Argument Structures and Fallacies
"No True Scotsman"
The story goes that this grizzled old Scotsman is sitting at the kitchen table and his wizened old wife, whose voice sounds like a Monty Python grandma impression, is reading the paper. She pipes up: "Oh, George! This is awful. A man in Manchester (that's in England if you're clueless) was found guilty of [insert atrocity here. I'm gonna go with, "snorting babies"]! How dreadful!
George McScotsman says in his gruff but ultimately revealing of a soft heart voice, "Hmph! No Scotsman would do such a thing!"
Georgina McScotslass goes on: "But George, it says here the man's from here in Edinburgh!"
Without missing a beat, George says: "Hmph! No true Scotsman would do such a thing!"
(I wanted to do ridiculously overblown stereotypical Scottish accents, but damn if I can remember how one sounds, much less type a funny version if it)
Analysis:
In this story, the characters here are committing, which are trying to patch up an already ridiculous (or at least wrong) blanket assertion with arbitrary modifications that ring hollow and show signs of having been pulled out your butt.
Fallacy is a form of circular reasoning including a conclusion about something in the very definition of the word itself.
Fallacy is a form of circular reasoning including a conclusion about something in the very definition of the word itself.
Hi Duyen,
Trả lờiXóaFirtly, i think your entry is hard to understand. you should analyse stucture of argument to lead to argument fallacies.
Secondly,in ny opinion, this is an axample for fallacy of ambiguity.Because, the husband use ambiguity of language ( " true Scotsman")to support his claim.
Nhận xét này đã bị tác giả xóa.
Trả lờiXóahi Duyen,
Trả lờiXóai'd like to leave some comments for your entry :D
I think the item your chose is quite interesting. It mentions a type of fallacy called "No true Scotman" - an informal logical fallacy by which an individual attempts to avoid being associated with an unpleasant act by asserting that no true member of the group they belong to would do such a thing. The husband gives an existing belief being assumed to be true in order to dismiss a counter-example (the man) to it.
The husband's argument has the form like:
(1) The man snorts babies
(2) No (true) Scotsman snorts babies
Therefore:
(3) The man is not a (true) Scotsman.
Therefore:
(4) The man is not a counter-example to the claim that no Scotsman snorts babies = no true Scotman snorts babies.
I think you are right to say that this is a form of circular argument, because the premise and conclusion are equivalent.
Besides, I also agree with Trang that this fallacy is fallacy of ambiguity because this argument relies on the ambiguity in the definition of the word "Scotsman".
It is quite confusing, isn't it? ;D