Person A states that deaths caused by terrorism are unacceptably high and that a reduction would be desirable.
Person B refutes this by stating that far more fatalities can be attributed to use of tobacco, therefore any attempt to address terrorism without addressing smoking is unfair or unsound.
Is person B guilty of logical fallacy?
If so, what is it properly called?
It’s called a false dilemma. We are not forced to choose between counterterrorism and reducing tobacco consumption.
I keep this site in my favorites. It provides a convenient list of faulty argument techniques including false dilemmas, though they call it a False Dichotomy.
Mange
UDS is right. It’s also called a Bifurcation, False Dichotomy, Faulty Dilemma. or Excluded Middle. In my opinion, your particular example is a special case of the Excluded Middle fallacy called Short Term Versus Long Term, where it is argued that one thing must precede another when in fact there is no reason that it should.
Person B is not suggesting that we are so forced. He says ‘if we engage in counterterrorism, we ought to devote efforts to preventing smoking too’. That is hardly the position of a person who maintains that it is impossible to do both.
There are two reasons that B is wrong. First is that he assumes smoking is a problem without bothering to adduce evidence. (We might argue that smoking deaths are voluntary suicides, and that obviously smokers value the pleasure of smoking more highly than a long and healthy life.) Second is that he assumes (without evidence) that because smoking causes many deaths the resources assigned to counterterrorism would do more good reassigned to preventing smoking.
Suppose that 900,000 people per year die from disease 1, and that it costs ten dollars to cure one case of disease 1. And suppose that 12 people per year die from disease 2, and that it costs two dollars to cure a case of disease 2. Now suppose that you have a health care budget of twenty dollars per year.
Do you:
(a) put all the money into the bigger problem, and save 2 people per year,
(b) split the money between the diseases, and save 6 people per year,
© put all the money where you get most bang for your buck, and save 10 people per year, or
(d) put all the money into college programs that teach people formal names for the fallacies tabulated by the Romans?
Regards,
Agback
It’s still a false dilemma. The point is that there is no particular link between the two issues which Person B has sought to link. We can address one issue, or not, without regard to the decision we take about addressing the other issue (and vice versa). Thus person B’s position is fallacious even before we look at the substance of the second problem he has raised.
I don’t know, I see a perfectly legitimate comparison. I was in a McDonalds the other day, and some guy walked in with a mask and a special suit. He told everybody to gather around and listen to his demands or he would be forced to punish us by pushing his little button and showing us our doom. Well, some fool wouldn’t listen, and the masked marauder pushed his button, peppering us with light Ciggarettes, some of which landed in my mouth and caused me to smoke them.
I don’t consider B’s counteragruement a logical fallacy, but rather a weak, if not trivial, claim.
There are three assumptions or claims within B’s statement:
B’s claim is an appeal to one of priority or resource allocation.
Personally, I think this is a red herring.
Well, you’re reading a lot into person B’s position. Nothing that he has said suggests that he is concerned with efficiency of resource allocation, or even that he is addressing himself to steps taken by the state, rather than by society at large. His objection is that addressing terrorism without addressing smoking problem B is “unfair”.
He does not suggest that we should address whichever problem can be most efficiently addressed with the resources available; he clearly feels that if we address terrorism we must address smoking as well. On the assumption that one of these problems is more efficiently addressed than the other with the resources availalbe, addressing both must be a suboptimal allocation of resources, so efficiency is not his concern.
As I look at person B’s position as stated in the OP, there is another fallacy. Person A states that “deaths caused by terrorism are unacceptably high and that a reduction would be desirable”, and person B “refutes this” by a series of proposition which do not, in fact, refute either of the statements made by person A. Person B probably accepts person A’s two propositions, but assumes that the conclusion is that we should devote all our resources to counterterrorism, to the exclusion of other lifesaving objectives, and seeks to refute that. He’s attacking an argument which has not been made, while ignoring the arguments which have been made.
Well, you’re reading a lot into person B’s position. Nothing that he has said suggests that he is concerned with efficiency of resource allocation, or even that he is addressing himself to steps taken by the state, rather than by society at large. His objection is that addressing terrorism without addressing smoking problem B is “unfair”.
He does not suggest that we should address whichever problem can be most efficiently addressed with the resources available; he clearly feels that if we address terrorism we must address smoking as well. On the assumption that one of these problems is more efficiently addressed than the other with the resources availalbe, addressing both must be a suboptimal allocation of resources, so efficiency is not his concern.
As I look at person B’s position as stated in the OP, there is another fallacy. Person A states that “deaths caused by terrorism are unacceptably high and that a reduction would be desirable”, and person B “refutes this” by a series of proposition which do not, in fact, refute either of the statements made by person A. Person B probably accepts person A’s two propositions, but assumes that the conclusion is that we should devote all our resources to counterterrorism, to the exclusion of other lifesaving objectives, and seeks to refute that. He’s attacking an argument which has not been made, while ignoring the arguments which have been made.
In order to have a debate, one must have something to debate. If you take A’s statement simply as saying terrorist deaths are undesirable, therefore fewer would be desirable, then it’s just a claim of the form of:
x=x
Such a statement has no import and presumablly there is a debate.
Therefore A must be wanting some action to take place to reduce these deaths. B has every logical right to say let’s spend the time and money on smoking first(or even instead of, because we don’t have money for both) because the reduction in the number of deaths will be greater.
Granted, no evidence was been presented by B to support this claim, that’s why I described it as weak.
We reason this way all the time in our own lifes. We have a long list of desirable things we could do but have limited time or money and can’t do everything. So we don’t do or buy some things that would be desirable because other things take priority.
No, B doesn’t say that we should address smoking first, or instead of. He says we should address smoking as well. That’s why I say his argument is not grounded on efficiency.
Besides, isn’t B assuming that addressing terrorism diverts resources from anti-smoking measures, and vice versa? There is no basis for this assumption. We could dramatically increase expenditure on both counterterrorism and anti-smoking measures at the expense of, say, road-building programs, or education, or agricultural subsidies, or welfare, or . . .
That’s why I say that B has set up a false dilemma.
OK; what about if it isn’t a resource-based decision; It is illegal to eat swans in the UK (unless you are royalty), but it is legal to eat goose; either we should legalise swan or criminalise goose; which should we do?
As a counter to person A or is this something completely new?
A new example, sorry.
That’s clearly a false dilemma. We are presented with two options - legalise eating swans, or criminalise eating geese. There is a third option, which is to leave matters as they are.
Whoa. Any money spend on item A is not available for items B thru infinity.
If I buy a stick of gum, that money is not available for my retirement or a trip to Europe. I may still have money left to do those things, but spending money on one thing reduces the amount available for everything else. At least in my experience.
Hi, Mangetout!
That is correct, but is not applicable in this case.
You see, the budget has far more items than these two items, so it is not just an either-or situation.