This is motivated by an ongoing argument in my neighbourhood about the rights and wrongs of local traffic restrictions. There have been several examples of the same basic form from both sides, but I will paraphrase just this one:
It is wrong to suggest that people use their vehicles less because there are people with disabilities who rely on theirs.
Or a little more formally:
There are members of a set S for whom A is true, therefore A must be true for all members of S
This is a little vague, but I think you can read it without any logical fallacies. The argument is “It is wrong to impose this limitation on all people because it would create excessive hardship on some people.” That’s logically cromulent: it doesn’t depend on the limitation creating a hardship for all people, just the most-affected subset.
It also seems pretty ethically cromulent to me, in just about any real system of ethics, though whether a hardship is indeed excessive is a factual/opinion matter; as is the question of whether mitigations could be put it place for the most-affected group of people.
There are people who have disabilities who rely on their vehicles. Therefore your suggestion – that people are using their vehicles less often – is factually incorrect.
I found it hard to parse at first, too, but I’m pretty sure he meant “to suggest that people [should] use their vehicles less” and not “to suggest that people [do] use their vehicles less.”
OK, in that case the example is not an example of a fallacy at all. Either it’s a bad example of a broader case that the OP meant us to focus on, or the OP does indeed mean this situation and is trying to extrapolate to a larger abstract condition and is in error in doing so.
There’s nothing fallacious about saying
Some X are in situation Y
Some Z are X
Implementing Plan A would have negative effects under situation Y
Plan A should not be implemented for population Z
Let me restate the informal example:
Person A says “perhaps people should think about reducing their car usage”
Person B replies “How dare you suggest that, some people are disabled and really need to drive”
It is as if Person B is borrowing the justification from a subset of people and applying it to all.
In the restated informal example, Person B is interpreting “people” to mean “all people” rather than as “people in general”.
I don’t see it as a logical fallacy, but rather as a language-parsing issue. And there are socio-political subtexts. Person A may be thinking “people in general” can be addressed for the betterment of all, while Person B may be thinking that if there are socially created pressures and expectations of people in general, exceptions will not automatically be made, attitude-wise and pressure-wise, for folks such as the disabled who really need to drive.
If you’re attempting to find the name of the formal fallacy for sake of argument, it’d be helpful if you gave us more context, i.e., what traffic restrictions are being proposed.
I think it’s an equivocation fallacy, hinging on what is meant by a statement like “people should use their vehicles less.”
Those making the argument that it’s “wrong to suggest,” are taking advantage of the lack of a qualifying statement to read it as “all people should use their vehicles less,” where the people actually making the suggestion that “people should use their vehicles less” would probably qualify it as “some” or “in general, but with obvious exceptions.”
To those who say it’s a non sequitur, I believe you may be technically correct based solely on the premises and conclusion as written, but not if we allow for the unstated (but probably implied) premises that being expected to drive less would be especially harmful to those with physical disabilities, and that we should not do things that are especially harmful to those with physical disabilities.
If the “solution” of people driving less requires more or less universal compliance, it’s not a logical fallacy. It’s the reality.
If the traffic area of concern contains a large number of people with disabilities, like a retirement village, it’s not a logical fallacy. It’s an on point criticism of the suggestion.
I guess you could consider it an “appeal to emotion” if you are assuming that they are just trying to shut down that line of discussion.
This seems like a textbook excluded-middle fallacy to me. The speaker is not considering that there might be incremental possibilities between absolute prohibition and absolute permissiveness.
This isn’t to say that there is or isn’t actually middle ground; just that the argument eliminates even the possibility.
Having been the one to bring up non sequitor, I’ll weigh in again. While the OP’s formal proposition was a non sequitor, it appears his formal argument doesn’t represent the true nature of the underlying argument. Like you said, the informal argument’s terms are too vague. It seems more like a misunderstanding than a fallacy (though there could be a fallacy right around the corner.). The potential fallacies are numerous based on the unparsed language.
Considering that there’s some organized resistance to plastic straw bans based on the concept that “Disabled people need straws, Yo!” straw man responses are indeed appropriate; possibly mandatory.
If there’s a fallacy here this would be the main one. Depending how you read it there’s a touch of Begging the Question in there too by assuming that disabled people driving less is wrong per se.
Sounds to me like someone getting offended for someone else (think: Social Justice Warrior). I feel like a response along the lines of “No one is suggesting that people that physically need their cars to get around stop using them or use them less, but rather that able bodied people try walking to the grocery store/friend’s house/library 3 blocks away instead of driving” would clear it up.
Someone upthread mentioned a strawman, and it sort of hits on that.
The suggestion “people should drive less”, the reply “What about all the handicapped people, do you just want them to never leave their house again”. The second person changed the argument, and shot down that argument instead of just discussing the suggestion as it was laid out.
Beyond that, the way it’s simplified in the OP, maybe it’s not so much a logical fallacy but just a discussion that needs to continue so that any miscommunications get cleared up. I have a feeling that if there is a logical fallacy and you toss it into the ring to defend your side, the other person is just going to dig their heels in unless they understand what a logical fallacy is.
That’s sort of what I was aiming at. The reply to that could be.
Able bodied People should drive less.
Joe McHandicapped is a handicapped person.
Therefore Joe McHandicapped [del]should drive less[/del] doesn’t need to worry about complying with this.
Also, I think it’s important to note that most/many of us are looking for a logical fallacy in what how we’re assuming the conversation actually played out OR from very little information.
