# Name this logical fallacy **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 10, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417 "2012-02-10T15:29:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![isaiahrobinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@isaiahrobinson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/isaiahrobinson)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417/41 "2012-02-12T22:14:42Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > I am somewhat at a loss to see where we disagree here. > > If taking a line of reasoning to its logical extreme results in an absurdity, it proves that the reasoning is incorrect. It’s not _logical_ absurdity though, which is where the conclusion is impossible. It’s a practical absurdity, in the sense that most people in real life would never actually do it, even though it’s possible, and even though some people in history probably have done it before. (Hell, Jesus advocated it - “sell everything you own and give it to the poor”, etc. A lot of people have probably done just that in history). > [@](#): > > In one of your posts, you mention sending 95% of your month’s paycheck to Darfur. However this reasoning does not permit retaining 5% to spend on your own needs. While that 5% may be necessary for the survival of yourself and your family, it is safe to assume that, somewhere in the world, more lives can be saved by that same money than would be saved by spending it on yourself and your family. > > In other words, it is immoral to spend any money at all on food or shelter for yourself and your family - you are morally obliged to starve and to direct that money to where it can do more good. > > Since we surely agree that that conclusion is morally repugnant, how can we fail to agree that that argument that leads to that conclusion is flawed? You’re thinking along the right track, but you’d be able to save more lives by staying alive, continuing to earn money and giving 95% of it to Africa than you could by sending that extra 5% to Africa as well and then starving to death. Hence the “calculation” would be that you should spend some money on bare essentials for yourself. I’m not saying I agree with that reasoning, and I don’t think anyone who thinks about it would ever agree either. But the fact is, these sorts of utilitarian moral calculations are instinctively how we all think about morality, and the OP’s argument just takes that to its extreme conclusion, which is why it feels so hard to refute and so frustrating. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Zagna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@El\_Zagna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Zagna)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417/42 "2012-02-13T04:09:41Z")
> [@isaiahrobinson](#): > > I’d say the difference is that someone who says “it’s immoral to buy yourself a beer for $5, because that $5 could save a life in Darfur”, hasn’t made any sort of error at all. There’s no false assumptions, no shifting the argument. For me there is an obvious error in each example given so far, and that is that there is an implied argument that we should all put all of our time, money and efforts into the most important problem in the world and not deal with anything else - other than mere survival, I suppose - until that problem is solved. Finding a cure for cancer would probably benefit from additional funds and researchers, but only to a point. There are only so many people who can contribute to research at that level, and even if we threw so much money at them that they were living like rock stars the research takes time. In the meantime homeless people are living on the streets. I think for this discussion to be useful at this point, you need to explicitly define what you mean by a logical fallacy. ---
**Author:** ![isaiahrobinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@isaiahrobinson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/isaiahrobinson)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417/43 "2012-02-13T05:17:12Z")
> [@El\_Zagna](#): > > For me there is an obvious error in each example given so far, and that is that there is an implied argument that we should all put all of our time, money and efforts into the most important problem in the world and not deal with anything else - other than mere survival, I suppose - until that problem is solved. Finding a cure for cancer would probably benefit from additional funds and researchers, but only to a point. There are only so many people who can contribute to research at that level, and even if we threw so much money at them that they were living like rock stars the research takes time. In the meantime homeless people are living on the streets. That isn’t the implied argument. As I said, utilitarian “moral calculations” aren’t just a case of finding the problem that’s causing the most suffering in the world and only spending money on that. It involves working out how you can get the right “bang for the buck” from your money and time, and it involves taking into account what other people are doing. To give crude examples: If you can save two homeless people’s lives in the US by giving $100 to a homeless shelter but only one life in Darfur by sending it there, you should give it to the homeless shelter, even if more people are dying in Darfur. If cancer is a problem causing more suffering than the ebola virus, but lots of people are donating to cancer research and hardly anyone is donating to ebola research, then maybe you can promote human welfare better by donating to ebola research instead, even though it’s not causing as much suffering. And so on. I’m not saying this is how we _should_ think about morality, I’m saying it’s how most people _actually do_ think about morality instinctively, at least to some extent. They just don’t follow the reasoning through to its extreme conclusion. But it’s not a fallacy to follow it to that conclusion. There’s no faulty assumptions and no faulty reasoning in doing so. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417/44 "2012-02-13T09:44:35Z")
