Encyclopedia > Logical fallacy No true Scotsman

  Article Content

No true Scotsman

Redirected from Logical fallacy/No true Scotsman

The "No true Scotsman" argument is an argument of the form:

Argument: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Reply: "But my friend Angus likes sugar with his porridge."
Rebuttal: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

This form of argument is a fallacy if the predicate ("putting sugar on porridge") is not actually contradictory to the accepted definition of the subject ("Scotsman"), or if the definition of the subject is silently adjusted after the fact to make the rebuttal work.

Some behaviors are actually contradictory to the label; "no true vegetarian would prefer a beefsteak to a salad" is not fallacious because it follows from the definition of "vegetarian."



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Ocean Beach, New York

... family size is 2.91. In the village the population is spread out with 21.7% under the age of 18, 5.1% from 18 to 24, 32.6% from 25 to 44, 31.2% from 45 to 64, and 9.4% who ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 31.9 ms