No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect an a-posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim.[1][2][3] Rather than admitting error or providing evidence that would disqualify the falsifying counterexample, the claim is modified into an a-priori claim in order to definitionally exclude the undesirable counterexample.[4] The modification is signalled by the use of non-substantive rhetoric such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", etc.[2]
Philosophy professor Bradley Dowden explains the fallacy as an "ad hoc rescue" of a refuted generalization attempt.[1] The following is a simplified rendition of the fallacy:[5]
Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
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Transcription
Hi there, Internet commenter! You've been sent a link to this video because someone is concerned that you might not be arguing your case to your utmost ability. They're concerned you might have used a fallacy to make an important point, thus defeating your own claim. The fallacy they're concerned you might have used is The No True Scotsman Fallacy. The No True Scotsman Fallacy calls into question the purity or actualness of something as a way to refute and argument. Usually it works like this: you claim some set of things has a universal characteristic. Someone then provides an exception to the rule, making your claim universal no longer, and then you respond by saying, "Well only true things in that set possess that characteristic." The No True Scotsman's user defends their claim based on a reactionary, subjective notion of what category something belongs in. Or to what degree that thing truly belongs in that category. Classically, No True Scotsman is used to exclude bad actors from a group. Anthony Flew, who coined this fallacy, described a Scotsman who, upon learning that one of his countryman had committed a violent act, said, "No true Scotsman would do such a thing." However, there are a couple what you might call "versions" of No True Scotsman. One of them has to do with in-group maintenance. Claiming that no true gamer, comic book reader, Republican or feminist would say or believe a certain thing. This tactic avoids confronting a counter-argument by saying the person who exhibits it is not truly the thing they claim. And so the exception they provide is null and void. No True Scotsman also works to exclude ideas, and objects, not just people. For example, Mike and Straw Mike are talking about video games. All video games must have clearly stated goals, and a win/ lose condition. Gone Home doesn't have either of those things and it's a video game. Right, but Gone Home is not a true video game. The more productive conversation would be: What happens to the category of "video game" when we consider Gone Home part of it? Or to discuss what about the category of "video game", for Straw Mike at least, absolutely requires that it have clearly stated goals, and win/lose conditions. Instead, the conversation is stopped dead in its tracks because the entire point hinges upon one side's subjective sense of what is and is not truly whatever. And now we're just arguing opinion, which will only ever end in Godwin's Law. I hope this description of the No True Scotsman Fallacy has been helpful. Happy conversing.
Occurrence
The "no true Scotsman" fallacy is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:[6][3][4]
- not publicly retreating from the initial, falsified a-posteriori assertion
- offering a modified assertion that definitionally excludes a targeted unwanted counterexample
- using rhetoric to signal the modification
An appeal to purity is commonly associated with protecting a preferred group. Scottish national pride may be at stake if someone regularly considered to be Scottish commits a heinous crime. To protect people of Scottish heritage from a possible accusation of guilt by association, one may use this fallacy to deny that the group is associated with this undesirable member or action. "No true Scotsman would do something so undesirable"; i.e., the people who would do such a thing are tautologically (definitionally) excluded from being part of our group such that they cannot serve as a counterexample to the group's good nature.[4]
Origin and philosophy
The description of the fallacy in this form is attributed to British philosopher Antony Flew, who wrote, in his 1966 book God & Philosophy,
In this ungracious move a brash generalization, such as No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, when faced with falsifying facts, is transformed while you wait into an impotent tautology: if ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this is by itself sufficient to prove them not true Scotsmen.
— Antony Flew
In his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking, Flew wrote:[4]
Imagine some Scottish chauvinist settled down one Sunday morning with his customary copy of The News of the World. He reads the story under the headline, "Sidcup Sex Maniac Strikes Again". Our reader is, as he confidently expected, agreeably shocked: "No Scot would do such a thing!" Yet the very next Sunday he finds in that same favourite source a report of the even more scandalous on-goings of Mr Angus McSporran in Aberdeen. This clearly constitutes a counter example, which definitively falsifies the universal proposition originally put forward. ('Falsifies' here is, of course, simply the opposite of 'verifies'; and it therefore means 'shows to be false'.) Allowing that this is indeed such a counter example, he ought to withdraw; retreating perhaps to a rather weaker claim about most or some. But even an imaginary Scot is, like the rest of us, human; and none of us always does what we ought to do. So what he is in fact saying is: "No true Scotsman would do such a thing!"
The essayist David P. Goldman, writing under his pseudonym "Spengler", compared distinguishing between "mature" democracies, which never start wars, and "emerging democracies", which may start them, with the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Spengler alleges that political scientists have attempted to save the "US academic dogma" that democracies never start wars against other democracies from counterexamples by declaring any democracy which does indeed start a war against another democracy to be flawed, thus maintaining that no true and mature democracy starts a war against a fellow democracy.[5]
Author Steven Pinker suggested that phrases like "no true Christian ever kills, no true communist state is repressive and no true Trump supporter endorses violence" exemplify the fallacy.[7]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Fallacies". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2022-02-09.
- ^ a b Curtis, Gary N. "The No-True-Scotsman Fallacy". Fallacy Files. Retrieved 2016-11-12.
- ^ a b Antony Flew, God & Philosophy, p. 104, Hutchinson, 1966.
- ^ a b c d Antony Flew (1975). Thinking About Thinking (or, Do I Sincerely Want to be Right?). Fontana/Collins. p. 47. ISBN 9780006335801.
- ^ a b Goldman, David P. (31 Jan 2006). "No true Scotsman starts a war". Asia Times. Archived from the original on 5 January 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2014.
political-science professors... Jack Mansfield and Ed Snyder distinguish between 'mature democracies', which never, never start wars ('hardly ever', as the captain of the Pinafore sang), and 'emerging democracies', which start them all the time, in fact far more frequently than do dictatorships
- ^ Robert Ian Anderson, "Is Flew's No True Scotsman Fallacy a True Fallacy? A Contextual Analysis", P. Brézillon et al. (eds.): CONTEXT 2017, LNAI 10257, pp. 243–253, 2017. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-57837-8_19
- ^ Pinker, Steven (2021). Rationality, What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. New York: Viking. p. 88. ISBN 978-0525561996. OCLC 1237806678.
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This page was last edited on 30 March 2024, at 12:53