Encyclopedia > Two wrongs make a right

  Article Content

Two wrongs make a right

Two wrongs make a right is a commonly used abbreviation for the belief that, if one wrong is committed, a second wrong will cancel it out.

Commonly used to excuse capital punishment: execution is okay because a murderer is being killed.

(Which, by presupposing that "execution" is a wrong, provides a splendid example of the logical fallacy known as "Begging the Question.")

A better statement would be this:

Given that killing is accepted to be usually wrong:

Killing as a punishment is acceptable if the criminal is a killer.

This fallacy is often committed by children. An example:

Parent: Jim, why did you pull your sister's hair? Don't you know that's wrong?

Jim: I know, but she pinched me first.



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
242

... 2nd century - 3rd century - 4th century Decades: 190s 200s 210s 220s 230s - 240s - 250s 260s 270s 280s 290s Years: 237 238 239 240 241 - 242 - 243 244 245 ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 31.7 ms