What’s the term for the kind of argument that goes, “It’s wrong to ban X because we allow Y and Y is much worse.”
Example: “It’s wrong to ban riding a bicycle without a helmet, because we allow driving without a helmet, which is statistically much more likely to result in fatal head injury.”
Is this just a particular flavor of tu quoque, or does it have a name of its own?
I’m certain this isn’t actually a named fallacy, just a mistake in thinking that laws or other human institutions have to make sense according to any one person’s reasoning.
I’m not sure this is a fallacy at all.
Well, the fallacy is somewhere in here: driving without a helmet may be allowed for reasons that have nothing to do with statistical likelihood of fatal head injury, or indeed no (logical) reason at all, but rather political necessity or historical accident, and therefore have no (logical) bearing on whether it is, of itself, wrong to disallow riding a bicycle without a helmet.
Or, said better after pausing to think: The fallacy is in assuming that the counterexample came about logically.
Is there a name for this logical fallacy, similar to the example in the OP:
Representative Such-n-Such introduced legislation exempting drivers of empty school buses from having to stop at railroad crossings. Obviously Representatve Such-n-Such has far too much time on his hands, what with two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a recession, global warming, etc.
Or a similar example: I got a traffic ticket. The Springfield Police Department must not have enough real crime to deal with.
a more obvious example is “gay sex is more dangerous than smoking, yet government promotes the former and hates the latter”.
I don’t see how it is a “fallacy”. I also don’t follow Derleth’s reasoning about stuff not being supposed to make sense for one person. How about for a million persons? Or how about if that one person is called Galileo?
An argument can be incorrect, without being a fallacy thereby.
In your (chosen) example, the counter-points are all arguable - one may well say that the fact that a law is chosen by historical accident or politocal necessity is not a sufficient basis to retain it; the point is arguable. Equally, if driving without a helmet has other reasons for allowing it, that’s a perfectly valid counter-argument, but it doesn’t demonstrate that the original argument was fallacious - merely that it is incorrect, because there are other factors involved.
A fallacy is more a pattern of argument which doesn’t, logically, move to (arguably) prove the conclusion. For example: if I was to argue that those supporting bicycle-helmet laws are bad people because they are all child molesters, thus bicycle helmets ought not to be banned. Even if it was true that those supporting a helmet law are bad people, it doesn’t support the conclusion.
It’s a statement about reality: The government, like a parent, sometimes has no better current reason for doing things beyond “Because I said so”; it assuredly has history behind its reasoning but, as we saw with Jim Crow and the prohibition of alcohol, historical reasons for doing things aren’t always justifiable reasons for continuing to do things.
In short, the Government is big. Not logical, just big.
Hmmn. I guess I don’t see “We should allow anything not worse than what we currently allow” as being arguable, on the basis that “what we currently allow” can never be assumed to have been brought about logically.
It is certainly an arguable proposition. The argument could go something like this:
However the restrictions whe have have been imposed, whether by logical cost-benefit analysis or custom, we would not be comfortable with imposing a more restictive set of laws.
Therefore, any new law must be measured against what we already have.
Those which go beyond what we have in terms of restriction/regulation, ought not to be imposed.
Aha. But does “we would not be comfortable with it” equal “it is wrong”?
Maybe I was attaching too much importance to the “because” as an operator in my original statement. As in, “Whether we do or do not allow Y has no direct bearing on the inherent rightness or wrongness of allowing X.”
Certainly, that would be the basis of the argument. The counter-argument would be that the argument is simply a value-judgment and there is no reason to suppose it’s a correct one …
But if we can’t diagnose it with a fancy Latin name, how will people know that they’re wrong?!?!?!
I mean, I guess you could say: “Stop casting all this Latin about like it was some sort of rhetorical hocus pocus and just explain why it’s a bad argument!” Which might just be crazy enough to work!
Wikipedia has a name for it: Other stuff exists. Maybe just convert that to Latin? 
Yeah, I guess the error is in thinking that the law should be logical and consistent. How stupid!
I understand what the OP is saying. This discussion came up a lot when the NATO countries first decided to bomb Libya a couple months ago. A common counter-argument was, “why should we bomb Libya for oppressing its people when [other countries] oppress their people just as badly and we don’t bomb them?” Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, etc. In response a lot of people argued that this clearly isn’t the way to think about it: you assess each case on its individual merits. Should we bomb Libya, yes or no? Should we bomb Syria, yes or no? The fact that we are or are not attacking some other country shouldn’t, in itself, be a factor when deciding to bomb Libya or not, so the argument went. Some commentators did suggest it was a ‘fallacy’ to think otherwise.
Folks, fallacies are a lot easier to define if you’d put the argument into a syllogism. If you can’t do that, then you probably shouldn’t be wielding rhetorical swords like tu quoques and whatnot. Too many times on this board, we see arguments presented like:
If P, then Q.
P
Thus, Q.
And the poster will go “But nP! What fallacy is this?!” They won’t accept the answer that just because P is false, it doesn’t make the argument fallacious. Look, a logical fallacy is an error of drawing a conclusion for premises. It is NOT an error of fact! An argument can use false premises and still be logically sound.
OP, try putting the argument into a syllogism and we’ll tell you what the fallacy is, if anything.
OK, having done some Wikipedia surfing, because Wikipedia is an infallible font of erudition, I think I may be asking if this is a form of *informal *fallacy, whereas **Malthus **is defending it as not being a *formal *fallacy. Am I understanding these terms correctly?
I might have been thinking of Ignoratio elenchi, a Latin and therefore irrefutable term meaning “ignorance of what a refutation could logically be”; i.e., presenting an argument that may or may not in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question.
ETA: Chessic Sense, I don’t know the rules of putting things into syllogisms. Point me to a primer?
It’s something like this, as a suggestion: Guy 1 says:
“If is bad, then should be banned.
P is bad.
Therefore P should be banned”
Guy 2 says:
“R is also bad.
R has not been banned yet.
Therefore P should not be banned either.”
The OP is asking the name of the ‘fallacy’ in Guy 2’s argument, if it is fallacious at all.