special pleading

Information about special pleading

Special pleading is a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.

The lack of criticism may be a simple oversight (e.g., a reference to common sense) or an application of double standard.

A more difficult case is when a possible criticism is made relatively immune to investigation. This immunity may take the forms of:
  • reference to vocabulary that is owned by a distinct community with sole rights to assess meaning and application
Example: If you do something illegal it is right for the government to arrest you.
  • unexplained claims of exemption from principles commonly thought relevant to the subject matter
Example: I'm not relying on faith in small probabilities here. These are slot machines, not roulette wheels. They are different.
  • claims to data that are inherently unverifiable, perhaps because too remote or impossible to define clearly
Example: Cocaine use should be legal. Like all drugs, it does have some adverse health effects, but cocaine is different from other drugs. Many have benefited from the effects of cocaine.
  • assertion that the opponent lacks the qualifications necessary to comprehend a point of view
Example: I know you think that I should be giving my money to the poor, but you've never been rich before. There are things about wealth that you don't understand.
  • assertion that literally nobody has the qualifications necessary to comprehend a point of view
Example: I know the idea that ball lightning is caused by ghosts makes no sense to you, but that's only because you're human. Humans cannot understand supernatural phenomena.


In the classic distinction among material, psychological, and logical fallacies,[1] special pleading most likely falls within the category of psychological fallacy, as it would seem to relate to "lip service", rationalization, and diversion (abandonment of discussion). Special pleading also often resembles the "appeal to" logical fallacies.

In philosophy it is assumed that where a distinction is claimed a relevant basis for the distinction should exist and be substantiated. Special pleading is a subversion of this assumption.

References

1. ^ This division is found in introductory texts such as Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument, W. Ward Fearnside, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959.

External links



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Informal fallacies
Special pleading • Red herring • Gambler's fallacy and its inverse • Fallacy of distribution (Composition • Division) • Begging the question • Many questions
Correlative-based fallacies:False dilemma (Perfect solution) • Denying the correlative • Suppressed correlative
Deductive fallacies:Accident • Converse accident
Inductive fallacies:Hasty generalization • Overwhelming exception • Biased sample • False analogy • Misleading vividness • Conjunction fallacy
Vagueness and Ambiguity:False precision • Slippery slope • Continuum fallacy
Equivocation:Equivocation • False attribution • Fallacy of quoting out of context • Loki's Wager • No true Scotsman
Questionable cause:Correlation does not imply causation (Cum hoc) • Post hoc • Regression fallacy • Texas sharpshooter • Circular cause and consequence • Wrong direction • Single cause
Common sense (or, when used attributively as an adjective, commonsense, common-sense, or commonsensical), based on a strict construction of the term, is what people in common would agree: that which they "sense" in common as their common natural
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A double standard, according to the World Book Dictionary, is a standard applied more leniently to one group than to another. For example, a belief that it is permissible for teenage boys, but not teenage girls, to engage in premarital sex is a double standard.
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Ball lightning is an atmospheric phenomenon, the physical nature of which is still controversial. The term refers to reports of a luminous object which varies in size from golf ball to several meters in diameter.
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A fallacy is a component of an argument that is demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, thus rendering the argument invalid in whole. In logical arguments, fallacies are either formal or informal.
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Not to be confused with Historian's fallacy.


The Historical fallacy, also called the psychological fallacy, is a logical fallacy originally described by philosopher John Dewey.
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A fallacy is a component of an argument that is demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, thus rendering the argument invalid in whole. In logical arguments, fallacies are either formal or informal.
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Appeal may refer to:
  • Appeal - in law an appeal is a challenge of a judicial judgement to a higher authority, usually called an appellate court.
  • Various types of logical fallacy are described as an appeal to something

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An informal fallacy is an argument pattern that is wrong due to a mistake in its reasoning. In contrast to a formal fallacy, the error has to do with issues of rational inference that occur in natural language; which are broader than can be represented by the symbols used in formal
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The gambler's fallacy is a formal fallacy. It is the incorrect belief that the likelihood of a random event can be affected by or predicted from other, independent events.
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The inverse gambler's fallacy is a term coined by philosopher Ian Hacking to refer to a formal fallacy of Bayesian inference which is similar to the better known gambler's fallacy.
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A fallacy of distribution is a logical fallacy occurring when an argument assumes there is no difference between a term in the distributive (referring to every member of a class) and collective (referring to the class itself as a whole) sense.
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A fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some (or even every) part of the whole.
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A fallacy of division occurs when one reasons logically that something true of a thing must also be true of all or some of its parts.

An example:
  1. A Boeing 747 can fly unaided across the ocean.
  2. A Boeing 747 has jet engines.

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This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers.
Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since October 2007.
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Many questions, also known as complex question, presupposition, loaded question, "trick question", or plurium interrogationum (Latin, "of many questions"), is an informal fallacy.
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In logic, correlative-based fallacies, also known as fallacies of distraction, are logical fallacies based on correlative conjunctions.

A correlative conjunction is a relationship between two statements where one must be false and the other true.
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false dilemma—also known as false choice, false dichotomy, falsified dilemma, fallacy of the excluded middle, black and white thinking, false correlative, either/or fallacy, and bifurcation
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The perfect solution fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when an argument assumes that a perfect solution exists and/or that a solution should be rejected because some part of the problem would still exist after it was implemented.
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The logical fallacy of denying the correlative is an attempt made at introducing alternatives where there are none. In a way, it is the opposite of the false dilemma, which is denying other alternatives.

For example:

Policeman: "..

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The logical fallacy of suppressed correlative is a type of argument which tries to redefine a correlative (two mutually exclusive options) so that one alternative encompasses the other, i.e. making one alternative impossible.
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a Dicto simpliciter (Latin: "from a maxim without qualification" -- meaning 'from a universal rule') or ad Dictum simpliciter (Latin: "to a maxim without qualification" -- meaning 'to a universal rule') The a
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The logical fallacy of accident, also called destroying the exception or a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, is a deductive fallacy occurring in statistical syllogisms (an argument based on a generalization) when an exception to the generalization is ignored.
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The logical fallacy of converse accident (also called reverse accident, destroying the exception or a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter) is a deductive fallacy that can occur in a statistical syllogism when an exception to a generalization is wrongly
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faulty generalization, also known as an inductive fallacy, is any of several errors of inductive inference:

Logic

The proportion PIE of the sample has attribute CAKE.

therefore

The proportion CAKE of the population has attribute PIE.
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Hasty Generalization, is a logical fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence. It commonly involves basing a broad conclusion upon the statistics of a survey of a small group that fails to sufficiently represent the whole
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An overwhelming exception is a logical fallacy similar to a hasty generalization. It is a generalization which is accurate, but comes with one or more qualifications which eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led
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A biased sample is a statistical sample of a population where some members of the population are less likely to be included than others. An extreme form of biased sampling occurs when certain members of the population are totally excluded from the sample (that is, they have zero
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False analogy is a fallacy applying to inductive arguments. It is often mistakenly considered to be a formal fallacy, but it is not, because a false analogy consists of an error in the substance of an argument (the content of the analogy itself), not an error in the logical
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The logical fallacy of misleading vividness involves describing some occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem.
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The conjunction fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one.

The most oft-cited example of this fallacy originated with Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:


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