<\/p>\n
A tu quoque<\/em>, or a ‘you too’ statement is generally thought to be fallacious. As with most things thought to be fallacies, this depends on the way\u00a0it is used.<\/p>\n Now, we can certainly agree that tu quoque<\/em> considerations have no impact on the truth value of the claim being responded to. So, if a reader of the Daily Mirror<\/em> newspaper complains\u00a0that the Daily Mail<\/em> is biased towards the political right, a\u00a0response that the Mirror<\/em> is biased towards the political left in no way refutes it. I take this as obvious and self-evident.<\/p>\n The tu quoque<\/em> fallacy therefore is the implication that a tu quoque<\/em> statement does demonstrate that the claim it is a response to is false. Alternatively, a\u00a0tu quoque\u00a0<\/em>could be employed as a way of distracting from an argument in order to avoid having to deal with a point. We might also call this latter informal fallacy*\u00a0a\u00a0red herring<\/em> or “whataboutery”.<\/p>\n What if, however, the response in the above example was not meant to refute the claim that the Mail<\/em> is biased, but rather to provide some other challenge? If the bias of the Mail<\/em> is an issue because bias in a newspaper in general is a problem (let’s assume this is what was meant by the initial statement), then one must be against the bias of the Mirror<\/em> as well. The tu quoque<\/em> response challenges the Mirror<\/em> reader to apply their principle universally, and (assuming the tu quoque<\/em> statement is a true one) must decide between supporting the principle and denouncing the Mirror<\/em> for the same flaw. Most of the time, it is the principle that is discarded.<\/p>\n There is then some value in the tu quoque\u00a0<\/i>response, but we must realise its limits. Even if the\u00a0Mirror<\/em> reader retracts the principle because they did not want to apply it to the\u00a0Mirror<\/em>, it doesn’t follow that the principle is wrong. For instance, the retraction might have been based on psychological reasons – a recognition of the cognitive dissonance coupled with a strong desire for the\u00a0Mirror<\/em> to remain in high regard.<\/p>\n That said, if our goal is to convince someone that their principle does not withstand scrutiny and the\u00a0tu quoque<\/em> succeeds as a means of doing so, then so long as we keep in mind that it doesn’t necessarily prove the principle false<\/em>,\u00a0we should be satisfied. It can be a useful illustrative\u00a0tool to have at our disposal, especially when our interlocutor is developing an\u00a0ad hoc<\/em> principle to justify a spurious claim.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n * I would prefer to call this a “dishonest tactic”, as I don’t really think it qualifies as any sort of reasoning at all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A tu quoque, or a ‘you too’ statement is generally thought to be fallacious. As with most things thought…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,20,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-philosophy-2","category-reason-and-argument"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/notung\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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