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A False Dichotomy: Be Patsies, or Be Like Them
I’m pretty much a broken record on the theme of speaking out, arguing that conservatives have to express conservative ideas boldly, and as clearly and with as much grace as we can muster. One common response to this is the claim that we’ve tried that and it hasn’t worked, and that now we have to adopt the techniques of our opponents.
I ran into this just today, when I suggested on another thread that the woke practice of “doxxing” (publishing personal information about private citizens) and getting people fired for the things they say or do on their own time was something we conservatives should not embrace. I’ve tried to make the same point on other occasions about such things as violating people’s first amendment rights, electoral cheating, and lying to further the conservative agenda. These are all things our opponents do. I don’t think that we should do them.
A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that we really have tried boldly speaking out, and that that’s now been proven to be inadequate. I don’t believe that. I think that the majority of conservatives are “normal” Americans (which Old Bathos very competently described in this comment), and normal Americans are reluctant to counter the prevailing media/academic/entertainment narrative that ever-faster seeps like a miasma into every facet of our lives.
Most of us don’t want to be the cranky relative at the family gathering arguing that mask mandates probably do more harm than good. Most of us don’t want to be the one who points out that BLM is a fraud. Most of us don’t want to be the insensitive so-and-so who argues that the “trans” movement is a dangerous fad, that America is as far from a racist country as one is likely to get, and that what torments our black communities is bad policies and broken culture, not anti-black bigotry.
So most of us don’t speak out. Many aren’t equipped — with information, temperament, or opportunity — to express those views. Others are worried about the professional or social blowback. There are lots of reasons why conservatives tend to be quiet, but the reality is that we do.
Pay attention to how free progressives are to give vent to their opinions. People who parrot the conventional leftist narrative clearly feel safe repeating what they hear on the radio and television, read in the paper, learn in school. It’s the air they breathe — that we all breathe. It takes no boldness or real conviction to go along with what looks like the majority view — even if it isn’t really the majority view.
Those of us who can speak up without endangering our livelihoods have to do so, and do so in ways that other normal people find persuasive and inspiring. We have to be reasonably well informed, well self-controlled, and understand that others need our example so that they, too, feel more free to stand up and be heard.
We have the advantage that we make sense and they do not. Most Americans still believe the things we believe. They just don’t realize that they’re in the majority, and that, if they speak out, they’ll be joined by others.
Published in Culture
No, I hadn’t read it before. That’s the idea, though I hadn’t thought of it on a national level. But come to think of it, it works for Putin (on a smaller scale).
Henry, more pointers like these would be helpful. I’ve wanted to ask you about this before: I let so many memes and challenges go by on FB, outrageous or silly ones I am actually equipped to answer. But my policy has been to just stay out of it–sometimes, that takes a lot of willpower. Maybe my policy is wrong, but it just feels like there is already so much arguing on FB that doesn’t get anywhere. Yes, there are a lot of facile and emotional arguments from both the left and the right. My contribution would just add to the noise, and it ends up feeling like FB is the wrong place to engage in this. Plus, staking out a position online can alienate–I can get irritated/alienated on small points when friends make them, such as the childhood acquaintance joining a teacher strike–whereas a discussion in person might be more fruitful. What say you?
It’s a false dilemma. That’s what the words mean.
There’s nothing about that fallacy that deserves to be called a “cutting.”
Maybe. I’d be the first person to understand logic and etymology but not notice how ordinary people talk!
Um, no. The word “valid” in a logic textbook is a technical term having almost nothing at all do do with general use.
If you don’t care about the etymology and don’t see the point of using different words differently, then you should be asking for something arcane and academic–some alternative to that textbook you cited.
SA, I do care about the etymology. The etymology of “dichotomy” is that it involves a partitioning into two alternatives. Two. Not three, not five, but two.
When I say “false dichotomy,” I’m saying that it isn’t really a dichotomy — that the choices don’t really partition into two. That, in fact, there are more than two choices.
I understand why you would say that it’s a false dilemma, but consider this: if someone liked one of the two choices presented, it would no longer be a dilemma, false or otherwise. However, it would still be a false dichotomy, because the fact that only two of the more-than-two choices were presented is itself misleading.
Yeah, I got that that the first time. And it was interesting!
But it still looks to me like a poor use of words.
Of course it would be a dilemma. That’s what the word “dilemma” means, both etymologically and in logic class terms–a choice between two options.
That is precisely why it would be a false dilemma–because it improperly gives us two options.
But the term dichotomy implies cutting.
In your way of talking, we can use the false-cutting-into-two name for an argument that doesn’t even cut.
“You must like Gimli, or at least Frodo” is a false dichotomy fallacy, in your way of talking, merely because it leaves out Legolas. But it doesn’t cut.
