Welcome to the newest edition of Obscure Fallacies, here’s your host, Flannel Jesus! Round of Applause please!
No, not you, fat lady in front, your arm fat is shaking too wildly, it’s slapping the faces of those sitting behind you, please stop clapping your hands.
The fallacy I wish to bring your attention to today is one that I admittedly have made numerous times (in fact, there are examples in the link I’m going to give that are identical to arguments I’ve made, perhaps not here but elsewhere). Whether you admit it or not, you’ve almost certainly made these types of arguments as well at some point or another. It’s an easy fallacy to let slip, it’s hard to point out, hard to respond to it correctly, hard to notice if you’re doing it. It’s a very subtle fallacy.
It’s called The NonCentral Fallcy. I will show you what the general form of the fallacy is, but it will be given in a slightly-difficult-to-understand form, and then some examples that will make the form understandable, if you have at least the reading comprehension of the average college student.
The form:
X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member.
Therefore, Martin Luther King is associated with malice.
I’m not sure this is entirely a fallacy. The argument against honoring Martin Luther King isn’t necessarily an accusation of malice itself, but just that Martin Luther King can be seen as malicious.
It’s like say you know someone belongs to a problematic group. Someone isn’t necessarily problematic, but you don’t want to assume the risk of others viewing you as hanging out with bad company.
Also, you don’t want to assume the risk of actually hanging out with bad company, especially if an abundance of options are available of people to hang out with. You see this a lot during award ceremonies. Award committees don’t necessarily judge nominees based on whether or not they’re actually bad, but just on whether or not they’re possibly bad. They don’t want to assume the risk of an award tarnishing its reputation.
The same thing can apply in terms of what to do among company. If you have a number of activities, but some activities are dangerous, then you would prefer to do other activities in order to avoid assuming the risk of danger.
If the bad thing about criminals is their maliciousness, the pointing out that MLK is a criminal is kinda beside the point – the real question is, is he malicious?
This is the point of recognizing it as a fallacy:
If category X is bad because of Property A (category ‘criminal’ is bad because of property ‘malicious’)
and you’re trying to prove that example M is bad by pointing out that he’s in category X (example ‘MLK’ is bad because he’s in category ‘criminal’)
you can skip the whole categorization process and just focus on what’s really bad.
Property A is bad, so…does MLK have property A? Forget about the category, that’s a distraction.
And that’s why it’s important to see the fallacy for what it is: don’t get distracted by the category, focus, focus, focus.
No, it’s not. What I’m saying has nothing to do with whether or not he’s malicious. It has to do with being associated with malice.
Focus is not always affordable though.
You’re assuming people (care to) have the time, energy, and attention available to investigate whether or not Property A exists.
Whether it’s your peers who are judging the company you hang with, or an audience that judges an award recipient, people can’t necessarily focus enough to find out if Property A is there.
Therefore, association becomes important. Is the probability of example M containing Property A significant enough to undermine our confidence?
It’s still a fallacy unless you’re saying all criminals should rightfully be associated with malice, which they clearly shouldn’t. Especially in the case of imaginary crimes, like heresy.
Either way, being a criminal is still beside the point. The real question, even in your version, pertains to malice. And why is being associated with malice a bad thing? Because it implies that you are likely malicious.
Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow goes into this in some detail (if there’s anyone left in the West who hasn’t read it or doesn’t have it in their to-read list, they should do something to rectify that). The emotional brain works very broad-brush, black-and-white, algorithmically, and will substitute easier questions and formulations if it’s faced with a challenge. The reasoning brain which actually looks logically and tries to work things out, is lazy as hell.
I certainly catch myself doing it. It is a fallacy though.
Herring are fish. Some fish are poisonous. Therefore… herring can be seen as poisonous?
It’s a logical point, not a political one. Assuming MLK was not malicious, he oughtn’t be seen as malicious by people who are thinking correctly. And people who see him as malicious are not thinking correctly, so why indulge their mistakes?
Yes, it is a fallacy and it’s a bad thing, but it’s what we call inductive reasoning.
People aren’t gods. They can’t necessarily spend the time, energy, and attention required to investigate the truth. At that, it’s not our right to tell others how they ought to spend their mental resources.
Therefore, we take samples, and we associate the properties of those samples to the population of a category. If an example is associated with a category, then it probably has a property.
Unless people are willing to focus mental resources towards deeper investigation, we have to deal with it.
If you’re accusing an innocent man of malice because you’re too lazy to think straight, or requesting idiotic policies based on a misapprehension you can’t be bothered to examine, I have some fresh priorities for you right here.
It’s both our right and duty to tell other people that they’re wrong when they’re wrong.
Well certainly. Take affirmative action and racial redistributive justice for instance. Lots of elites believe whites should necessarily be treated as malicious and that minorities need to be compensated at whites’ expense.
Eh… no, that’s slavery. Sometimes, people get things wrong on purpose just to make you waste your breath. At that, it’s not your obligation to correct someone else’s problematic thinking. People are obligated to prevent their own thinking from creating problems for others.
If we correct others’ problematic thinking, it’s because we’re going above and beyond the call of duty. Some people don’t even like that though. They call us arrogant know-it-alls for doing that.
Kind of similar I think, though not “the non-central fallacy” - I used to work for a couple guys who rented a space at the end of a hallway in a building that had multiple commercial tenants. One of the tenants was some kind of slightly shady marketing company, i.e. maybe a pyramid scheme or something. They probably ran continuous help wanted ads in the local newspaper, as they had a near continuous stream of young adults coming in looking for them. It’s amazing, really, how many people knocked on our door, clearly labeled “6D”, and asked if this was suite “6E”. I mean, suite 6E was the next door down, at the end of the hall. Granted, seems kind of dumb, but still. You just say no, 6E is the next door down, and chalk it up to the air-headedness of young adults or whatever. No big deal. But when more and more people do the same thing, you (well, my bosses) end up applying your (their) frustration at the overall situation to some poor individual who just happens to by the 50th person to knock and ask if this is suite 6E.