> [@isaiahrobinson](#): > > Take this example: you’re at a campsite in the middle of nowhere, in an area renowned for being home to a certain type of venomous snakes. You’ve brought one vial of anti-venom for yourself. You wake up in the middle of the night and realize you’ve just been bitten by such a snake, and that in about 20 minutes you will start to feel agonizing pain. However you realize two people with you at the campsite have also been bitten by such snakes - an adult father and his 6-year-old son. You know the snake’s venom is not usually strong enough to kill adults, although it will put them in agony for a couple of days. However, a 6-year-old would be likely to die from the venom. Both the father and the son are in a lot of pain already and are not really aware of what’s going on around them. Who should you inject with the anti-venom, and why? > > Under the moral theory you’ve just laid out (“a moral action is simply one intended to benefit others, particularly at a cost to oneself. I don’t believe it needs to get the most bang for buck to count as moral”), it would be perfectly moral to inject the father. You’d be benefitting someone else, and at your expense. It’s a good example. But one situation in which individuals make a utilitarian decision does not prove that it is the basis of all our morality. There are plenty of counter-examples. For example, anyone with children would be horrified by the notion that they should do nothing for their child before their child’s well-being is among the worst in the world. Now you’ve (in a separate post) asserted that _really_ our morality is utilitarian, we just don’t follow it through. But there are other interpretations. > [@](#): > > But that’s obviously _not_ the moral thing to do, right? The fact that you use _the_ moral thing to do implies that there is only one moral choice. Which in this example, I’d agree with, but not in general. Sometimes morality is defined as “what one should do”, which I think is misguided. It’s that line of thinking that seems to lead people into relativism and bizarre assertions, like that criminals believe their actions are virtuous (otherwise they wouldn’t be doing them). I think it’s better to define moral simply as something like “an action intended to benefit others”. ---
**Author:** ![benbo1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@benbo1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/benbo1)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417/45 "2012-02-13T12:01:25Z")
I think this is close to the spirit of what the OP had in mind. I call it the ‘Mrs. Lincoln misdirect’ - overlooking something obviously wrong with something inconsequential. Whenever u try to bring up an important thing wrong with a plan or event, & someone asks, ‘well, aside from that, how about it’? Respond: ‘well, aside from \*\*\*that \*\*\*Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?’ ---
**Author:** ![El\_Zagna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@El\_Zagna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Zagna)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417/46 "2012-02-13T15:13:18Z")
> [@isaiahrobinson](#): > > That isn’t the implied argument. Well, I think it is. > [@](#): > > I’m not saying this is how we should think about morality, I’m saying it’s how most people actually do think about morality instinctively, at least to some extent. I don’t agree with that either. I don’t think you can find a father that would sacrifice everything he had to save the life of his child to see that action as less moral than sending $100 to Darfur to save one life over there. ---
**Author:** ![isaiahrobinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@isaiahrobinson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/isaiahrobinson)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417/47 "2012-02-13T15:49:48Z")
> [@El\_Zagna](#): > > Well, I think it is. It isn’t: the moral calculation isn’t as simplistic as you’re assuming. > [@](#): > > I don’t agree with that either. I don’t think you can find a father that would sacrifice everything he had to save the life of his child to see that action as less moral than sending $100 to Darfur to save one life over there. You’re right, the example of your children is one area in which most people clearly don’t think about morality in a utilitarian way. But that’s why the types of arguments the OP is talking about would never be used about children, because they wouldn’t be effective: I think we can all agree “you shouldn’t have spent that $100 treating your child’s illness, because it could have treated 50 children in Africa instead” is not a very convincing argument. It’s easy to dismiss, because it’s not how any of us actually think about morality. But in a lot of cases the types of argument the OP is talking about really do have a persuasive force that’s hard to refute. That’s why the OP is trying to work out what the problem is with them. “We shouldn’t be spending $1m on a parade for a football team when that money could have saved thousands of children’s lives in Africa” is hard to refute, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t we have spent it on Africa instead? The answer is, we didn’t want to. The question isn’t a fallacy; we just don’t like admitting the answer, because it cuts against how we tend to think about morality. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-this-logical-fallacy/612417.md?page=2)