No True Scotsman
Tuomas W. Manninen
Conservatism can never fail; it can only be failed.
Collected from the Internet
The No true Scotsman fallacy (NTS) may at first blush look similar to the fallacy of accident.
But while the latter occurs when trying to apply a general claim to an objectively anomalous sample, the NTS fallacy takes a more subjective form. The NTS fallacy changes the definition of what it takes for something to be a member of a group in order to protect a claim from a putative counter-example. The NTS fallacy is frequently found in ideological (political, religious, etc.) debates where it is used in an attempt to make one’s claim unfalsifiable. The NTS is a fallacy of presumption: the arguer committing the fallacy presumes to be the authority on determining what it takes to be a member of a certain group.Both the name for the NTS fallacy and its definition were first coined by Anthony Flew (1977); the following is a close paraphrase of Flew’s (1977, 47) original example:
A nationalist-minded Scot reads about a heinous sex crime in the newspaper. Perturbed by what he is reading, he thinks to himself, “No Scotsman would ever do such a thing.” Some time later, our Scot spies a similar headline in the paper, except that this time the perpetrator is identified as
a Scotsman. Instead of admitting that even his compatriots are capable of committing depraved acts, our Scot thinks, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing!”
The fallacy occurs because the Scot in Flew’s example, instead of accepting the seeming counter-example that falsifies the original claim (“No Scotsman would ever do such a thing”), adjusts the definition of what it is to be a Scotsman. Here, the original definition of “Scotsman” is compatible both with a person’s being a perpetrator of heinous crimes and with a person’s not being a perpetrator of heinous crimes.
The feature “being capable of depraved acts” is a contingent one and, as such, it is compatible with the definition of “Scotsman.” However, the revision adds the condition “not capable of committing depraved acts” to the original definition by stipulation; as Flew puts it, this “piece of sleight of mind replaces a logically contingent by a logically necessary proposition” (53). Determining whether one is a Scotsman or not is chiefly based on one’s nationality or residence, and this does not necessitate having a strong moral character. Yet, the conclusion drawn - “No true Scotsman would ever do such a thing” - alters the conditions for this determination.For a real-life example of the NTS fallacy, we can look to the lead-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. The author J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, who has resided in Scotland for two decades, has been heralded as “a tremendous ambassador for the country.” But after she donated £1 million to the pro-United Kingdom campaign, she was called “a Union cow bag” by various online independence activists (Riley-Smith and Johnson 2014). Although Rowling had previously appeared to be Scottish aplenty for all Scots involved, to some members of the independence movement, all of a sudden, she was not Scottish enough. The barrage of criticism aimed at Rowling shows that living in Scotland may be sufficient to make you Scottish, absent a contentious political issue. After such an issue is introduced, some would also require that one support a specific viewpoint when it comes to the question of Scotland’s independence. To put the point slightly differently, the term “Scottish” was initially used with the assumption that everyone agreed to its meaning. However, given the amorphous nature of the term, the uses of it turned out to be incompatible when scrutinized. Or, as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) put the point: “none [no boundaries to the use of the term] has so far been drawn. But that never troubled you before when you used the word” (§68).
For another illustration, we turn to contemporary American political discourse, where the pejorative acronyms RINO and DINO (Republican-inname-only and Democrat-in-name-only, respectively) are commonplace and commonly attached to high-ranking officials of either party by members of that party who view that the official in question has strayed from the ideals. The actual examples are too numerous to list here, but many can be found using a simple online search for the terms - for example, “Paul Ryan” and “RINO” yields several results. Granted, the term ‘Republican’ is amorphous (as is the term ‘Democrat’): there may be no precise way for defining what it is to be a Republican (or Democrat). However, even if most everyone would agree that the Speaker of the House or the House Majority Leader are Republicans - due to their respective positions, their respective voting record, and the fact that the majority of the party caucus is supporting them - there are some voices that challenge this. In cases such as these, the Republicans challenging the political bona fides of these other Republicans may be operating with a different definition of what it is to be a Republican. The criticism seems to stem from the belief (held by the critics) that the ideology - conservatism - is impervious to failure and that it can only be criticized when poorly implemented.
