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The False Dichotomy Fallacy: Not the Same Thing as the False Dilemma Fallacy
While teaching my first logic class (as a grad student, Baylor University, Fall of 2008), I made a rookie mistake. A student asked me if the false dilemma fallacy was the same thing as the false dichotomy fallacy. I said yes.
I know, I know–it seems cringey and facepalmy now.
What’s that–you weren’t thinking that was cringey and facepalmy?
Well, I guess it’s time for a lesson in logic. Let’s start with a few observations:
–There is no such thing as an official or perfect list of informal fallacies.
–There is no such thing as an official or perfect system for categorizing informal fallacies.
–There is no such thing as an official or perfect list of names for the informal fallacies.
But here’s what we do have:
–A good definition of what an informal fallacy actually is (and there’s one available here at my earlier post);
–a number of argument patterns that are often used in informal fallacies;
–various resemblances among some of the patterns that make it possible to categorize them;
–a few very well-established names for some of the patterns (ad hominem, ad populum, etc.);
–some other names that are somewhat less well-established;
–and a lot of different logic and critical thinking textbooks, each of which has its own particular approach to informal fallacies.
The textbooks vary in these ways:
–they have different lists of the patterns (the longer the list, the more arguments you can apply it to, but the harder it is to remember everything!);
–they have different systems for categorizing the patterns;
–and they do not use exactly the same names for the patterns.
For all things logic, I recommend The Power of Logic by Lehman, Wasserman, and the Howard-Snyders as a good standard logic textbook and also, I deem, better than the other standard ones I’ve worked with (Introduction to Logic by Copi and A Concise Introduction to Logic by Hurley).
But here I am in Hong Kong, my job at HKBU involves teaching a lot of ethics courses, I haven’t taught logic since my last job in Pakistan, and all my logic textbook copies are in a box in a storage unit south of Houston!
And you know what? I don’t even care. And I’ve already told you why I don’t care: We’re not talking about a problem that has an official or perfect solution.
But if you didn’t think my rookie mistake was actually cringey and facepalmy, then I can give you a better solution, and here it is:
There are two different patterns often used in informal fallacies that involve an either-or statement. One is called the “false dilemma” pattern, and the other is (or should be) called the “false dichotomy” pattern.
Let’s look at the patterns, using temporary names that won’t lead us astray.
Fallacies Using the FRODO Pattern
1. You must disapprove of Trump’s behavior, or disapprove of Biden’s behavior. Make up your mind!
2. We must either approve of masks or of chloroquine, and masks are good. So chloroquine can go to heck!
3. We have to drill more, or do more green energy; the time to decide which one is now!
4. We have to cut spending or else grow the economy to fight the national debt. It’s easy to grow the economy, so let’s just ignore the spending.
Fallacies Using the SAM Pattern
1. Your only options are to vote for Hillary or for Trump. Hillary is bad. Therefore, your only option is to vote for Trump.
2. You can be a patsy, or a jerk. It’s wrong to be a jerk. So be a patsy! Or: You can be a patsy, or a jerk. It’s wrong to be a patsy. So be a jerk! (An argument rightly criticized in Henry R’s thread here.)
3. Either you approve of sacrificing the economy to fight coronavirus, or else you are in favor of doing nothing!
4. Are you going to be a Christian, or are you going to be a nihilistic atheist?
You see what’s wrong with the Frodos, don’t you? Those “Why not both?” memes were literally made to respond to arguments like this! (See also Iron Man, below.) All the Frodo arguments are telling us we have to choose between two options when we could well choose both.
Something different is wrong with the Sam arguments. Their fallacy is giving us only two choices when there are other options available. (See Dilbert’s mom, below.)
Those are not the same mistake. The Frodo arguments are asking us to choose between only one of two options when we can actually have both; the Sam arguments are asking us to choose one of two options when we can actually reject both.
(Of course, the same argument can have both mistakes: You must like Star Wars or else Star Trek. Star Trek is great, and therefore you should hate Star Wars!)
So which mistake is used in “false dichotomy” fallacies, and which one is used in “false dilemma” fallacies? Well, the Frodo arguments are improperly separating things that could go together. And the Sam arguments are improperly limiting us to only two choices when other choices are available.
