the "no true Scotsman" problem solved

[FlashDangerpants]

So how do we determine who has "the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman/Christian is"?

Going back to my first post:

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

This is simply a category error. A Scotsman is not defined by what they eat. They are defined by where they were born, or who their parents are. Just as women are not defined by what they wear. They are defined by what is between their legs and their chromosome type.

It's simple. Define a Scotsman and I'm sure that the reasonable and intellectually honest types will come to some sort of agreement.

Here I am not disagreeing with anything you said above. I am showing that Person A is exhibiting a lack of authority in prescribing what it is to be a Scotsman, and went on to imply that the authority would be a dictionary. You seem to agree by pointing out that "Crusades" and "Christians" have definitions that render the argument fallacious, or problematic.

So it appears that we have been in agreement all along and you and Flash simply wanted to argue for the sake of arguing.

Please try to pay attention, this is getting embarrasing. No True Scotsman is a move that people make sometimes under certain circumstances. Those circumstances are...

1. A general claim is made:

• All Scotsmen are gingers / no Scotsmen are fat.

• All Republicans are fiscally conservative / No republicans vote for tax increases.

• You can tell a painting is good because the eyes follow you around the room.

• All Christians are good people because they accept Jebus as their saviour and so they know right from wrong.

2. A counterexample....

• I know a Scotsman who is fat and has black hair.

• Trump exploded the budget deficit before Covid / Ronald Reagan increased taxes a lot.

• In Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, nobody is looking out, except maybe one splodgy bloke at the back whose eyes you can't make out, so the eyes dont' follow you anywhere.

• Torquemada.

3.The NO TRUE SCOTSMAN MOVE IS MADE HERE.... (instead of accepting that there is a problem with the claim)

• All True Scotsmen have red hair.

• Ronald Reagan was a Republican In Name Only & RINO's aren't real Republicans.

• It would only be a great painting if the dog was looking out, and then only if his eyes followed you around.

• Torquemada was really all about the money, violence and sex, he wasn't a Christian like we are.

The point is that NTS is a move that a person can make in an argument, and that it's usually a bad move to reject evidence you don't like on definitional grounds if you have been caught making a lazy generalisation. You are looking at the wrong end of the thing entirely. the fallacy is informal, sometimes the pattern works perfectly well. Just as sometimes ad hominem is a perfectly good move, and sometimes the post hoc is actually propter hoc. The issue with the fallacy is that it's quite seductive, and often feels like a sensible way to go.

This isn't some case where there is a problem to be solved. It is just an example of an often unreliable pattern of reasoning that is not considered a very good way to pursue very defensible inferences. That's all it is.

If you are still too arrogant to take my word for it, perhaps Carneades can help. It's the only Youtube channel I recognise that is carrying any discussion of this not very important subject.

[FlashDangerpants]

Excellent.

So how do we determine who has "the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman/Christian is"?

That is a separate issue. I suppose for it to actually be a fallacy the matter of what constitutes a Scotsman/Christian must be undetermined.

You've let him kind of walk you into the long grass there and you are now overthinking it too. Both people in the conversation know what a Scotsman is, it's a fairly normal word and they mean broadly the same thing by it, and nobody who's desperate to show off their Wittgenstein learning can really complain about that unless they read like VA does.

[Harbal]

You've let him kind of walk you into the long grass there and you are now overthinking it too.

With any luck, no one else will notice.

[Iwannaplato]

Excellent.

So how do we determine who has "the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman/Christian is"?

Both sides justify their positions as well as they can. IOW it depends on the we in the situation. If it's a school board and an NTS contention came up....each side would make their case and the board would decide. I'm not being snarky, just coming at it as a pragmatist. It'll be decided by people, sometimes experts, often not, based on differing sets of criteria. Often with no one ever having heard of NTS. Others having heard of it. Those having heard of it may be better equipped to point out what is (or is not) going on.

And going back to my earlier points regarding improper language use, logical statements and propositions are manifestations of language use so if one makes a fallacious argument then they have essentially misused language. I never implied that the fallacy itself (the interaction between Person A and B) was a misuse of language rather that Person A, and only Person A, misused language by not referencing the authority for prescribing what it is to be a Scotsman - a dictionary.

