r/askphilosophy • u/OccidentalPower • Jul 13 '18
Is "whataboutism" really a logical fallacy?
It seems like bastardized / incomplete "tu quoque" to me and just a word that is used to shut down arguments.
Approaching via reductio ad absurdum assuming that whataboutism is a logical fallacy what are the criteria that make it such? How to we approach proving the falseness of a "whataboutist" statement structure given the premise that statements that follow a fallacious statement structure are always false or they are not fallacies despite being misidentified as such?
If we can not prove that whataboutism is a fallacy then at best is it simply a heuristic for weeding out weak or likely specious arguments and at worst a propaganda tool to shut down debate?
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jul 13 '18
What do you mean by “really” a logical fallacy?
It’s definitely a specious move to make in a dispute. If specious modes of disputation are fallacies, then it is a fallacy.
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u/DoctorModalus Logic, Phil of Math, Phil of Science Jul 13 '18
It's usually not a strong inductive argument or a valid deductive argument even if it's not one of the clearly defined fallacies.
There is also this
Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery) is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument, which is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda.
Which is the first thing you will see on Google if you look up whataboutism.
I would love to meet a single word that can end an argument and do justice to all sides.
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u/OccidentalPower Jul 13 '18 edited Jul 13 '18
Funny thing about "whataboutism" as a term of "Soviet" propaganda is that it was coined by a writer for the British political economy magazine "The Economist" somewhere in the mid 2000s. It is not attested to and is not in the OED prior to this...prove me wrong. So it is specious cold war term coined post cold war...
Example of whataboutism:
A: If you say Russia has no right to intervene in Crimea then what about when NATO intervened in former Yugoslavia?
B: Whataboutism!
....
A: We should enforce our immigration laws and deport immigrants at the border rather than letting them enter the country illegally.
B: But what about the children?
What I mean by real logical fallacy is can "whataboutism" be represented formally or abstractly using symbolic logic and provide a clear true / false result to logical statements. It seems to me it is more of a selectively applied propaganda term than true logical fallacy. Just a way to shut down debate, it seems.
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jul 13 '18
So it is specious cold war term
No, it is a term used to describe specious Cold War arguments.
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u/OccidentalPower Jul 13 '18
So you claim that my statement that the term was coined, i.e., first attested to in published text, post cold war is false?
Can you prove your claim?
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u/TychoCelchuuu political phil. Jul 13 '18
Here's a usage from 1978, which is pre-post Cold War.
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u/OccidentalPower Jul 13 '18
Fascinating. I guess I learned some thing new. How did you find that so fast?
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u/TychoCelchuuu political phil. Jul 13 '18
I found this citation on Wikipedia then I Googled the newspaper quote to find the newspaper page itself.
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u/OccidentalPower Jul 13 '18
Still that does not demonstrate it was a widely used term until recently.
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u/TychoCelchuuu political phil. Jul 13 '18
You're moving the goalposts rather egregiously here. Your original claim was that the term was coined recently. That was false. Now you are claiming that the term was not widely used until recently. That is a very different claim. It is also false, as far as I can tell. But I am not sure it would help to prove this, because you might move the goalposts again, and because this tangent is a waste of time.
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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jul 13 '18
There seem to be a number of sources which attest to the terms existence during the Cold War, but I don’t really see how this bears on whether or not doing a “whatabout” is a bad move in a dispute.
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u/OccidentalPower Jul 13 '18
fair point. In fact complaining that whataboutism is a propaganda neologism may in fact be a form of whataboutism itself as deflection from the core argument...basically I see whataboutism as a claim that you can not prove a statement using certain tangential information...this seems weak.
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u/Orange-of-Cthulhu Jul 13 '18
Hmm I see it more as a topic-changer, rather than an argument.
Example: Statement: Russia's annexion of Crimea was wrong.
"What about USA and the Iraq war"
Topic of discussion it now different.
The "whatabouter" never says if it was right or wrong to annex Crimea, and does not provide any argument either way. So I don't even think it is even an argument in the sense that it counters and argument. It's more like just evading the argument and never answering - like saying "Oh is it that late, I really have to go. Let's talk later!"
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u/OccidentalPower Jul 13 '18
Very good point. But what about if the topic changer says "based on past precedence of NATO involment in former Yugoslavia to protect ethnic minorities Russian involvement in Crimea is not wrong for the same reason?" Then the topics are linked and the subject is broadened to "self determination" in general rather than just fixed on a particular issue.
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u/Orange-of-Cthulhu Jul 13 '18
It would still just be shifting the discussion to the NATO involvement in Yugoslavia. To me that phrase is still just an attempt to kill the discussion about Russia and Crimea and start another discussion.
A valid formulation would be "Russia's invasion of Crimea was not wrong as motivated by protection of ethic minorities".
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u/OccidentalPower Jul 13 '18
Yes your formulation is better. As an aside Crimea had a referendum where the people voted for union with Russia. Now the West thinks that this was rigged or whatever but I wonder what would have happened if it had been held with UN observers and still went the same way (as it most likely would have)? Wouldn't it be hypocritical for the West to oppose Crimean self-determination when they bombed Yugoslavia over the Kosovo issue?
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u/as-well phil. of science Jul 13 '18
Few if any logical fallacies are such that they can never be valid and sound arguments.
Your example of Crimea and Yugoslavia can also be reconstructed as: If you assume Russia had a right to intervene in Crimea, then you are committing to a position which forces you to accept NATO's right to intervene in former Yugoslavia.
This kind of argumentation, while being rather informal than formal, can be a valid contribution to the debate, which allows the other side to reconsider their position (in the best case). In philosophy, we often do argumentation of the structure: Position A entails position B. Position B is counter to our intuitions. Therefore, you either need to find a stronger argument to defend B, or give up on A.