So let’s review the relevant terms:
–a dichotomy is a cutting or a dividing in two (see Dictionary.com here);
–and a dilemma is, traditionally, a set of two options or of two propositions (go to Dictionary.com here and scroll down to the part about “Historical Usage”).
So which arguments improperly cut or divide two options? Those would be the Frodo arguments. So a good name for the Frodo arguments is “false dichotomy fallacies.” And which arguments give us an improper set of two options? Those would be the Sam arguments. So a good name for the Sam arguments is “false dilemma fallacies.”
This is how you’re likely to find the term defined in any logic textbook that uses the term “false dilemma.” “False dilemma” has a pretty well-established meaning, unlike “false dichotomy.”
Unfortunately, the terms are sometimes used synonymously, like here in Wiktionary. This is not universal; for example, at the Dictionary.com definition of “dichotomy,” the third definition emphasizes the use of the term in logic as involving a strict separation, a mutual exclusivity–standard dichotomy stuff, not dilemma stuff.
Using them synonymously abandons the dictionary use of the word “dichotomy.”
Consider the claim You must support a future malaria vaccine, or at least support chloroquine. This sentence is not telling me that I cannot support both. But if you want to call it a fallacy on the grounds that it leaves out mosquito nets, be my guest. That would make it an inappropriate reduction of choices, an improper set of two options–a false dilemma.
But it doesn’t falsely separate the two options it presents. It’s not a chotomy of any kind, and so not a dichotomy. So I ask you, if you want to use “false dichotomy” and “false dilemma” synonymously:
Why would you want to label something an improper separation when it does not improperly separate?
You could just say something like, “Hey, bro, this is a dichotomy, but it should be a trichotomy!” Or you could just use the standard logic textbook term that makes sense etymologically: You can say, “This is a false dilemma fallacy.”
And then you can save the term “false dichotomy fallacy” for arguments that improperly separate two options. That’s the right way to use the word “dichotomy,” and it allows us to use these two fitting names to keep track of the distinction between two different kinds of bad argument.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
As I have continued to think about this rather preposterous debate — preposterous for its duration if nothing else — I’ve come to wonder if perhaps… wait for it… we are both right.
That is, I wonder if the sense in which two choices are presented as a dichotomy depends on the context or perspective from which one looks at the words.
For example, SA looks, I think, at the relationship between the two words and how they are contrasted. I look at the two words as a partitioning of a space, the literal cutting or separating of a whole into two parts that together compose that whole.
By SA’s interpretation, the details of those two components matter quite a lot. From my perspective, what matters is that it be a legitimate partitioning into two complete subsets, which is what I interpret the word dichotomy to mean.
If the partitioning does not divide the entire solution space into two components that, when recombined, reconstitute the entire space, then it is not truly a dichotomous division — not by the aspect of the definition of dichotomy that I am emphasizing. In short, my interpretation depends very much on the root definition of the word, as a partitioning without any implication of the meaning or relationship of the two components. It is simply a slicing through a single thing to make it two distinct parts.
Here’s where you lost me. Which two words?
If a fallacious argument makes some distinction between options but does not actually divide them, why call it a dichotomy?
HR, if you want to accomplish anything in this conversation, the best place to start is probably here: Do you understand that the following arguments make different errors in reasoning?
1. We have to cut spending or else grow the economy to fight the national debt. It’s easy to grow the economy, so let’s just ignore the spending.
2. Are you going to be a Christian, or are you going to be a nihilistic atheist?
I can understand your confusion. I am texting on my phone, from my (stopped) car. I should’ve been more precise.
My impression is that it matters to you what the relative meanings are of the two things which are the product of the division: the two terms of the dichotomy. Whereas what matters to me is that there be actually two and only two products of the division. In other words, that the division completely divide the area of interest, the space, into only two terms so that, when combined, they reconstitute the entire space.
When options are presented and the implication is that they are the only options, the corollary is that the entire possible solution space has been divided into the only two possible options. It doesn’t matter how the two options relate to each other, so long as they are in fact distinct. If they are distinct and they re-combine to reform the entire solution space, then we have a dichotomy by that definition of partitioning into two components.
