Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 December 1

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December 1

Identifying a logical fallacy

I'm trying to figure out what this fallacy would be called and it's really bugging me:

• Person A: "We should implement socialism."
• Person B: "Imagine if we lived in a nuclear wasteland with limited resources and manpower. Would socialism work then?"

The fallacy is that Person B has moved the argument from the present moment and set of conditions where such a thing might be feasibly achievable (as is being argued, regardless of whether you agree with the argument or not) to an imaginary scenario in which what is being argued would be unachievable by default. Is there a term for this fallacy? --Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 18:28, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

If you haven’t already, you could look at List of fallacies. The only two possibilities I saw there are red herring and moving the goalposts. Loraof (talk) 21:24, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I checked the list and couldn't find it, but thank you anyway. --Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 16:29, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think there is such a word to describe such an imaginative argument fallacy (possibly just a false analogy/metaphor/hypothetical?). Maybe it could even be an equivocation, a false appeal fallacy (authority, emotion, popularity), an argument from ignorance, a straw man fallacy, an "Either/Or" (false dilemma) fallacy, or just begging the question. Adog (Talk・Cont) 21:37, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. It's funny how we can still discover new logical fallacies even now. Thanks for the help! --Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 16:29, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Maybe a good neologism would be changing the premise – the original implied premise is the existence of whatever conditions we are experiencing now, whereas the changed premise is a nuclear wasteland. On the other hand, if the original premise was under any and all circumstances, then there is no logical fallacy (assuming the validity of the implied additional premise that socialism is wrong in a nucler wasteland). Loraof (talk) 22:17, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• And maybe the change of premise is a form of misdirection. Loraof (talk) 22:32, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

It's kind of an indirect way of Person B telling Person A that it's a short-sighted idea. Hence, a bad idea. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:03, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Could it be a form of Nirvana fallacy/Perfect solution fallacy, in that it is arguing that because something is imperfect (in that it doesn't work in all scenarios, regardless of how irrelevant or unlikely those scenarios are) it is no good? Iapetus (talk) 10:23, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I'd go with Moving the goalposts. Though I think it is silly anyway. There's lots of types of socialism but egalitarianism is extremely common and works well in societies with few resources. Dmcq (talk) 13:55, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Editor510: - Identifying an impertinent, if not malicious, informal fallacy in a live debate can often be more effectively done by mirroring its nonsensical sense and structure than by attempting to impotently label it by one of the very many largely incoherent names that have defied analysis for eons. See Charles Leonard Hamblin's Fallacies (Methuen, 1970) for a damning critique that still stands as "the dividing line between traditional approaches to the study of fallacies and new, contemporary approaches" (per Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on fallacies. In an adversarial context, I would simply counter with something like: "Imagine if we lived in an ecological Eden with unlimited resources and fusion power. Would capitalism work then?"

Witness almost a dozen well-intentioned and reasoned attempts to pin the tail on the donkey above. Thank you all. @Loraof:, @Adog:, @Baseball Bug:, @Wardog:, @Dmcq:

Still perplexed for a name, a harmless if not helpful curiosity in my opinion, I reached out via email to two academic philosophers, widely cited experts on fallacies. They did not agree on how to label, confirming my suspicion of the futility of name calling in a real world rhetorical situation. Both qualified and cited all-important linguistic, real-world context. One said it was clearly a fallacy of irrelevance, perhaps a red herring (or see better, Fallacy Files entry) in certain contexts. The other authority (fallacy?) said it was perhaps a fallacy of Accident, citing as helpful (as neither the ancient Greek name nor our article are) a still standard intro logic text: "“Circumstances alter cases; a generalization that is true by and large may not apply in a given case, for good reasons having to do with the special (or “accidental”) circumstances of that case.” Introduction to Logic, Copi & Cohen, 10th ed.

More details via email upon request. Trying to post first thoughts before thread is archived.-- Paulscrawl (talk) 03:24, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Problem with new biography: link between two 18th century revolutionary women

I've just written a bio for Marguerite Brazier, a figure of the American and French Revolutionary period. I've included one piece of information that's actually not referenced, but is tantalizing, and comes from our biography of her husband Nicholas Bonneville:

...Bonneville's wife, Marguerite Brazier (1767–1846), who was a disciple of Bonneville's associate, the radical feminist, Etta Palm d'Aelders...

Every other part of the article is sourced, but I can't find a source for this. Perhaps we'll need to remove it, but can anyone find more information on this link? P.S. I'm tagging a few good scholars I know, Ruhrfisch, Victoriaearle, Ian Spackman, but please don't let that stop anyone else from looking into this. With many thanks, -Darouet (talk) 22:50, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from Google, the connection exists only in the Wikipediasphere. Alansplodge (talk) 16:01, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

@Alansplodge: I get the same result, and fear the possibility of WP:CITOGENesis. That said, French books are not nearly so available on the internet as are English ones. and I'm hoping we might find some research support from somebody with access to a library containing French academic texts on the French Revolution? Darouet (talk) 17:47, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Seems to be your only hope. There are some likely suspects at Wikipedia:WikiProject France/Members. Alansplodge (talk) 18:56, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

If she had been an activist there would very probably be mention of it in the usual available literature, because of her subsequent legend. It then seems very improbable. She's mostly not heard of for the period 1790-1800, and the statement could come from a reference to the fact that she stayed in America even after her husband left to France back again from New Rochelle in the end, in the fact and in the tale - of their common history. I see in fact Louise-Felicite de Keralio as a probable better match as an influencer for her regarding the French Revolution era. Askedonty (talk) 21:21, 3 December 2018 (UTC)