I didn't know the whole context of your post. I knew I didn't know, but went ahead and jumpied in, mainly responding to one statement in the post I quoted, though I read the whole post (but not the exchange going back, except for, I think, the last of Harbal's posts). I figured it didn't matter too much since my post would either be redundant or perhaps takes sides well, but regardless give my way of wording the issue and thinking about it.

My sense is that sometimes it will not be so easy to determine who is right. There can be gray area cases of exclusion. A Scotsman may not be determined by what they eat (or they may also be for some), but with Christians matters trivial to some might be more central to others. And the motivations for exclusion could be righteous ( ) or not depending on the perspective and also what the argument is really about.

If we are talking about the potential pernicious effects of having certain RELIGION X beliefs then it doesn't matter (in my estimate) if the terrorist paid for cocaine and prostitutes most of his adult life including right before the event. He was still affected the religion as a member, given the specifics of the topic. Oh, he's really not a _________________, doesn't work.

But there could be other discussions where his exclusion would make sense. And then fuzzy area ones.

I suppose my main point is that I think the concept is very useful since it can allow one to notice a forest (that might be there) rather than just focusing on the details of each way his actions might disqualify him for inclusion. In the trenches of the argument we may miss the pattern. It gives one a view of a potentially fallacious approach by others or oneself. Oh, this is what is going on, really.

The OP takes it as something that can be solved and then the NTS was just stupid. Like he managed to square the circle. Or showed that one can always affirm the consequent.

Which to me is a sad misunderstanding of what the NTS is for.

So, if we're really agreeing, great. I claim laziness, not a great urge to find a fight.

[Trajk Logik]

The no true Scotsman fallacy is an attempt to pass something off as the case when it has not been established to be the case. The person committing the fallacy is assuming the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is when he is not entitled to do so.

An example.

Person 1: Christianity has been a force for good throughout history.
Person 2: What about the Crusaders? They killed a lot of innocent people.

Person 1: True, but Crusaders were not living up to Christian ideals, so they weren’t true Christians.

Since the Crusades were by definition a series of religious wars carried out by Christian Europeans and supported by the Church, the argument is fallacious and the speaker tries to “shift the goalposts” to defend their claim.

Excellent.

So how do we determine who has "the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman/Christian is"?

That is a separate issue.

It's not. You said the person committing the fallacy is assuming the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is when he is not entitled to do so, which is to say that the fallacy IS the assumption they have the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is when they are not entitled to do so.

I'm asking how you determine who has the authority if the person committing the fallacy does not. How do you know the person isn't entitled to do so? There has to be a reason why they are wrong, or else the fallacy isn't a fallacy. In essence, the fallacy doesn't exist if you are unable to determine who has the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is. The person could be right for all we know until you explain why they don't. Just saying they don't doesn't work. For it to be a fallacy we need to know what the authority is to say the person does not have it.

I suppose for it to actually be a fallacy the matter of what constitutes a Scotsman/Christian must be undetermined. If, say, it were a core tenet of Christianity that you must never kill another person under any circumstances, then I suppose my above example would not qualify as a fallacy.

Wrong. It needs to be determined for you to say that which person does have the authority and which does not. If it is undetermined then both persons could be correct or incorrect in their version of a Scotsman and there is no fallacy. How do we solve this conundrum you've put us in, Harbal?

You have been overcomplicating the matter by trying to go beyond what the NTS refers to, or so it seems to me. I am no authority on philosophy and its fallacies, so what I have said might not be 100% accurate, but Flash usually knows what he's talking about.

As I have shown, I am simply questioning you on your own explanation of the fallacy and did not go beyond that and you obviously don't have a clear understanding of philosophy and it's fallacies because you keep committing them as in your appeal to authority you just did. True philosophers/scientists question everything and don't have the need to belittle others like Flash is doing.

The example I posted and the description underneath it were not mine, btw, I copied and pasted them.

And the person you plagiarized seems to be agreeing with me with their mentioning of definitions as the authority of prescribing what a Scotsman/Christian is. Ironic how you chose to copy and paste that without realizing it supported what I've been saying. Now you realize that and seem to be distancing yourself from it.

[Trajk Logik]

So how do we determine who has "the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman/Christian is"?

