Talk:False dilemma

Merged

I presume this is another name for "false dichotomy"? Should this be added as a synonymn? Crundy 06:44, 25 July 2008 (EDT)

Yes, it should have been. That might have saved me writing a separate article for "false dichotomy" & having to merge it with this one. Wėąṣėḷőįď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:42, 16 February 2009 (EST)

Is there anything such as a fallacy of an illusory middle? I know it's nowhere near as cut and dry as false dilemmas because they often fall into the realm of negative proof, but I think there are cases where something like this would be the case; for example, saying that are ways a coin can land other than head, tails, or edge or that it's possible to balance the budget without cutting expenditures or raising revenue. --Dr. Swordopolis (talk) 06:04, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The latter example is not exactly what I would call a "middle" ground; the "middle" there would be cutting expenditures and raising revenues. The only people who say you can balance a budget without doing either are liars (or perhaps brain-dead). ListenerX^TalkerX 06:31, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

That's what I'm getting at. If you say 'you can have an unbalanced budget or you can raise revenue or cut expenditures' and then someone says 'dude, we have other options, stop presenting it a lunatic/liar/lord situation', is there some snarky fallacy or whatever you can throw at them? --Dr. Swordopolis (talk) 22:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The law of the excluded middle is what is being breached there. I am unsure if there is a name for this. ListenerX^TalkerX 06:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure false dilemma/dichotomy/excluded middle are all the same aren't they? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:24, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Aren't we talking about balance fallacy?--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 06:58, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

The law of the excluded middle says that $A\vee \neg A$. A false dilemma is when one applies this law to a disjunction that is not a tautology. The fallacy that Dr. Swordopolis is referring to is when one says that some statement is a false dilemma when it is not. This is not the balance fallacy, since the balance fallacy involves wrongly assigning weight to existing choices, while this fallacy asserts the existence of non-existent choices. ListenerX^TalkerX 07:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

We've got enough examples and don't need to add another one, still I found, "This was published in the Journal of Religion and Health, so you can trust it. Unless you think religion poisons everything." [1]. We can distrust a specific journal with religion in its title without assuming that religion poisons everything. Proxima Centauri (talk) 09:31, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Attribution

Some content from http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Denying_a_Conjunct, http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/False_Dichotomy. FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 01:59, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Newspeak as a false dilemma

In Orwell's newspeak 'un' creates the opposite - so unwhite is theoretically black. But, in fact - most of the colours on [2] are 'unwhite' (plus the rest of the spectrum). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 15:53, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

??? Reverend Black Percy (talk) 18:39, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

'Unwhite' is not just black but 'every other colour (including various shades of off-white).' Therefore the un-prefix is likely to lead to confusion. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 14:25, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Examples list

It doesn't need to exist. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 17:59, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

It's been removed. Vee (talk) 18:23, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

While the amount of examples was probably excessive, I feel that the logical fallacies pages could use having a couple of examples for illustration of the fallacy. Plutocow (talk) 18:46, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not keen on removing the examples list, since pretty much all of the listed examples do illustrate the concept. I would agree that some of them could be rephrased to be less wordy, though. --Luigifan18 (talk) 20:52, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I have criticisms of some of the examples. The one on capitalism takes pains to point out the Nordic Model, but fails to account for the fact that the Nordic Model simply exports the harshest forms of capitalist exploitation to the Global South. "WE SHOULD TAKE [the harshest forms of capitalist exploitation] AND PUSH IT SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!!" Yeah, it's not a problem with social democracy exclusively, but the problems with capitalism (even in the form of the Nordic Model) remain. It's a strawman of anti-capitalist critiques. Vee (talk) 21:25, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Plutocow here. Trimming the most dubious or contentious examples would be a good place to start on shortening the list; if our goal is to illustrate the concept, clear-cut is best. Some of them are a bit repetitive, too: "he that is not with me is against me," "if you're not with me, then you're my enemy," and "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" are all basically the same, just in different contexts, and that last one is accompanied with some text implying the second shouldn't even be on the list. I'd also cut the one on the US's two-party system; it seems to be conflating a few things. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 22:24, 28 November 2022 (UTC)