Toby asks . . .
We have used some of your logic texts but have encountered an informal argument we thought may be a fallacy not covered in the books. We name it after the kid who uses it.
A certain camper wore the same t-shirt all week. When my Dear Husband, his counselor, told him on Thursday to change shirt, his reply was, “Why? This shirt was fine on Monday - you had no complaints on Tuesday - no problems on Wednesday, and now all of a sudden you are saying something is wrong with it?”
Is there a name for this fallacy we just are not catching?
Answer
Toby,
Your camper might be committing a simple red herring fallacy. This is when somebody introduces something irrelevant into an argument.
While your husband does agree with this camper that his shirt was okay on previous days, this avoids your husband’s argument that the accumulation of grime has reached the point today when his shirt is a hindrance to good social interaction.
Hans
Copyright June 17, 2008, all rights reserved. 12244 views
1 • David M. Chess • August 13, 2008 • 4:52 PM
This is also a decent example of a fallacy in rhetoric that I’ve seen called “Not Drawing The Line”.
An extreme example is: a million ball-bearings must not be heavy, since obviously one ball-bearing isn’t heavy, and adding just one ball-bearing to a pile that isn’t heavy obviously isn’t going to make it suddenly heavy. 😊
In this case, the shirt was fine on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday; how could just one more day have changed anything?
I have very fond memories of a hardcover book on the laws of rhetoric (I think it was red) that I devoured in my youth… 😊
2 • Heartthrob in disguise • August 14, 2008 • 3:59 PM
True, BUT…
Who gets to decide what is relevant and what is not?
3 • Eric Gool • August 13, 2009 • 1:56 PM
With all do respect to Mr. David, I think that his example would be an example of the part to whole fallacy.
4 • David M. Chess • August 13, 2009 • 11:43 PM
Happy Birthday to my comment! 😊
Labeling is always subjective, of course, but I’d say that while “a million ball-bearings isn’t heavy because none of the ball-bearings that make it up is heavy” would be part-to-whole, the slightly different “a million ball-bearings must not be heavy, since obviously one ball-bearing isn’t heavy, and adding just one ball-bearing to a pile that isn’t heavy obviously isn’t going to make it suddenly heavy” is “Not Drawing the Line”.
But whatever works. 😊