instal the new for mac Source Insight 4.00.0131

Our reader is, as he confidently expected, agreeably shocked: 'No Scot would do such a thing!' Yet the very next Sunday he finds in that same favourite source a report of the even more scandalous on-goings of Mr Angus McSporran in Aberdeen. He reads the story under the headline, 'Sidcup Sex Maniac Strikes Again'. Imagine some Scottish chauvinist settled down one Sunday morning with his customary copy of The News of the World.

In his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking, Flew wrote:

In this ungracious move a brash generalization, such as No Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, when faced with falsifying facts, is transformed while you wait into an impotent tautology: if ostensible Scotsmen put sugar on their porridge, then this is by itself sufficient to prove them not true Scotsmen. The description of the fallacy in this form is attributed to British philosopher Antony Flew, who wrote, in his 1966 book God & Philosophy, 'No true Scotsman would do something so undesirable' i.e., the people who would do such a thing are tautologically (definitionally) excluded from being part of our group such that they cannot serve as a counterexample to the group's good nature. To protect people of Scottish heritage from a possible accusation of guilt by association, one may use this fallacy to deny that the group is associated with this undesirable member or action. Scottish national pride may be at stake if someone regularly considered to be Scottish commits a heinous crime.

using rhetoric to hide the modificationĪn appeal to purity is commonly associated with protecting a preferred group.

offering a modified assertion that definitionally excludes a targeted unwanted counterexample.

not publicly retreating from the initial, falsified assertion.The 'no true Scotsman' fallacy is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:

Person A: 'But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.' Person B: 'But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge.' Person A: 'No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.'

Instal the new for mac Source Insight 4.00.0131