Mark, you seem to be missing my point entirely. Your first example is missing certain key elements – a legal standard of sorts and a biased application of the standard. You describe simple tit for tat retaliation, which has no standard. Let’s say your two children are both playing with legos, and the younger breaks the sculpture the older one created. The elder of the two complains and references previous times the parents told him to leave each other’s toys alone. He builds it again, only for the younger brat to break it again. The elder takes his legos to sit in front of his parent, knowing she won’t believe him if he just says it. Lo and behold, the younger kid breaks his work again, in plain view of his parent. Unfortunately, his parent is his stepmother, and his sister’s mother. She tells him that he should let the younger kid do whatever she wants, as she is her actual child, not him.
There are two standards established, with one being superior to the other.
What if the law is applied unequally? What if something that was legal is made illegal without any process? Clearly, such a law is unjust. Classically, that is the very definition of tyranny. What is tolerated from one group becomes acceptable for all groups.
Antifa can burn things down and kill / maim people with impunity, while peaceful conservative protests are treated as monsters. A rowdy bunch of pranksters break into the Capitol and they are viewed as traitors and terrorists. If a bunch of conservative protestors fight back against Antifa, it is fair play. If people don’t like it, enforce the rules on Antifa.
Sawatdeeka, hi there. I’ve enjoyed your participation on the Edit This podcast. I’m looking forward to more of that.
What you’re describing is civility, the urge to be a normal, pleasant, decent human being. I don’t want us to surrender that. But I think we have to begin to accept that we are doing our fellow Americans no favors if we allow destructive nonsense to run unchallenged, false narratives to have free rein, and bad ideas to flourish. I think we have to begin to speak out — even when it’s uncomfortable, even when we might feel that we’re being a little bit rude.
I post a lot of things here and on Facebook and MeWe that seem obvious to me, but that I think other people may not have tried to express in their own words. My goal is to give people words to use in response to the things they hear, and to reassure them that they aren’t alone when they think “that doesn’t sound right.”
I think all of us should be doing that, reassuring and equipping each other. We can do that online and we can do it in person. We need to strengthen the community of normal people who want to speak out.
I don’t know how to do that except to keep doing it, to keep speaking out. Find people who say things that make sense to you, and who say it in a way you find appealing, gracious, effective. Get comfortable with the things you really believe. Then screw up the courage to repeat those thoughts to others.
That’s a very good list, I would say. And it reminds me of a question:
Have you ever been in a situation where you have to insist that, “If we’re going to have this discussion, we’re going to have it to the end and not stop with whoever can offer the quickest quip?”
The falseness, SA, is the division of the solution space into only two choices — the presentation of a dichotomy, as opposed to a trichotomy or some other multiple of choices. You say “dichotomy implies cutting,” but that’s not all it implies: you’re cherry-cutting here. ;) It implies “cutting into two.”
And dilemma, while it does translate literally as “a choice between two options,” is almost invariably used to imply a difficult or unpleasant choice. Honestly, can you tell me that you’ve ever heard the word used to describe an easy choice? If not, isn’t it unfair to strip it of its universally recognized meaning while chastising me for imprecision?
[ Note: I am enjoying this conversation, recognize it as a tiny tempest in a minute teacup, and consider it all in good fun. Even though I think I’m right and you’re almost criminally mistaken. ]
Yes, the word dichotomy involves cutting into two, which is precisely what that claim does not do. But you insist it should be called a “dichotomy.” Why?
Yes, of course I’ve heard that. I’m a logic teacher. The etymological use is almost every usage I’ve even seen in the last ten years. That’s how every logic or critical thinking textbook is sure to use the term. Till this conversation, I’d even forgotten it was ever used to imply difficulty!
Mostly. Well, not counting the part you got backwards at the end.
I’ve been taught that a dilemma is a choice between two undesirable options. The “horns of a dilemma” refers to being gored by one or the other of a bull’s horns, neither of which would be a pleasant experience. I seem to remember a lecture explaining that if you go back far enough, the term “lemma” actually refers to something related to a horn. (I come from a background where there were people who knew their ancient Greek and Hebrew and other related languages.) But I could also have remembered wrong, or could have just read that part into it myself.
But in common usage it has come to be a synonym for “problem” or “difficulty.”
Looks like the term first narrowed to refer to two propositions that were unpleasant, and then broadened to include other unpleasant situations.
My title is intended to suggest that people do falsely partition the solution space into two choices: what we’re doing now (which I characterize as, essentially, passivity), or bad behavior. The point of the post is to argue that this is false, and that we have a third and untried option: outspoken pushback.
Okay, this is probably the whole problem.
Out here in the Real World, the word “dilemma” always implies a problem. It isn’t a synonym for “binary choice.” It means “difficult binary choice.”
Similarly, I suggest, out here in the Real World “false dichotomy” means “solution space misleadingly limited to two choices, but in fact consisting of other than — and probably more than — two choices.”
I like words, but I tend to use them in what I think is a reasonably conventional way. There is no way I am equipped, intellectually or temperamentally, to use words in the way they’d be used in a philosophy class. I’m an uneducated intellectual mutt.
We may have to agree to disagree.
Yes. You’re exposing a false dilemma fallacy. Unless you also want to criticize what those people say by replying “Why not both?,” then you’re not talking about a fallacy that falsely divides two joinable options.
