Additionally Identified As: Continuum Fallacy, Sorites Fallacy
Description:
One variant of the False Dilemma is the Line Drawing Fallacy. On this fallacy, it’s claimed that until a exact line might be specified between two issues, there isn’t any line or distinction between the 2. The fallacy might be offered on this method:
Premise 1: An actual line between X and Y have to be drawable or there isn’t any distinction between X and Y (when no such line have to be drawn).
Premise 2: An actual line can’t be drawn between X and Y.
Conclusion: Subsequently, there isn’t any distinction between X and Y.
This can be a type of the False Dilemma as a result of it erroneously presents the goal with two decisions that aren’t the one two choices. On this case, one possibility is drawing a exact line and the opposite is that there isn’t any distinction.
After I first discovered about this fallacy as an undergraduate, the examples have been largely educational constructs. For instance, for those who pull hair from an individual’s head one after the other, you can’t specify the precise variety of hairs you could take away earlier than the particular person is bald. Subsequently, you possibly can by no means make an individual bald by pulling out their hair. As one other instance, for those who give an individual one greenback one after the other, you can’t specify the precise variety of {dollars} you could give them earlier than the particular person is wealthy. Subsequently, you possibly can by no means make an individual wealthy by giving them one greenback at a time.
In 1990, nonetheless, this fallacy featured prominently within the trial of the officers who beat Rodney King offering the primary instance I knew that confirmed this fallacy can have critical penalties. The reasoning utilized by the jury might be offered as follows:
Premise 1: The primary time King was struck was not extreme pressure.
Premise 2: If extreme pressure was used throughout the beating, then there have to be a selected strike at which level the pressure went from warranted to extreme.
Premise 3: This strike can’t be recognized.
Conclusion: The pressure used within the beating didn’t turn into extreme.
Whereas it’s (in all probability) true that the precise level of transition can’t be decided, this isn’t mandatory to find out that it will definitely turned extreme.
Protection: The primary protection is to contemplate whether or not an ample cause why an actual line have to be drawn for there to be a distinction between the 2 issues. If not, then it’s a false dilemma. If that’s the case, then the dilemma (may very well be) actual.
Instance #1
Zeno: “So, my good friend, for those who take away a single grain of sand from a heap of sand, will it stop to be a heap?”
Hugh: “No.”
Zeno: “Aha, so even a single grain of sand shall be a heap.”
Hugh: “What? No. Certainly not.”
Zeno: “Contemplate my logic. You agreed that eradicating one grain from a heap is not going to trigger it to stop being a heap. What a few second grain? A 3rd?”
Hugh: “Um, nonetheless a heap.”
Zeno: “What, then, is the precise variety of grains that have to be eliminated earlier than the heap ceases to be a heap?”
Hugh: “No concept.”
Zeno: “Precisely. So, eradicating each grain of sand however one from the heap will imply it’s nonetheless a heap.”