Going back to my first post:

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

This is simply a category error. A Scotsman is not defined by what they eat. They are defined by where they were born, or who their parents are. Just as women are not defined by what they wear. They are defined by what is between their legs and their chromosome type.

It's simple. Define a Scotsman and I'm sure that the reasonable and intellectually honest types will come to some sort of agreement.

Here I am not disagreeing with anything you said above. I am showing that Person A is exhibiting a lack of authority in prescribing what it is to be a Scotsman, and went on to imply that the authority would be a dictionary. You seem to agree by pointing out that "Crusades" and "Christians" have definitions that render the argument fallacious, or problematic.

So it appears that we have been in agreement all along and you and Flash simply wanted to argue for the sake of arguing.

Please try to pay attention, this is getting embarrasing.

I have been. It's you that hasn't paid attention to what I've written and would rather put words in my mouth. Your thinly veiled ad hominems is what is embarrassing and undermining your own arguments.

No True Scotsman is a move that people make sometimes under certain circumstances. Those circumstances are...

1. A general claim is made:

• All Scotsmen are gingers / no Scotsmen are fat.

• All Republicans are fiscally conservative / No republicans vote for tax increases.

• You can tell a painting is good because the eyes follow you around the room.

• All Christians are good people because they accept Jebus as their saviour and so they know right from wrong.

2. A counterexample....

• I know a Scotsman who is fat and has black hair.

• Trump exploded the budget deficit before Covid / Ronald Reagan increased taxes a lot.

• In Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, nobody is looking out, except maybe one splodgy bloke at the back whose eyes you can't make out, so the eyes dont' follow you anywhere.

• Torquemada.

3.The NO TRUE SCOTSMAN MOVE IS MADE HERE.... (instead of accepting that there is a problem with the claim)

• All True Scotsmen have red hair.

• Ronald Reagan was a Republican In Name Only & RINO's aren't real Republicans.

• It would only be a great painting if the dog was looking out, and then only if his eyes followed you around.

• Torquemada was really all about the money, violence and sex, he wasn't a Christian like we are.

The point is that NTS is a move that a person can make in an argument, and that it's usually a bad move to reject evidence you don't like on definitional grounds if you have been caught making a lazy generalisation.

But that's the thing. Who determines which one is rejecting the evidence they don't like? One is rejecting that Scotsmen are gingers the other is rejecting that Scotsmen are not gingers (or that the color of hair does not determine what makes one a Scotsman). Until we figure out who is right, no fallacy has been committed. Maybe Scotsmen are gingers. How do we determine if they are right and by which authority?

You are looking at the wrong end of the thing entirely. the fallacy is informal, sometimes the pattern works perfectly well. Just as sometimes ad hominem is a perfectly good move, and sometimes the post hoc is actually propter hoc. The issue with the fallacy is that it's quite seductive, and often feels like a sensible way to go.

No, the problem is that it is you that thinks that they can just say shit and not be questioned about it. Your explanation has so many assumptions baked into it that you limited mind is incapable of seeing.

This isn't some case where there is a problem to be solved. It is just an example of an often unreliable pattern of reasoning that is not considered a very good way to pursue very defensible inferences. That's all it is.

The problem is that you haven't shown who is the one rejecting the evidence they don't like, and are unable to see the solution would be to determine the authority for defining the terms used so that you can then know if a fallacy has even committed and who committed it.

If you are still too arrogant to take my word for it

You're the one that has the incessant need to engage in personal attacks when anyone has the gall to comment on a thread that you are participating in. That's all I have done, and you personally attacked me for it. You're a sad excuse for an authority on anything.

[Trajk Logik]

So how do we determine who has "the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman/Christian is"?

Both sides justify their positions as well as they can.

Which is what I said in my first post in the thread:

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

This is simply a category error. A Scotsman is not defined by what they eat. They are defined by where they were born, or who their parents are. Just as women are not defined by what they wear. They are defined by what is between their legs and their chromosome type.

It's simple. Define a Scotsman and I'm sure that the reasonable and intellectually honest types will come to some sort of agreement.

In other words, it's something that has to be worked out for a solution to be reached between the two groups.

The OP takes it as something that can be solved and then the NTS was just stupid. Like he managed to square the circle. Or showed that one can always affirm the consequent.

