Suppressed correlative

Suppressed correlative or lost contrast is a semantic logical fallacy in which the arguer attempts to redefine two contrasting terms in such a way that one encompasses the other. As such, it is a form of straw man argument.

Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric
Key articles
General logic
Bad logic
v - t - e

Form

Opponent: "All things are either X or not X."
Response: "I define X in such a way that all things you say are not X are included in X."

Even if the definition used to redefine X is a more technically correct definition, it is still this fallacy, because it is still an attempt to avoid the opponent's actual argument which is based around two contrasting possibilities.

Examples
  • This is commonly used in debates about whether things are "art"; the question "is it art?" requires some possibility that something might not be art. The common response, that art is defined as an ineffable quality or a method of human expression, removes any possibility that something created by humans could not be classified as art, and therefore cannot possibly be addressing the opponent's actual argument.
  • Often used in attempts to classify science or atheism as religious beliefs; the substitute definition of "religion" will typically be so broad that almost any human association would qualify as a religion.
  • "I don't view humanity as the same species because we're not all the same" — Stefan Molyneux.[1]
gollark: https://minoteaur-legacy.osmarks.net/view/incdec ← horrible abuse of the JS feature
gollark: The legacy minoteaur instance has been overrun by beeoids somewhat.
gollark: You could navigate by clicking links between pages.
gollark: What if I somehow make a MUD *in legacy minoteaur*?
gollark: It works fine, telnet is just bad about unicode.

References
  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiCCaiG8_4o
This article is issued from Rationalwiki. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.