Plainly, no. We’re not disputing the term “dilemma.” The distinction between the logic class sense and ordinary usage makes no difference here.
In that case, ordinary usage of “false dichotomy” abandons the meaning of the word “dichotomy,” and you really don’t see the point of using different words differently.
This isn’t even a philosophy class thing. You cited the dictionary yourself. The word “dichotomy” implies cutting. A dichotomous argument by definition is one that divides something into two options. Your way is to use it to describe arguments that don’t divide into two.
And a false dichotomous argument would be one that falsely divides something into two options, producing a false dichotomy.
That was my point: there are more than two options.
We’re obviously talking past each other, but it isn’t obvious to me how we’re doing that.
Yes. It has to separate those options from one another to be a dichotomous arg.
But your use of the term would label as falsely dichotomous an argument that never falsely separates two options (as in the target of your post, where we really shouldn’t do both), or that doesn’t separate the options at all, as in the claim “You simply must like Gimli, or at least Frodo.”
You keep saying that, but provide no more evidence for that view than I have provided for mine. I could accept your authority, but you’ve already admitted that “dilemma” carries no connotation of “difficult” for you, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a nearly universally recognized implication of the word. So I’m going to trust my own familiarity with the term and go with my usage on this, until I get some kind of authoritative definition suggesting that your use is more correct.
This makes no sense. Why are you changing the subject? We’re not talking about the word “dilemma.”
Laughing.
I’m using it as an example of your… specialized… use of words, and of why I’m skeptical that your sense of the common meaning of “false dichotomy” is correct.
The high minded principles are fine.
But we have reached the standards of France in the Dreyfus Affair. The First World War interrupted their descent into the kind of madness we might see soon. That madness was made real in 1936 Spain.
The only question I have is, will staying above the bad behavior prevent the descent, or hasten it? Who’s to know? Is it already too late? Once the violent partisan murders begin, if they will, will it be in each person’s interest to have a clean record?
I’m guessing the answers are, I think remaining aloof for the most part will hasten the descent. We need to stop the others from acting badly, and that needs to be done vigorously with no punches pulled.
Is it too late? Most likely, yes. Unless we find a way to overcome election fraud, then our country is finished. Today Janet Yellen continued to promote blatant policies the ComIntern would be proud of (global minimum tax!).
If the worst happens, it won’t be like 1861. It will be more like Spain in 1936 and that is a fate too terrible to contemplate. We need to do everything we can to prevent that.
I’ve tried to be pretty clear about what we should do. So I’ll ask you to be clear: give me examples of things you think we should do now. Given what has happened to date, what do you think we should do that you think I am counseling against. Be specific.
I don’t have a sense of the common usage.
I don’t have authority.
My evidence is the dictionary you cited. And the fact that an argument that doesn’t separate two things is not dichotomous by that definition.
You can protest all you want that there should be three things instead of two, and you may be right. But it doesn’t change that fact.
My friend, I have consulted one text for a specific definition of “false dichotomy.” I quoted that definition in my comment #8, which supported my intended usage precisely:
Your response was “[Sigh.] Looks like a flawed textbook.” So give me an alternative source, something to work with that contradicts this definition. I’m not a professor of anything, just a guy who can read and who is pretty comfortable with language. Cite a source and quote it for me.
Actually a dichotomy creates a quadrectomy: one right/one wrong; the other right and the first one wrong; both right; both wrong. Simple.
That is of course if your presuppositions are correct. If not, it turns into a choastomy.
I try not to confront strangers, but I do not let the big lies go by unanswered. I just try to answer in a non-threatening way. When that claim about Florida is made in my presence, I typically say, “You know, I was looking at the statistics on the World O Meter and it’s remarkable that Florida is right in the middle of the pack. There’s a lot we don’t know about COVID.” Given that I am an academic, everyone just assumes that I am a liberal, so I have that going for me.
Although sometimes I can’t help myself. I was in a flower shop the day after we had a severe thunderstorm-it was right on top of us and accompanied by the loudest clap of thunder I ever heard- and the woman in front of me said “And people don’t believe there is global warming.” I just blurted out: “You really think a thunderstorm in August in NY is a result of global warming? Seriously?. ” But I won over no hearts and minds with that one.
So I think my experience supports the contention that we probably will do better by offering sane alternatives rather than joining the unhinged.
I think you also show that many people are thoughtless gullible worry-warts.
It was the dictionary. You quoted it yourself.
Would it be a bad idea for conservatives to threaten to pack the court next time GOP controls Congress and White House?
I think it’s worth a shot
In addition to the dictionary, let’s not forget that I showed that that textbook was joining two distinct argument patterns under one name.
I quoted the definition of “dichotomy,” a word that means divided into two things. The phrase “false dichotomy” means, per the definition above, divided in such a way as to suggest that there are only two things.
Again, I cited a text. If you consider that a “flawed textbook,” perhaps you have access to an unflawed textbook. Give me something to work with here.