Which to me is a sad misunderstanding of what the NTS is for.

So, if we're really agreeing, great. I claim laziness, not a great urge to find a fight.

Not based on what you just said above. In a way the OP is right in that "Both sides justify their positions as well as they can" to reach a solution to what a Scotsman is and thereby determining which one committed the fallacy, if one was even committed. If both parties start off in same position of not having the authority to determine who is wrong in their description of a Scotsman and have to justify their descriptions then there is no fallacy until it is actually determined what a Scotsman is to say who was wrong in in their description.

So it seems to me, based on what you have said, we need to solve the problem of defining Scotsman to even determine if a fallacy was even committed and who committed it.

[FlashDangerpants]

Watch the video I gave you.

[FlashDangerpants]

You've let him kind of walk you into the long grass there and you are now overthinking it too.

With any luck, no one else will notice.

That guy isn't sharp enough to take advantage of mistakes others make.

[Harbal]

Excellent.

So how do we determine who has "the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman/Christian is"?

That is a separate issue.

It's not. You said the person committing the fallacy is assuming the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is when he is not entitled to do so, which is to say that the fallacy IS the assumption they have the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is when they are not entitled to do so.

I'm asking how you determine who has the authority if the person committing the fallacy does not. How do you know the person isn't entitled to do so? There has to be a reason why they are wrong, or else the fallacy isn't a fallacy. In essence, the fallacy doesn't exist if you are unable to determine who has the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is. The person could be right for all we know until you explain why they don't. Just saying they don't doesn't work. For it to be a fallacy we need to know what the authority is to say the person does not have it.

I suppose for it to actually be a fallacy the matter of what constitutes a Scotsman/Christian must be undetermined. If, say, it were a core tenet of Christianity that you must never kill another person under any circumstances, then I suppose my above example would not qualify as a fallacy.

Wrong. It needs to be determined for you to say that which person does have the authority and which does not. If it is undetermined then both persons could be correct or incorrect in their version of a Scotsman and there is no fallacy. How do we solve this conundrum you've put us in, Harbal?

You have been overcomplicating the matter by trying to go beyond what the NTS refers to, or so it seems to me. I am no authority on philosophy and its fallacies, so what I have said might not be 100% accurate, but Flash usually knows what he's talking about.

As I have shown, I am simply questioning you on your own explanation of the fallacy and did not go beyond that and you obviously don't have a clear understanding of philosophy and it's fallacies because you keep committing them as in your appeal to authority you just did. True philosophers/scientists question everything and don't have the need to belittle others like Flash is doing.

The example I posted and the description underneath it were not mine, btw, I copied and pasted them.

And the person you plagiarized seems to be agreeing with me with their mentioning of definitions as the authority of prescribing what a Scotsman/Christian is. Ironic how you chose to copy and paste that without realizing it supported what I've been saying. Now you realize that and seem to be distancing yourself from it.

You're an idiot.

[Trajk Logik]

You're an idiot.

This isn't a sufficient argument against anything I've said, so everything I have said still stands.

Watch the video I gave you.

I did and the video makes the same assumptions you do, AND the comments seem to support what I have been saying. For instance, in the video it says:
“Simply put, if you assert All S are R, and someone finds and S that is not R,…” who is to say that that someone actually found an S that is not R? What is S? What does it refer to? What does it represent? Only then can we say that someone found an S, or that the first claim that All S are R is true.

Simply put, the second person is disagreeing with the first person’s definition of S. So the problem is that there is an undetermined definition. The solution is to agree on a definition. Only then can you determine if a fallacy was ever committed.

The video goes on to say that the “specific claim is easier to prove. “It’s really hard to find all S for most things. It’s easier to find just one S that is not R.” But that depends on what S and R are referring to. S is the term; R is the definition. S has to have at least one R to mean anything. Scotsman needs to mean something to then claim a fallacy has been committed in the first place and to even say someone has made a generalization.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Scotsman

So, a Scotsman is a native or inhabitant of Scotland. Would that be considered a generalization or a definition? Can they be the same thing? If we can only talk about specific individuals, then there is no such thing as groups. To be a part of a group means that you must fit some definition. An individual may have other properties, but those other properties have no bearing on them being part of the group because those properties are not part of the definition of what it means to be part of the group.

