the_to_1/), so you can get "yeah, but!"-ted into oblivion until you're just not up to the task of responding anymore, even though you absolutely could address every complaint without difficulty, if you had the time. Like you said, moving the goalposts. When you have an almost limitless sea of low-effort objections to draw from via Google (which you do, about almost anything, as long as a lot of people have spent time coming up with them), it's easy to put up a shitscreen so thick that nobody can ever break through, and not even realize that you're acting badly. I know that rationalists very strongly believe that with enough good-faith discussion everyone's beliefs should ultimately align, and there should never be such a thing as agreeing to disagree, but I fear that in many cases the relaxation time to that state is prohibitively long.

cortesoft 10y ago

Yeah, NTS gets called all the time when it doesn't apply. It really is hard when a group is self selecting, because there is no way to reliably categorize people as in or out of the group. I find feminism to be a particularly tricky group for this; anti-feminists will find some way out there person who says they are a feminist and wants to kill all men. The anti-feminist will say, "Look, feminists want to kill all men! Feminism is horrible!" If you try to argue that this person does not represent the majority of feminists, you will be accused of No True Scotsman.

philh 10y ago
I note that "this person does not represent the majority of feminists" isn't No True Scotsman for any definition of feminist. Someone can be a feminist while not representing the majority of feminists. "This person is not a feminist" would be NTS for some definitions but not all.

eloisant 10y ago

That's simple. 2 possibilities: - The religion has an official leader (for example the Pope for Catholics). He (and the hierarchy below him) gets to decide who is a true Catholic and who is not, and what the rules are. The line is clear. - The religion has no official leader (Islam, protestants...). In this case you can't claim that terrorists are "not true Muslims". Pretty much anyone can self-identify as a Muslim. You can however fight against generalisations claiming for example that Muslims are terrorists, or in favor of terrorist action "by default" unless they shout their opposition loud enough.