Motte-and-bailey fallacy
The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey").[1] The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced.[2][3] Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer can claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte)[1] or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).[4]
History
Philosopher Nicholas Shackel, who coined the term,[1] prefers to speak of a motte-and-bailey doctrine instead of a fallacy.[3] In 2005, Shackel described the reference to medieval castle defense like this:[2]
A Motte and Bailey castle is a medieval system of defence in which a stone tower on a mound (the Motte) is surrounded by an area of land (the Bailey) which in turn is encompassed by some sort of a barrier such as a ditch. Being dark and dank, the Motte is not a habitation of choice. The only reason for its existence is the desirability of the Bailey, which the combination of the Motte and ditch makes relatively easy to retain despite attack by marauders. When only lightly pressed, the ditch makes small numbers of attackers easy to defeat as they struggle across it: when heavily pressed the ditch is not defensible and so neither is the Bailey. Rather one retreats to the insalubrious but defensible, perhaps impregnable, Motte. Eventually the marauders give up, when one is well placed to reoccupy desirable land.
[The Bailey] represents a philosophical doctrine or position with similar properties: desirable to its proponent but only lightly defensible. The Motte is the defensible but undesired position to which one retreats when hard pressed.
Shackel's original impetus was to criticize what he considered duplicitous processes of argumentation in works of academics such as
The motte-and-bailey concept was popularized on the blog Slate Star Codex in 2014.[4]
Examples
An example given by Shackel is the statement "morality is socially constructed". In this example, the motte is that our beliefs about right and wrong are socially constructed, while the bailey is that there is no such thing as right and wrong.[3]
According to Shackel,
Related concepts
The fallacy has been described as an instance of equivocation, more specifically concept-swapping, which is the substitution of one concept for another without the audience realizing.[5]
In Shackel's original article, he argued that
In Shackel's description, a motte-and-bailey doctrine relies on overawing outsiders with
Unlike normal examples of equivocation where one exploits already existing, perhaps quite subtle, differences of meaning, Humpty Dumptying is hardly subtle. The differences in meaning are so obvious that equivocating by use of them cannot normally be pursued without first softening up the audience. The softening up is effected by convincing the audience that the dual meaning is somehow an exposition of a profundity. ... the strategy is, as in Foucault's "Truth and power", to first make use of the word in its redefined sense, then present the redefinition as if it had already been established as the deeper content of the concept. Finally, the impression of profundity is sealed by passages which elide both meanings at once.[2]
Critical analysis
Responding to Shackel's use of the motte-and-bailey concept, professor of rhetoric Randy Allen Harris objected to what he saw as the use of the concept to gratuitously violate the
See also
- Argumentation scheme – Type of argument
- Argumentation theory – Academic field of logic and rhetoric
- Bait-and-switch – Form of fraud used in retail sales or in other contexts
- Cognitive bias – Systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment
- Intellectual virtue– Concept in Aristotelian ethics
- Media manipulation – Techniques in which partisans create an image that favours their interests
- Pooh-pooh – Fallacy in informal logic
- Tilting at windmills– English idiom
References
- ^ refutation.
- ^ .
For my purposes the desirable but only lightly defensible territory of the Motte and Bailey castle, that is to say, the Bailey, represents a philosophical doctrine or position with similar properties: desirable to its proponent but only lightly defensible. The Motte is the defensible but undesired position to which one retreats when hard pressed ...
- ^ a b c d Shackel, Nicholas (5 September 2014). "Motte and Bailey Doctrines". Practical Ethics. University of Oxford. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
Some people have spoken of a Motte and Bailey Doctrine as being a fallacy and others of it being a matter of strategic equivocation. Strictly speaking, neither is correct. ... So it is, perhaps, noting the common deployment of such rhetorical trickeries that has led many people using the concept to speak of it in terms of a Motte and Bailey fallacy. Nevertheless, I think it is clearly worth distinguishing the Motte and Bailey Doctrine from a particular fallacious exploitation of it.
- ^ RealClearInvestigations. online. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
- S2CID 148413229.
- ^ a b c Harris, Randy (May 2003). "Commentary on Shackel". Informal Logic @ 25: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA 5), Windsor, Canada, 14–17 May 2003. Windsor: University of Windsor. Harris was commenting on Shackel's paper from the same conference: Shackel, Nicholas (May 2003). "Two Rhetorical Manoeuvres". Informal Logic @ 25: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA 5), Windsor, Canada, 14–17 May 2003. Windsor: University of Windsor.
External links
- Anadale, Christopher (10 June 2019). The Motte & Bailey Fallacy (Lecture) (video). YouTube. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