If we have a definition of the term from the beginning then the very first statement about that thing is either true or false. We don’t need to propose a counter-example simply because the prior claim does not fit the definition from the beginning, or is not part of the definition. One simply needs to say “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Look it up in the dictionary and you will see the definition of Scotsman does not include what they eat or their hair color.” If the still disagrees and rejects the counter-example or the definition as not referring to the true thing (which happens a lot as most people are unwilling to accept when they are wrong), then you’re basically stuck with a thick-headed putz that you shouldn’t waste your time with any more, and the conversation stops.

So, there is only a problem when the term isn’t properly defined. Do we accept the counter-example as evidence that the generalization was false, or do we adjust our definitions? The answer to that question would be the solution to the problem.

Some of the comments support what I’ve been saying:
“I think this is actually a problem when discussing definitions and sets. If you define swans as being white birds of a particular genus, then there couldn't be a black swan similar to how there can't be euclidean circles that aren't round. But this poses a problem: when do you change a definition?”

“it seems to me this only works as a fallacy if the 'true scotsman' is an unchanging and clearly defined subject. It could just as easily be claimed that the fallacy is to not understand 'the true scotsman' as subjective (which I posit it is). Thus making the counter fallacy to the supposed 'true scotsman' the actual fallacy.”

The fact that you referred me to the video is a clear indication that you have not been even trying to read and understand what I have said, or you haven’t actually watched the video and read the comments of the video you think shows I am wrong (probably both).

You had your head, and Harbal’s nose, so far up your ass you failed to even consider what anyone else might have to say or add to the thread.

[Harbal]

You're an idiot.

This isn't a sufficient argument against anything I've said, so everything I have said still stands.

[FlashDangerpants]

Watch the video I gave you.

I did and the video makes the same assumptions you do, AND the comments seem to support what I have been saying. For instance, in the video it says:
“Simply put, if you assert All S are R, and someone finds and S that is not R,…” who is to say that that someone actually found an S that is not R? What is S? What does it refer to? What does it represent? Only then can we say that someone found an S, or that the first claim that All S are R is true.

Simply put, the second person is disagreeing with the first person’s definition of S. So the problem is that there is an undetermined definition. The solution is to agree on a definition. Only then can you determine if a fallacy was ever committed.

The video goes on to say that the “specific claim is easier to prove. “It’s really hard to find all S for most things. It’s easier to find just one S that is not R.” But that depends on what S and R are referring to. S is the term; R is the definition. S has to have at least one R to mean anything. Scotsman needs to mean something to then claim a fallacy has been committed in the first place and to even say someone has made a generalization.

I think perhaps you don't understand what a fallacy is. You used a dictionary to find out what a Scotsman is, perhaps you should use it again.

[Atla]

Now there are two of them. With such skills how do they stay alive in adulthood?

[Advocate]

[quote=Harbal post_id=681768 time=1701193226 user_id=9107]
[quote="Trajk Logik" post_id=681759 time=1701190269 user_id=12607]
[quote=Harbal post_id=681741 time=1701180813 user_id=9107]
The no true Scotsman fallacy is not a problem, it is a technique sometimes used in argument, but it is a type of invalid argument. It isn't something to be solved; it just needs recognising as invalid, and disqualifying as such.
[/quote]
Right. What makes it an invalid argument? What are you recognizing, and isn't disqualifying it the solution? Making invalid arguments is a problem with one's argument.
[/quote]

The no true Scotsman fallacy is an attempt to pass something off as the case when it has not been established to be the case. The person committing the fallacy is assuming the authority to prescribe what being a Scotsman is when he is not entitled to do so.

An example.
[i]
Person 1: Christianity has been a force for good throughout history.
Person 2: What about the Crusaders? They killed a lot of innocent people.

Person 1: True, but Crusaders were not living up to Christian ideals, so they weren’t true Christians.

Since the Crusades were by definition a series of religious wars carried out by Christian Europeans and supported by the Church, the argument is fallacious and the speaker tries to “shift the goalposts” to defend their claim.[/i]
[/quote]

What a true Scotsman is may be stipulated by each party at will and rather than confusing the issue, that's the heart of agreement;
IF the definition of True Scotsman is taken to be thus, such and such implications obtain...