Asklemmy

43744 readers

1535 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What's the name of the fallacy where someone appeals to different circumstances that don't currently apply in order to justify something? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Here is the fallacy I'm describing:

Someone defends their own actions, or someone else's actions, as acceptable/justified or necessary, on the basis that those actions might be necessary or justified in certain circumstances, referencing other individuals or circumstances for which it might be necessary or justified, despite their own circumstances/the circumstances in question not having the same elements that would require it or justify it.

For example, someone defends the actions of someone who murdered another person unnecessarily because they disliked them (e.g.), using the argument that there might be people who need to kill in self-defense or in a survival situation for whom it might be justified, despite that not applying to the situation in question.

I'll attempt to write the form of the fallacy here:

X is justified in Y case.

Someone does X in Z case.

X is justified in Z case because X would be justified in Y case.

It's a fallacy because:

What is true of Y case doesn't necessarily apply to Z case; the elements/circumstances of Y case that would make X justified may not be present in Z case, and therefore even if X is justified in Y case it wouldn't automatically be justified in Z case as a consequence.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago

It's not necessarily a fallacy, because the argument that Y and Z are equivalent or sufficiently similar to both justify X is a valid argument.

The argument that they're similar might be an example of a false equivalency however, which is an informal fallacy, and so depends on the circumstances of the argument, since it's not de facto invalid to draw an equivalence between two things.

A simple fine is a just punishment for littering. Someone threw a bag of trash out of their car on the highway (illegal dumping, not littering). Because a fine is justified for littering, and illegal dumping is similar to littering, a fine is justified for illegal dumping.

The equivalence between littering and dumping isn't unreasonable.

A simple fine is a just punishment for littering. Someone burnt down an orphanage (arson and heinous murder, not littering). Because a fine is justified for littering, and arson and murder are also crimes, a fine is justified for them as well.

The equivalence between littering and murder is weak at best, and most would find it unconvincing that we should treat them the same.

(There's a fun related problem where the equivalence is bad, but both conclusions are actually agreeable. It can lead to some weird arguments. "Hitler deserved to be removed from power. Hitler was a man. Stalin was also a man, and therefore deserved to be removed from power")