False dilemma - WikiHQ

thumb|upright=1.5|Young America's [[dilemma: "Shall I be wise and great, or rich and powerful?" (Puck 1901)]]

A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact there could be many.

False dilemmas often have the form of treating two contraries, which may both be false, as contradictories, of which one is necessarily true. Various inferential schemes are associated with false dilemmas, for example, the constructive dilemma, the destructive dilemma or the disjunctive syllogism. False dilemmas are usually discussed in terms of deductive arguments, but they can also occur as defeasible arguments.

The human liability to commit false dilemmas may be due to the tendency to simplify reality by ordering it through either-or-statements, which is to some extent already built into human language. This may also be connected to the tendency to insist on clear distinction while denying the vagueness of many common expressions.

Definition

A false dilemma is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The problematic content in the case of the false dilemma has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives. Sometimes a distinction is made between a false dilemma and a false dichotomy. On this view, the term "false dichotomy" refers to the false disjunctive claim while the term "false dilemma" refers not just to this claim but to the argument based on this claim.

disjunctive syllogism: <math>\frac{(P \lor Q), (\lnot P)}{\therefore Q}</math>

In this form, the first premise (<math>P \lor Q</math>) is responsible for the fallacious inference. Lewis's trilemma is a famous example of this type of argument involving three disjuncts: "Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord". In the case of a defeasible false dilemma, the support provided for the conclusion is overestimated since various alternatives are not considered in the disjunctive premise. An exception is John Searle, an analytic philosopher who called it an incorrect assumption that produces false dichotomies. Searle insists that "it is a condition of the adequacy of a precise theory of an indeterminate phenomenon that it should precisely characterize that phenomenon as indeterminate; and a distinction is no less a distinction for allowing for a family of related, marginal, diverging cases."

Similarly, when two options are presented, they often are, although not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities; this may lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options in false dichotomies typically are presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy may be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic. This issue arises from real dichotomies in nature, the most prevalent example is the occurrence of an event. It either happened or it did not happen. This ontology sets a logical construct that cannot be reasonably applied to epistemology.

Examples

False choice

The presentation of a false choice often reflects a deliberate attempt to eliminate several options that may occupy the middle ground on an issue. A common argument against noise pollution laws involves a false choice. It might be argued that in New York City noise should not be regulated, because if it were, a number of businesses would be required to close. This argument assumes that, for example, a bar must be shut down to prevent disturbing levels of noise emanating from it after midnight. This ignores the fact that law could require the bar to lower its noise levels, or install soundproofing structural elements to keep the noise from excessively transmitting onto others' properties.

Black-and-white thinking

In psychology, a phenomenon related to the false dilemma is "black-and-white thinking" or "thinking in black and white". There are people who routinely engage in black-and-white thinking, an example of which is someone who categorizes other people as all good or all bad.

Similar concepts

Various different terms are used to refer to false dilemmas. Some of the following terms are equivalent to the term false dilemma, some refer to special forms of false dilemmas and others refer to closely related concepts.

Bifurcation fallacy
Black-or-white fallacy
Denying a conjunct (similar to a false dichotomy)
Double bind
Either/or fallacy
Fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses
Fallacy of the excluded middle
Fallacy of the false alternative
False binary
False choice
False dichotomy
Invalid disjunction
No middle ground

References

External links

The Black-or-White Fallacy entry in The Fallacy Files

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