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No True Scotsman
No True Scotsman
No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect an a
posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim.[1][2][3] Rather than
admitting error or providing evidence that would disqualify the falsifying counterexample, the claim is
modified into an a priori claim in order to definitionally exclude the undesirable counterexample.[4] The
modification is signalled by the use of non-substantive rhetoric such as "true", "pure", "genuine",
"authentic", "real", etc.[2]
Philosophy professor Bradley Dowden explains the fallacy as an "ad hoc rescue" of a refuted generalization
attempt.[1] The following is a simplified rendition of the fallacy:[5]
Occurrence
The "no true Scotsman" fallacy is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:[6][3][4]
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.
—Antony Flew
The essayist David P. Goldman, writing under his pseudonym "Spengler", compared distinguishing
between "mature" democracies, which never start wars, and "emerging democracies", which may start
them, with the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Spengler alleges that political scientists have attempted to save
the "US academic dogma" that democracies never start wars against other democracies from
counterexamples by declaring any democracy which does indeed start a war against another democracy to
be flawed, thus maintaining that no true and mature democracy starts a war against a fellow democracy.[5]
Author Steven Pinker suggested that phrases like "no true Christian ever kills, no true communist state is
repressive and no true Trump supporter endorses violence" exemplify the fallacy.[7]
See also
Ad hoc hypothesis Moving the goalposts
Begging the question Persuasive definition
Democrat in Name Only Reification (fallacy)
Epistemic commitment Republican in Name Only
Equivocation Special pleading
Gatekeeping Tautology (language)
List of fallacies True Pole
Loaded language Whataboutism
References
1. "Fallacies" (https://iep.utm.edu/fallacy/). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved
2022-02-09.
2. Curtis, Gary N. "The No-True-Scotsman Fallacy" (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/scotsman.html).
Fallacy Files. Retrieved 2016-11-12.
3. Antony Flew, God & Philosophy, p. 104 (https://archive.org/details/godphilosophy0000flew/p
age/104/mode/2up), Hutchinson, 1966.
4. Antony Flew (1975). Thinking About Thinking (or, Do I Sincerely Want to be Right?) (https://b
ooks.google.com/books?id=15KwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22No%20true%20Scotsman%22).
Fontana/Collins. p. 47. ISBN 9780006335801.
5. Goldman, David P. (31 Jan 2006). "No true Scotsman starts a war" (https://web.archive.org/w
eb/20190105005853/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA31Ak01.html). Asia
Times. Archived from the original (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA31Ak01.ht
ml) on 5 January 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2014. "political-science professors... Jack
Mansfield and Ed Snyder distinguish between 'mature democracies', which never, never
start wars ('hardly ever', as the captain of the Pinafore sang), and 'emerging democracies',
which start them all the time, in fact far more frequently than do dictatorships"
6. Robert Ian Anderson, "Is Flew's No True Scotsman Fallacy a True Fallacy? A Contextual
Analysis", P. Brézillon et al. (eds.): CONTEXT 2017, LNAI 10257, pp. 243–253, 2017.
doi:10.1007/978-3-319-57837-8_19 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-319-57837-8_19)
7. Pinker, Steven (2021). Rationality, What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. New
York: Viking. p. 88. ISBN 978-0525561996. OCLC 1237806678 (https://www.worldcat.org/ocl
c/1237806678).