If they fail that test, then we do not have a dichotomy, because the operation performed on the solution space was not a division into two distinct components. It was something else.
That’s pretty good for stopped-car texting!
The two propositions, you mean–or the two options.
Ok. Well, their meaning is relevant to whether a dichotomy is fallacious or not. (See the first link in the opening post.) I care about their meaning as far as that is concerned.
But to get to the immediate point–whether we should call an argument a dichotomy. No, I don’t care about their meaning; I care whether the argument divides the two from one another, which is necessary for properly calling it a dichotomy.
It has long been clear that that is what matters to you.
And when that’s done fallaciously, you know what that’s called in various sources you and I have both cited? You know what The Power of Logic and Introduction to Logic call that? A false dilemma fallacy.
Distinctness is not the same thing as separation. Your way is to call arguments dichotomies never dichotomize, just as long as they give us too few options.
By context: my purpose in communication, the person with whom I am communicating and how best to communicate in terms he will relate to.
That’s fine, I guess. I’ma evening willing to use worser grammar and thing like that in interests of clearer commudicashun when the situations calls for it. So using a poorly fitting name for a fallacy from time to time for the same purpose makes sense.
That’s a bit unpleasant. Perhaps TR might have meant that he wishes to use words and phrases in the way he believes they are understood by most people, which I think has some merit.
I have been required to repress my natural grammatical pedanticism for similar reasons. Gotta speak the other guy’s language if’n y’all wanna get thru.
Yes, it has merit. But it’s the same thing, evidently.
Well, no. He didn’t say that he was in favor of using comically incorrect grammar, like some ignorant rube who wouldn’t know which end of a philosophy textbook he was supposed to hold and which end he was supposed to use to cut the heads off of chickens. He suggested that he would use terms in the way they were understood by the person to whom he was speaking.
Now perhaps he does in fact spend his days talking to people with significantly sub-normal IQs, but I didn’t get that impression from his comments.
Neither did I.
Yes. Which has merit.
And is, evidently, the same thing as what I actually said it was the same as–now extra emphasized with underlining in the quotation above.
I acquired two somewhat redundant degrees in Management. Much of the ‘content’ was of very limited use. What I found most helpful in my later consulting and process improvement efforts was that I had learned the ‘language’ of Accounting, Finance, HR, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, etc, etc, etc. Being able to communicate in terms they could relate to enabled real conversations. They were hesitant to ‘snow’ me with BS and I was able (sometimes, at least) to understand what some of their real issues and motivators were.
If I were to be so pretentious as to expound upon the subject of the OP, I would want to be very familiar with what the potential recipient of my discourse would be likely to engage. I would be most interested in what he believed and how he got there. I found both SA’s and HR’s approach to be interesting and valid within certain bounds.
Yet, here I am.
Ah, my error. I’m sorry. I thought you were caricaturing his position by suggesting that it was akin to speaking down to hicks. When you said “but it’s the same thing,” I thought that you were comparing what you had just done via comical grammar to what I suggested he was attempting to do, which is use words in the way he believed people understood them.
I guess my misunderstanding was the result of the ambiguity of the pronoun in “But it’s the same thing, evidently,” since “it” could have been either your comment about fallacy naming or your playful misuse of grammar.
Thanks.
But they’re all the same thing. Using words people understand better, using poorly fitting names for informal fallacies on occasions when it helps people understand the main point, using bad grammar for clearer commudicashun. Them’s all in the same category.
How about recognizing that the meanings of words and phrases derive, to a significant extent, from their common usage? Is that also in the same category, or is it simply acknowledging that language evolves and effective communication includes taking that evolution into account when addressing your audience?
It’s both, I think.
But you’re still missing the double significance of all the sources considered in #s 11 and 33:
There is no clear and unambiguous common usage of “false dichotomy.”
There is a clear and unambiguous common usage of “false dilemma.” It refers to arguments like the “Be a jerk or be a patsy” argument.
Perhaps that’s true among philosophy professors and their students. I think it is close to the opposite among the general public.
You think all them citations in #s 11 and 33 represent philosophy profs but not the general public?
You think the general public aren’t trying to say what the logic teachers say when they use the names of informal fallacies?