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Tu Quoque |
| Description: | ||
| The argument tries to support a position by showing that its shortcomings are shared by an opposing position. In effect, the argument says, "My position may be bad, but you should accept it because my opponent's position is just as bad." | ||
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| Comments: | ||
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| The phrase "tu quoque" is a Latin phrase meaning "you also." I suppose it was the Latin form of such juvenile taunts as "You're one too!" or "It takes one to know one!" | ||
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| Examples: | ||
| "Creationism is sometimes accused of being unscientific--of being merely a matter of faith, but the Theory of Evolution is also just based on faith." | ||
| "Passive resistance may not succeed, but there is no guarantee that military force will succeed either." | ||
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| Discussion: | ||
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| A fundamental principle of reasoning in ethics, in terms
that even children instinctively understand, is "turnabout is fair play."
Any rule that applies to one person must be applied to all, or at least to
all other persons in relevantly similar circumstances. This symmetry of
moral agents to each other is what underlies such fundamental moral
principles as the Golden Rule and Kant's Categorical Imperative. Fair play
in argumentation is, of course, just one place in which the general
"turnabout" principle is applied with legitimate and appropriate force. If
one reasoner is entitled to use a particular form of reasoning, a particular
sort of appeal, or a particular background assumption, then all other
reasoners in the discussion are entitled to use it as well. The Tu Quoque fallacy mimics the legitimate use of the principle of ethical symmetry. However, an error is introduced. It is fair to say that if one reasoner is not entitled to use a particular appeal, then no other reasoner may use it either, but it does not follow from this that if one reasoner uses an illegitimate appeal (and is allowed to get away with it) that the appeal then becomes legitimate. Cheating does not become fair play merely because someone else cheats first. Fair play requires that no one cheat. I note that many logicians consider the Tu Quoque fallacy to belong to the Ad Hominem category, and they include under it various examples that I consider to be examples of the Ad Hominem - Ex Concessis fallacy. The difference between the two fallacies, as I conceive the matter, is that the Tu Quoque fallacy is used to defend an argument (by pointing out that that it is no worse than something else which is presumed to be acceptable), while the Ex Concessis fallacy is used to attack an argument (by pointing out that it is, in some superficial way, just as bad as something else which is presumed to be unacceptable). When the argument both attacks and defends simultaneously, the example may be impossible to place under just one fallacy. |
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| Classification: A Fallacy of Irrelevance (a deductive fallacy of soundness with a falsehood in the major premiss) in the Ad Hominem family. | ||
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| Source: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest use of the phrase "tu quoque" to identify a fallacious style of reasoning is Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in his 1838 novel Alice. Prior to that, the phrase was frequently used, not to name the fallacy, but to perpetrate the very fallacy so named. The fallacy also appears in Morris Engel, With Good Reason (1st ed. 1976). | ||
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