Middle Ground

Grant Sterling

The middle ground fallacy (MG) is committed under the following circumstances:

(A) Two (or more) people have presented conflicting views on some subject.

(B) A third party assumes - without offering reasons - the truth regard­ing the subject must lie between the extremes presented by the con­flicting views.

This fallacy is also called, among other things, the fallacy of/to modera­tion (argumentum ad temperantiam), false compromise, the golden mean fallacy, or the gray fallacy.

Like almost all fallacies, MG is prevalent because it closely resembles a non-fallacious way of reasoning. In many disputes, especially when there is a spectrum of opinions, the truth often lies somewhere in between the most extreme views on either side. But although this is often the case, it is by no means always the case, so one cannot simply assume without evidence that the “middle ground” is always correct. Consider the following example:

Extreme Believer: Many people are abducted by aliens every day.

Skeptic: There are no alien abductions at all.

Fallacious Reasoner: Obviously, there must be a few alien abductions every day.

The mere fact that there are two views on this matter doesn’t prove that the truth is in between. If there is no evidence for alien abductions, we shouldn’t believe that a few occur merely because someone claims that many occur. Or if there is strong evidence that many occur, we shouldn’t believe that there are only a few just because someone denies the evidence. The middle ground view is only reasonable if we have evidence for some abductions but not as many as “Extreme Believer” asserts.

Even worse than this, sometimes the “middle ground” is far less plausible than either extreme. For example, if one person claims that all whales are fish and the other claims that all whales are mammals, it would be absurd to suppose that half of all whales are fish and the other half mammals (or that whales are half fish, half mammal)! Sometimes a middle ground isn’t even possible. If I say that Springfield is the capital of Illinois and you say that it isn’t, there’s no logical way that the truth can be somewhere in between.

A further danger of the MG is that it encourages arguers to defend radi­cal, extreme views, expecting that the listener will now embrace part of the arguer’s claims. Imagine that an unscrupulous arguer has strong evidence that it would be beneficial for the state to increase income tax by 2%. She knows that her opponent will advocate no increase at all. She may fear that if she defends a 2% increase, the listeners will assume that a lesser (perhaps 1%) increase is best, which she knows will be inadequate. Therefore she may be tempted to distort her evidence and pretend to believe that a 4% increase is needed.

Fortunately, this is an easy fallacy to avoid. Simply keep in mind the fact that merely because someone asserts a theory, especially an extreme theory, this does not by itself provide evidence for any conclusion at all. The fallacy is committed by people who don’t listen to the reasons that have been offered by each side to defend their theories - they simply assume that the truth is in the middle. The fallacy is the result of intellectual laziness.

Notice that MG has nothing to do with practical questions of compromise. If you are discussing your yearly bonus and your boss offers you nothing while you ask for $500, there’s nothing fallacious about negotiating some figure in between. (The most famous practical application of something like the MG fallacy is the famous “judgment of Solomon” (1 Kings 3:16-28) where Solomon appears to “compromise” by cutting a baby in two.)