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{{Short description|Informal logical fallacy}}
{{For|the practice of wearing a kilt without undergarments|True Scotsman}} {{For|the practice of wearing a kilt without undergarments|True Scotsman}}


'''No true Scotsman''' or '''appeal to purity''' is an ] in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a ] by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition.<ref name="iep">{{Cite web|title=Fallacies|url=https://iep.utm.edu/fallacy/|access-date=2022-02-09|website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy}}</ref><ref name=FallacyFilesWebsite>{{cite web|url=http://www.fallacyfiles.org/scotsman.html|title=The No-True-Scotsman Fallacy|last=Curtis|first=Gary N.|website=Fallacy Files|access-date=2016-11-12}}</ref><ref name=godandphilo>{{cite book |author=Antony Flew |title=God & Philosophy |page= |publisher=Hutchinson |date=1966}}</ref> Rather than admitting error or providing evidence to disprove the counterexample, the original claim is changed by using a non-substantive modifier such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", or other similar terms.<ref name="Flew1975" /><ref name=FallacyFilesWebsite/>
'''No true Scotsman''' is an intentional ], an '']'' attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.<ref>, '']''</ref> When faced with a ] to a ] claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it.


Philosophy professor ] explains the fallacy as an "]" of a refuted generalization attempt.<ref name="iep"/> The following is a simplified rendition of the fallacy:<ref name="atimes"/>
==Origins==
The term was advanced by philosopher ] in his 1975 book ''Thinking About Thinking: Do I sincerely want to be right?''.<ref>{{Citation | surname=Flew | given=Antony | title=Thinking About Thinking: Do I sincerely want to be right? | publisher=Collins Fontana | place=London | year=1975 | ISBN=978-0006335801}}</ref>


<poem style="margin-left: 2em;">
{{Quote|Imagine Hamish McDonald, a ], sitting down with his '']'' and seeing an article about how the "] 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 ] 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."|Antony Flew|''Thinking About Thinking''}}
Person A: "No ] puts sugar on his ]."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no {{em|true}} Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."</poem>


==Occurrence==
A simpler rendition would be:<!-- This is much easier to understand because its terminology isn't as loaded and distracting to the layperson (e.g. "sex maniac") as the phrasing of Anthony Flew above; it also shows the reasoning in a much more binary manner-->
The "no true Scotsman" fallacy is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:<ref name="anderson">{{cite conference |author=Robert Ian Anderson |url=https://www.academia.edu/34279472 |title=Is Flew's No True Scotsman Fallacy a True Fallacy? A Contextual Analysis |editor1=P. Brézillon |editor2=R. Turner |editor3=C. Penco |conference=Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 2017 |series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |volume=10257 |pages=243–253 |date=2017 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-57837-8_19}}</ref><ref name=godandphilo/><ref name=Flew1975/>
:'''Alice:''' All Scotsmen enjoy ].
* not publicly retreating from the initial, falsified ] assertion
:'''Bob:''' My uncle is a Scotsman, and he doesn't like haggis!
* offering a modified assertion that definitionally excludes a targeted unwanted counterexample
:'''Alice:''' ''Well,'' all ''true'' Scotsmen like haggis.
* using rhetoric to signal the modification


An appeal to purity is commonly associated with protecting a preferred group. Scottish ] 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 ], one may use this fallacy to deny that the group is associated with this undesirable member or action. "No {{em|true}} Scotsman would do something so undesirable"; i.e., the people who would do such a thing are ] (definitionally) excluded from being part of our group such that they cannot serve as a counterexample to the group's good nature.<ref name=Flew1975>{{cite book|author=Antony Flew|title=Thinking About Thinking (or, Do I Sincerely Want to be Right?)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=15KwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22No%20true%20Scotsman%22|year=1975|publisher=Fontana/Collins|page=47|isbn=9780006335801}}</ref>
When the statement "all ''A'' are ''B''" is qualified like this to exclude those ''A'' which are not ''B'', this is a form of ]; the conclusion is assumed by the definition of "true ''A''".


==Examples and related issues== ==Origin and philosophy==
An example of a political application of the fallacy could be in asserting that "no democracy starts a war", then distinguishing between mature or "true" democracies, which never start wars, and "emerging democracies", which may start them.<ref>]. , '']'', Jan 31, 2006</ref> At issue is whether or not something labeled as an "emerging democracy" is actually a democracy or something in a different conceptual category, the same way that "merging lanes" between two streets are different from a single street.


The description of the fallacy in this form is attributed to British philosopher ], who wrote, in his 1966 book ''God & Philosophy'',
In July 2011, when ], a Norwegian right-wing Christian, detonated a bomb in Oslo and went on to massacre young people gathered on Utøya, ] on his show '']'' said: <ref>{{cite web|title=Sorry, O’Reilly: Anders Breivik Is A Christian|url=http://mediamatters.org/blog/201107270001|publisher=Media Matters|accessdate=29 July, 2011}}</ref>
:''"Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder, the man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith...we can find no evidence, none, that this killer practiced Christianity in any way."''


{{quote|In this ungracious move a brash generalization, such as ''No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge'', when faced with falsifying facts, is transformed while you wait into an impotent tautology: if ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this is by itself sufficient to prove them not ''true'' Scotsmen.}}
Thereby he implied that if Breivik were a "true Christian" he wouldn't have committed such a crime.

