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No true Scotsman

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No true Scotsman is a fallacy of equivocation and question begging. Its name was coined by philosopher Antony Flew in his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking – or do I sincerely want to be right?.

Fallacy

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the "Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again." Hamish is shocked and declares that "No Scotsman would do such a thing." The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, "No true Scotsman would do such a thing."

For the argument, it is important that Brighton is in England and Aberdeen is in Scotland.

Flew's original example may be softened into the following :

Argument: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Reply: "But my uncle Angus, who is a Scotsman, likes sugar with his porridge."
Rebuttal: "Aye, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

It should also be noticed that in putting forward this fallacious rebuttal one is employing an ad hoc shift in argument.

This form of argument is an informal fallacy if the predicate ("puts sugar on porridge" or "does such-and-such an act [as committing a sex crime]") is not actually contradictory of the accepted definition of the subject ("Scotsman"), or if the definition of the subject is silently adjusted after the fact to make the rebuttal work.

As a real-world example, suppose a non-technical layman is debating the merits or otherwise of various video camcorders. He might assert that: "Any video engineer will tell you that the Matsushiba KYX300 format is vastly superior to the Magnasonic VBX2000." If someone points out, many engineers are on record as saying that the VBX2000 is actually the better system, the original speaker may modify his premise to state: "Any video engineer who knows what they are talking about."

This is really another form of begging the question. His assertion is essentially self-nullifying, in that, not being an engineer, he is hardly in any position to judge the credentials of people who are.

This fallacious technique is often used in politics, in which critics may condemn their colleagues as not being "true" Muslims,Communists, Christians, conservatives, etc. because of a disagreement concerning certain matters of policy.

This is connected to the widespread attempt in debate to assert that positive terms (good, decent) imply, naturally or by definition, the characteristics argued for (opposition to capital punishment, pornography, smoking in public), rather than actually making an argument why they are connected. "No decent Scotsman" can be considered the moral (practical) equivalent of the theoretical "No true Scotsman".

For example, it may be asserted that "No decent person would support hanging", "watch pornography", or "smoke in public". This is an abbreviated form of the fallacy: compare "he may take salt in his porridge, but no true Scotsman would" and "(some people may support smoking in public), but no decent person would." Often the speaker seems unaware that he is, in fact, coercively (re)defining the meaning of the phrase "decent person" to gain tactical advantage in the argument. The use of this technique shifts the debate away from the merits of hanging, pornography, or smoking (or whatever controversial subject that may be at issue) by attempting to establish, without basis in logic, that anyone disagreeing with the speaker is, in fact, "indecent".

The word "real" may be substituted for "true" and still commit the same fallacy in different plumes. For example, when General George Patton said, "All real Americans love the sting of battle" to his soldiers, he was implying that they were unAmerican if they shrank from combat.

It has an equivalent in the realm of ethics in the version "no decent Scotsman".

Why people fall into the fallacy

The truth of a proposition depends on its adequacy to its object ("Is the drawing a true likeness of Antony Flew?"). The truth of an object depends on its adequacy to its concept ("Is the figure drawn on the paper a true triangle?"). Problems arise when the definition of the concept has no generally accepted form, for example when it is vague or contested.

"A true Scotsman" (a concept) is not on the same level as "a true triangle" (a concept) never mind "the true Antony Flew" (a concrete existing object). The formal similarity, "true X", and the corresponding feeling that the concepts should be on the same level, in some sense must be on the same level (even perhaps all exist as objects), motivates the fallacy. It is a short step from that feeling to treating one's own definition, however arbitrary, of a "true Scotsman" (who else's?) as having the same objectivity as that of a geometrical figure or an existing individual, and then attempting to make the world agree.

See also

External links

References



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Last updated on Saturday February 16, 2008 at 18:31:44 PST (GMT -0800)
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