So it’s quite common in some circles on the internet to already be familiar with certain logical fallacies. The most common I have come across have been the strawman, no true Scotsman, and ad hominem. (In my personal experience, even when the fallacy is extremely relevant, the hasty generalization fallacy is not pointed out for some possible reasons I address at the end of this post and will write a more detailed post as to why later on).

But there seems to be a trend that I can possibly quantify and qualify, but for the sake of my personal freedom decide I will leave that up to researchers(I’d be more than happy to do it, but have personal restraints to doing so). Ad hominem’s are sometimes used as another word for insult. An ad homeniem can be an insult, but an ad hominem logical fallacy is an argument that another persons argument is incorrect or should be dismissed because of a certain character flaw or other types of attacks on character.

Also a lot of arguments containing a premise with “that person isn’t really a member of set S” are automatically dismissed as a “no true Scotsman”. It seems to me that some people are not aware that logical fallacies are only deemed as such if and only if the premises do not support the conclusion. In order to recognize whether a premise is true goes beyond the realm of logic. Specifically with a no true Scotsman, since whether a member’s involvement in a specific group is called into question, we need to first define what it means to be a member of said group. This is when our knowledge of language comes into play.

In this textbook on page 95, you will see that there are different ways to define words. To define “Scotsman” or set S, it would seem as if the lexical definition would be the best method of doing so. The lexical definition of a Scotsman is “a man born, raised, or living in Scotland.” In order to determine if someone is a “true” Scotsman, we must figure out if they fit the lexical definition, or possibly any of the other types of definitions(only if the audience is aware another definition despite the lexical one is being utilized).

Lets look at some examples: Person A: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.” Person B: “But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge.” Person A: “Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”

Is there a definition of Scotsman that includes the idea that they must put sugar on their porridge?

A stipulative definition could in fact be created, but it would be unreasonable to try and argue that people must use your definition above the lexical one(unless of course a non-fallacious argument can be made that true Scotsman do in fact put sugar in their porridge!)

Another example: Person A: “All atheists believe that there are no such things as souls.” Person B: “But my friend who is an atheist does believe in souls.” Person A: “Well no true atheist believes in souls.”

The lexical definition is “a person who believes that God does not exist.”(Warning, I am merely using Merriam-Webster’s definition for continuity even though I do recognize the incompleteness of the definition and was going to discuss this, however, this blog post has turned out to be much longer than I expected. I might however do another blog post specifically about atheism and include this in the discussion. Also, a person could argue that its not the definition of an atheist, but not believing in souls is a product of atheism. Whether true or not is an entirely different argument and not what is being discussed here.)

As you can see the lexical definition does not account for an atheist’s belief in souls, only a belief in “God.” Therefore, the logical fallacy was used.

But now here is an example of an exception to the rule:

All Feminists believe in the equality of the sexes. But there are feminists who hate and oppress men. Well those feminists aren’t real feminists.

Feminist:

1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests

This example is infact rife with so much opportunities to argue definitions(n ot only feminist, but the word oppress), which to use, which to discard, or whether certain definitions are valid. It happens all too often on social networks. As you can see the lexical definition in fact does include the equality of the sexes, therefore no logical fallacy was committed. Sometimes there will be instances where a stipulative definition is being used, yet not expressed, and just like the textbook expresses, leads to confusion and misinterpreting arguments. When a word is being used we must give people the benefit of the doubt(in the path to rational discourse, how rational is it to assume the worst?) that all people are using the lexical definition, unless stated otherwise. Sometimes people may believe they are using the lexical definition but in fact are not or are using a different definition from a different source. In the first ten websites given for the fallacy on Google , only three explain that there are exceptions(the YouTube video uploaded by PBS not included) to the fallacy, yet one of those didn’t explain it clearly. So many sources that aim to teach people about fallacies leave out the exceptions. It seems as if people are learning through Google about these fallacies, if they haven’t been able to learn through school as a lot of people I personally know, and thus aren’t getting the full story. This lack of knowledge leads people to assume perfectly sound arguments are fallacious and thus aren’t knowledgeably coming to conclusions. Exceptions to logical fallacies in fact apply to ALL logical fallacies, not just to no true Scotsmans. (Sorry for the editing towards the end, it seems as if this post is too long and there’s too many paragraph breaks; WordPress is auto editing it).