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> [B]ecause there's the subtle implication that if she weren't a hypocrite then the sexism claim would be valid. Waaaait a second... isn't that http://en.wikip
by nateabele 14y ago
> [B]ecause there's the subtle implication that if she weren't a hypocrite then the sexism claim would be valid.
Waaaait a second... isn't that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent?
- georgeorwell 14y agoThanks for catching that. It's hard to reason about these things because tu quoque is already false. I mean, if you assume false is true, then you can prove anything. I guess it depends on whether there's an if or an if-and-only-if relationship between being a hypocrite (H) and there not being sexism (S): (H -> !S) -> (!H -> S) // false (this is what you mean) (H <-> !S) -> (!H -> S) // true But besides being wrong, I guess I was also hinting at something else, which is that if you accept this one fallacy (tu quoque), you are probably implicitly accepting this other fallacy (I think it might have a different name than affirming the consequent, but they're related). That wasn't clear with my use of the phrase "subtle implication" and I didn't realize this either.