In his 1975 book ''Thinking About Thinking'', Flew wrote:<ref name="Flew1975" />

{{Blockquote|Imagine some Scottish chauvinist settled down one Sunday morning with his customary copy of ''The News of the World''. He reads the story under the headline, "] Sex Maniac Strikes Again". Our reader is, as he confidently expected, agreeably shocked: "No Scot would do such a thing!" Yet the very next Sunday he finds in that same favourite source a report of the even more scandalous on-goings of Mr Angus McSporran in ]. This clearly constitutes a counter example, which definitively falsifies the universal proposition originally put forward. ('Falsifies' here is, of course, simply the opposite of 'verifies'; and it therefore means 'shows to be false'.) Allowing that this is indeed such a counter example, he ought to withdraw; retreating perhaps to a rather weaker claim about most or some. But even an imaginary Scot is, like the rest of us, human; and none of us always does what we ought to do. So what he is in fact saying is: "No true Scotsman would do such a thing!"}}The essayist ], writing under his pseudonym "Spengler", compared distinguishing between "mature" democracies, which ], 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 {{em|true and mature}} democracy starts a war against a fellow democracy.<ref name="atimes">{{cite web|last1=Goldman|first1=David P.|author-link1=David P. Goldman|title=No true Scotsman starts a war |url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA31Ak01.html|work=Asia Times|access-date=1 December 2014|date=31 Jan 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190105005853/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA31Ak01.html|archive-date=5 January 2019|url-status=dead|quote=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}}</ref>

Author ] suggested that phrases like "no true Christian ever kills, no true communist state is repressive and no true Trump supporter endorses violence" exemplify the fallacy.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Pinker|first1=Steven|title=Rationality, What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters|date=2021|location=New York|publisher=Viking|isbn=978-0525561996|oclc=1237806678|page=88}}</ref>


==See also== ==See also==
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==References== ==References==
{{reflist}} {{Reflist|30em}}


{{Fallacies}}
{{Informal Fallacy}}


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Latest revision as of 17:21, 19 December 2024

Informal logical fallacy For the practice of wearing a kilt without undergarments, see True Scotsman.

No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a counterexample by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition. Rather than admitting error or providing evidence to disprove the counterexample, the original claim is changed by using a non-substantive modifier such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", or other similar terms.

Philosophy professor Bradley Dowden explains the fallacy as an "ad hoc rescue" of a refuted generalization attempt. 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 true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Occurrence

The "no true Scotsman" fallacy is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:

  • not publicly retreating from the initial, falsified a posteriori assertion
  • offering a modified assertion that definitionally excludes a targeted unwanted counterexample
  • using rhetoric to signal the modification

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 true 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.

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 this ungracious move a brash generalization, such as No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, when faced with falsifying facts, is transformed while you wait into an impotent tautology: if ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this is by itself sufficient to prove them not true Scotsmen.

In his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking, Flew wrote:

Imagine some Scottish chauvinist settled down one Sunday morning with his customary copy of The News of the World. He reads the story under the headline, "Sidcup Sex Maniac Strikes Again". Our reader is, as he confidently expected, agreeably shocked: "No Scot would do such a thing!" Yet the very next Sunday he finds in that same favourite source a report of the even more scandalous on-goings of Mr Angus McSporran in Aberdeen. This clearly constitutes a counter example, which definitively falsifies the universal proposition originally put forward. ('Falsifies' here is, of course, simply the opposite of 'verifies'; and it therefore means 'shows to be false'.) Allowing that this is indeed such a counter example, he ought to withdraw; retreating perhaps to a rather weaker claim about most or some. But even an imaginary Scot is, like the rest of us, human; and none of us always does what we ought to do. So what he is in fact saying is: "No true Scotsman would do such a thing!"

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 true and mature democracy starts a war against a fellow democracy.

Author Steven Pinker suggested that phrases like "no true Christian ever kills, no true communist state is repressive and no true Trump supporter endorses violence" exemplify the fallacy.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Fallacies". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2022-02-09.
  2. ^ Curtis, Gary N. "The No-True-Scotsman Fallacy". Fallacy Files. Retrieved 2016-11-12.
  3. ^ Antony Flew (1966). God & Philosophy. Hutchinson. p. 104.
  4. ^ Antony Flew (1975). Thinking About Thinking (or, Do I Sincerely Want to be Right?). Fontana/Collins. p. 47. ISBN 9780006335801.
  5. ^ Goldman, David P. (31 Jan 2006). "No true Scotsman starts a war". Asia Times. Archived from the original on 5 January 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2014. 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
  6. Robert Ian Anderson (2017). P. Brézillon; R. Turner; C. Penco (eds.). Is Flew's No True Scotsman Fallacy a True Fallacy? A Contextual Analysis. Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 10257. pp. 243–253. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-57837-8_19.
  7. Pinker, Steven (2021). Rationality, What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. New York: Viking. p. 88. ISBN 978-0525561996. OCLC 1237806678.
Common fallacies (list)
Formal
In propositional logic
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Syllogistic fallacy
Informal
Equivocation
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Correlative-based
Illicit transference
Secundum quid
Faulty generalization
Ambiguity
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