In September 2015, when John Boehner, the US Speaker of the House, announced that he was stepping down from his position, many of his critics were elated as they found him to be not conservative enough. For most observers, however, this criticism can (rightly) seem to be fallacious: one does not advance to the rank of the majority leader of a political party by being lukewarm about one’s commitment to the party’s ideology. Still, the group most directly responsible for forcing Speaker Boehner to step down (on the pain of being ousted from his position), the House Freedom Caucus (a contingent of ultra-conservative members of the Republican majority), seems to have appointed itself to the role of the kingmaker: without its express approval, no one can be deemed conservative enough.
In a curious twist of events, even the members of the House Freedom Caucus have been called RINOs by their constituents after the caucus agreed to support Paul D. Ryan as Boehner’s successor (DeBonis 2015).Further examples of this fallacy can be found in discussions on religion. For example, if we ask the question, “What is it to be a Christian?” (or “Who is a Christian?”), we receive various answers depending on who answers the question. In the broadest use of the term “Christian,” it seems that anyone identifying herself as one would count as a Christian. In a more strict sense, anyone adhering to (some of) the central tenets of Christianity (such as creeds, etc.) would likely count as one. Yet, there are plenty of other, even more specific definitions of what it is to be a Christian; these definitions are frequently incompatible with each other, and this provides an incredibly fertile source for instances of the fallacy. This point is thoroughly explored by Martin Thielen (2011) in his book What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian? and even more poignantly expressed in the comedy routine by the stand-up comedian Emo Phillips. The latter tells a story of a member of the Church of Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptists, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1879, who tries to prevent a suicidal man from jumping off a bridge by showing how much there is to live for. Once the discussion reveals that the would-be-jumper is a member of the Church of Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptists, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912, the punchline is, “I said, ‘Die, heretic!’ and pushed him off the bridge”; for present purposes, the punchline may just as well have involved the NTS fallacy.
A likely factor that contributes to the NTS fallacy is the arguer’s own cognitive bias, specifically the in-group (‘us’)/out-group (‘them’) bias: the arguer’s in-group is taken to be homogeneous, and when differences of opinion crop up, the offending member is delegated to the out-group (i.e., as one of ‘them’).
To revisit our first example, the arguer (the nationalist-minded Scot) may first have thought that having an acclaimed author like J.K. Rowling as a member of their group would only serve to accentuate the group’s collective accomplishments. However, when Rowling contributed to the cause against the independence movement, she went against the arguer’s values, which they had presumed to apply to all members of the group. Similar considerations apply, mutatis mutandis, for the other examples.In order to avoid the NTS fallacy, the arguer needs to be mindful of his own cognitive biases and allow for the fact that in-group disagreements do happen. In a case such as this, here’s what might become of the argument in the first example:
“I am proud to be a Scot, and I think it’s great to have an accomplished author such as J.K. Rowling as my compatriot. Even though I don’t like her anti-independence sentiments, she still is a Scot inasmuch as I am.”
Then again, as reality has shown, reaching such a fantastic level of selfawareness may be impossible to achieve.
References
DeBonis, Mike. 2015. “Fuming over Ryan, Some Conservative Voices Turn on the Freedom Caucus.” Washington Post, October 25. https://www.washingtonpost. com/politics/fuming-over-ryan-some-conservative-voices-turn-on-the-freedom- caucus/2015/10/25/8194f3ce-7999-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html (accessed October 4, 2017).
Flew, Anthony. 1977. Thinking Straight. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Phillips, Emo. 1987. “Golden Gate Bridge” (recorded at Hasty Pudding Theater”). http://www.emophilips.com/video/video/244. (accessed October 9, 2017).
Riley-Smith, Ben, and Simon Johnson. 2014. “JK Rowling Subjected to Cybernat Abuse after £1 M Pro-UK Donation.” The Telegraph, June 11. http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/10893567/JK-Rowling-subjected-to- Cybernat-abuse-after-1m-pro-UK-donation.html (accessed October 4, 2017).
Thielen, Martin. 2011. What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?:
A Guide to What Matters Most. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical Investigations, 3e. Translated by G. E. M.
Anscombe. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall