No true Scotsman explained

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. 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:

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 Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Occurrence

The "no true Scotsman" fallacy is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:[4] [3]

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 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.[5]

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 his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking, Flew wrote:

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 democracy starts a war against a fellow democracy.[6]

Author Steven Pinker suggested that phrases like "no true Christian ever kills, no true communist state is repressive" exemplify the fallacy.[7]

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Fallacies. 2022-02-09. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  2. Web site: The No-True-Scotsman Fallacy. Curtis. Gary N.. Fallacy Files. 2016-11-12.
  3. Antony Flew, God & Philosophy, p. 104, Hutchinson, 1966.
  4. 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.
  5. Book: Antony Flew. Thinking About Thinking (or, Do I Sincerely Want to be Right?). 1975. Fontana/Collins. 47. 9780006335801.
  6. Web site: Goldman. David P.. David P. Goldman. No true Scotsman starts a war . Asia Times. 1 December 2014. 31 Jan 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20190105005853/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA31Ak01.html. 5 January 2019. dead. 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.
  7. Book: Pinker. Steven. Rationality, What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. 2021. New York. Viking. 978-0525561996. 1237806678. 88.