Here is the fallacy I’m describing:
Someone defends their own actions, or someone else’s actions, as acceptable/justified or necessary, on the basis that those actions might be necessary or justified in certain circumstances, referencing other individuals or circumstances for which it might be necessary or justified, despite their own circumstances/the circumstances in question not having the same elements that would require it or justify it.
For example, someone defends the actions of someone who murdered another person unnecessarily because they disliked them (e.g.), using the argument that there might be people who need to kill in self-defense or in a survival situation for whom it might be justified, despite that not applying to the situation in question.
I’ll attempt to write the form of the fallacy here:
X is justified in Y case.
Someone does X in Z case.
X is justified in Z case because X would be justified in Y case.
It’s a fallacy because:
What is true of Y case doesn’t necessarily apply to Z case; the elements/circumstances of Y case that would make X justified may not be present in Z case, and therefore even if X is justified in Y case it wouldn’t automatically be justified in Z case as a consequence.
It’s not necessarily a fallacy, because the argument that Y and Z are equivalent or sufficiently similar to both justify X is a valid argument.
The argument that they’re similar might be an example of a false equivalency however, which is an informal fallacy, and so depends on the circumstances of the argument, since it’s not de facto invalid to draw an equivalence between two things.
A simple fine is a just punishment for littering. Someone threw a bag of trash out of their car on the highway (illegal dumping, not littering). Because a fine is justified for littering, and illegal dumping is similar to littering, a fine is justified for illegal dumping.
The equivalence between littering and dumping isn’t unreasonable.
A simple fine is a just punishment for littering. Someone burnt down an orphanage (arson and heinous murder, not littering). Because a fine is justified for littering, and arson and murder are also crimes, a fine is justified for them as well.
The equivalence between littering and murder is weak at best, and most would find it unconvincing that we should treat them the same.
(There’s a fun related problem where the equivalence is bad, but both conclusions are actually agreeable. It can lead to some weird arguments. “Hitler deserved to be removed from power. Hitler was a man. Stalin was also a man, and therefore deserved to be removed from power”)
sounds like a kind of false equivalence to me
I’d say it’s a non sequitur
Indeed. If Y exists then X is justified. Z exists. Therefore X is justified. It doesn’t follow.
I’d say it’s just a specific case of a strawman argument, but maybe I’m misunderstanding.
The “if my grandma had wheels, she would have been a bicycle” fallacy.
Whata you say make-a no sense! False equivalence
GIIINOOOOO!
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I’d say there are two cases:
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The argument is that Y and Z are similar enough to extend Y => X to Z => X. This might be valid if Y and Z are indeed the same in all aspects that matter, if not then I’d say it’s a False equivalence.
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It is not known whether Z is actually Y or not, but it’s assumed to be true to extend Y => X to Z => X. In that case it should be Appeal to probably.
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Maybe you have Chutzpah on your mind?
“a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan” (Wikipedia)
Looks like faulty generalization followed by application of its result to another specific case.
That’s not a fallacy. Their’s is an argument by analogy, where Y and Z case are analogous, perceived to have similar characteristics.
Your objection is that the two situations are not similar in some relevant way (need for self-defense, survival situation).
An invalid analogy, perhaps?
Since the original thing is an analogy and OP is trying to say, that one cannot be used as analogous to the other.Well, that’s an argument OP would have to make, because arguments by analogy aren’t necessarily fallacious.
I disagree. I don’t think it’s good enough for someone to just state that Y and Z (for any values of Y and Z) are sufficiently equivalent without anything to back it up, and then expect anyone who disagrees to carry the burden of proof. Occam’s razor would say to use the simpler null hypothesis that Y and Z are distinct, and the burden of proof is on the one who claims equivalence.
Otherwise you could win any argument by assuming the conclusion based on an unfalsifiable hypothesis.
I mean, I agree, but that’s the rhetorical purpose of an argument by analogy: you can smuggle in a lot of problematic assumptions through an analogy that would be extremely suspect if you were to make the same argument deductively or inductively. You see these arguments all the time in politics
Are you claiming that the purpose of an analogy is to smuggle in problematic assumptions, and so if one analogy is fallacious, they all are?
Yeah no, I disagree. A sufficiently formed analogy serves as a “mapping” or logical “reduction” from one problem space to another. If a party understands how to solve a problem in one problem space, and agrees on the mapping to a different problem space, now they also know how to solve the problem in the new space.
However, if you propose a fallacious mapping, then your argument is now also fallacious. It would be no different from proposing a solution to a math equation with an error in the work. Your solution could still possibly be a correct one just by chance, but you have not successfully shown a valid path to the solution. That’s the definition of a fallacy.
Yo dawg, I heard you like analogies.
Are you claiming that the purpose of an analogy is to smuggle in problematic assumptions, and so if one analogy is fallacious, they all are?
Ah, damn, that’s fair.
I didn’t mean to claim that. But, that is definitely one of the common uses in politics.
I agree with what you said, though, about the mapping.
Except that OP is implying that the analogy being used doesn’t match the argument being put up.
Rereading OC, I realise that it is not really an analogy, since the same “X” is being used in both the cases. So perhaps we should be looking for something else.
The top comment explains it better.
I’m not sure it’s a specifically named one, but then again there are dozens, and they’re hard to keep straight. In general it is (attempted) rationalization, hand-waving, and kinda… just a bad argument. It does not actually explain why that specific murder was “necessary” - only that it could’ve been.
The intent is to rationalize, but it might not get close enough to a real argument to pin down to a specific (in)formal fallacy.
It might be similar to a Motte and Bailey Fallacy. Though that one is more focused on distinct but related definitions than it is for distinct but related situations. Not the exact one that you are looking for, but the related concepts might be a path towards an answer.
Whataboutism?
It’s not a logical fallacy, just a factual error.
