Page 133 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
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intolerance and the zero tolerance fallacy 133
pear to be acceptable but in fact are not.2 Aristotle, and especially his fol-
lowers, went on to name several, thus turning fallacy identification and
naming into something of an intellectual cottage industry. Galileo, who
in general was not a friend of the Aristotelians, offered a more liberal ac-
count of what a fallacy is, holding that any unsound argument – any ar-
gument that fails to be both valid and have only true premises – was fal-
lacious. Thus, he writes:
Either those who are to be persuaded are capable of understanding the rea-
sons of Copernicus and others who follow him, or they are not; moreover, ei-
ther these reasons are true and demonstrative, or they are fallacious. If those
who are to be persuaded are incapable, then they will never be persuaded
by the true or by the false reasons; those who are capable of understand-
ing the strength of the demonstrations will likewise never be persuaded if
these demonstrations are fallacious; so neither those who do nor those who
do not understand will be persuaded by fallacious reasons. Therefore, given
that absolutely no one can be dissuaded from the first idea by fallacious rea-
sons, it follows as a necessary consequence that, if anyone is persuaded of the
contrary of what he previously believed, the reasons are persuasive and true.
But as a matter of fact there are many who are already persuaded by Coper-
nican reasons. Therefore, it is true both that these reasons are effective and
that the opinion does not deserve the label of ridiculous but the label of wor-
thy of being very carefully considered and pondered (1615: 70).
An even broader use of “fallacy” occurs in a report of an incident be-
tween the Greenpeace ship Sea Shepherd and a Costa Rican shark-fish-
ing boat. The Sea Shepherd Society, responding to a claim that the Sea
Shepherd had endangered the crew of the Costa Rican fishing boat,
wrote, “the video evidence proves this to be a fallacy”. Here “fallacy”
simply seems to mean “false claim”.3
The contemporary literature on fallacies sides with Aristotle against
Galileo, restricting fallacies to a subset of invalid arguments.4 (The
Greenpeace use is – rightly in my view – just ignored by contemporary
critical thinking theorists as a case of overblown rhetoric.) Thus Grego-
ry Bassham, William Irwin, Henry Nardone, and James M. Wallace, in
2 On Sophistical Refutations 164a22.
3 See http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2012/05/13/captain-paul-watson-arrested-
in-frankfurt-germany-on-warrant-issued-by-costa-rica-1374 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
world-europe-18066901 (19. August 2012).
4 Some logically valid arguments – for example, petitio principii – are fallacious. For simplicity I will
ignore such cases here. A valid argument is one where, if all the premises were true, the conclusion
could not possibly be false.
pear to be acceptable but in fact are not.2 Aristotle, and especially his fol-
lowers, went on to name several, thus turning fallacy identification and
naming into something of an intellectual cottage industry. Galileo, who
in general was not a friend of the Aristotelians, offered a more liberal ac-
count of what a fallacy is, holding that any unsound argument – any ar-
gument that fails to be both valid and have only true premises – was fal-
lacious. Thus, he writes:
Either those who are to be persuaded are capable of understanding the rea-
sons of Copernicus and others who follow him, or they are not; moreover, ei-
ther these reasons are true and demonstrative, or they are fallacious. If those
who are to be persuaded are incapable, then they will never be persuaded
by the true or by the false reasons; those who are capable of understand-
ing the strength of the demonstrations will likewise never be persuaded if
these demonstrations are fallacious; so neither those who do nor those who
do not understand will be persuaded by fallacious reasons. Therefore, given
that absolutely no one can be dissuaded from the first idea by fallacious rea-
sons, it follows as a necessary consequence that, if anyone is persuaded of the
contrary of what he previously believed, the reasons are persuasive and true.
But as a matter of fact there are many who are already persuaded by Coper-
nican reasons. Therefore, it is true both that these reasons are effective and
that the opinion does not deserve the label of ridiculous but the label of wor-
thy of being very carefully considered and pondered (1615: 70).
An even broader use of “fallacy” occurs in a report of an incident be-
tween the Greenpeace ship Sea Shepherd and a Costa Rican shark-fish-
ing boat. The Sea Shepherd Society, responding to a claim that the Sea
Shepherd had endangered the crew of the Costa Rican fishing boat,
wrote, “the video evidence proves this to be a fallacy”. Here “fallacy”
simply seems to mean “false claim”.3
The contemporary literature on fallacies sides with Aristotle against
Galileo, restricting fallacies to a subset of invalid arguments.4 (The
Greenpeace use is – rightly in my view – just ignored by contemporary
critical thinking theorists as a case of overblown rhetoric.) Thus Grego-
ry Bassham, William Irwin, Henry Nardone, and James M. Wallace, in
2 On Sophistical Refutations 164a22.
3 See http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2012/05/13/captain-paul-watson-arrested-
in-frankfurt-germany-on-warrant-issued-by-costa-rica-1374 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
world-europe-18066901 (19. August 2012).
4 Some logically valid arguments – for example, petitio principii – are fallacious. For simplicity I will
ignore such cases here. A valid argument is one where, if all the premises were true, the conclusion
could not possibly be false.
