Stolen Concept Is Not False Dichotomy
Stolen Concept Is Not False Dichotomy[The "stolen concept fallacy" referred to here is actually the fallacy of taking one or more ConceptsOutOfContext. The page was renamed, breaking all the links. Sorry.]
A stolen concept fallacy does not have to look like a false dichotomy. Suppose someone comes right out and states that a certain igneous rock is evil. Such a statement is fallacious, but it exhibits the [fallacy of taking one or more ConceptsOutOfContext] (the concept of "evil" does not apply to rocks), not the FalseDichotomy fallacy (there is no "dichotomy" in a statement to the effect that a rock is evil; nor is there in the statement that the sun is unearned).
On the other hand, some might say that the statement "the igneous rock is evil" is not fallacious, it is simply false. My contention, though, is that the statement makes no sense, because it is taking a concept out of context. [Implication:] A statement that doesn't make any sense can't be evaluated; it is neither true nor false. [Reason for that implication:] The concepts of "true" and "false" do not apply to things that are not logical propositions. To argue otherwise would be to take "true" and "false" out of their contexts!
To state that "the rock is not evil" would be misleading if the context might allow one to conclude that the rock might therefore be "good." For absolute clarity and precision, it is best to refute the fallacy by saying "the rock is neither good nor evil." -- EdwardKiser
If I made a list of all evil things, rocks wouldn't be on it; therefore they are not evil. At least that makes sense to me...
But you are not omniscient; you cannot make a list of all evil things. You can only make a list of all the evil things you have ever seen or heard of. What if something comes along that you have never seen before and never heard of? How will you know whether it is evil?
A concept is more than a list of its instances; it is also a descendant of a superclass. When you see an object you've never seen before, you will start at "existent" and walk right down your class hierarchy to classify it. (The object, seen in different respects, might be able to be walked down the hierarchy in more than one way.) The context is the class's superclass.
If I were going to make a class diagram of animals, it would probably look something like this:
Animal -> Vertebrate, Bug Vertebrate -> Fish, Rabbit, Man(Let's just pretend I don't get out much.) Anyways, the superclass of fish is vertebrate. I would say that bugs aren't fish since they don't end up in its class. Are you saying that the question as to whether or not bugs are fish is meaningless, since the question "are you a fish?" makes no sense to a bug?
The question is meaningful because it brings both concepts under a single superclass which they both belong to. The question is concerned with identifying lifeforms, or perhaps even things, which a bug and a fish both are.
However, the word "fish" is also used in the context of pictures to refer to a picture of a fish. It would be fallacious to ascribe properties of real fish (they always have gills, and use them to get oxygen out of water) to pictures of fish (they don't always have gills, and when they do, it is only for detail). It would be fallacious to argue that a bug is not a picture of a fish because the bug doesn't breathe water like a fish does.
(Most stolen concept fallacies I construct are obvious, but a few that I have seen are quite clever and hard to detect.)
Obvious is good, that's what examples should be like. Unfortunately this one is mincing languages and concepts. People refer to fish pictures as fish, but that doesn't mean that they include them under their concept of fish; if you ask them "are pictures of fish really fish?" they will say no. It's just a convenient label, like saying the kettle is boiling rather than the water within it is.
Pictures of fish are not fish, and rocks are not fish. My main point is this: the concept fish applies to stuff outside its superclass, which is animal not thing. Thing is indeed a further superclass of animal, but if you're allowed to pick any superclass of fish then you may as well just pick the universal superclass, whence you no longer have a domain.
My suggestion, actually, is precisely that this will happen: you can always walk up as far as you like. Text is no longer a thing, but I can still say text isn't a fish. Neither is thought or good or 3. If it doesn't end up in the class thing, subclass animal, subclass fish, then it isn't a fish. I'm suggesting maybe evil and good can be treated the same way. I expect you would have a class wherein each thing is either good or evil, corresponding to the concept domain you suggested. But that doesn't mean that the concepts don't apply outside that domain, just that they're both false and no longer opposites.
As RichardLederer? once said about "hot water heaters," "Why heat hot water?" I think a lot of puns and double-entendres are based on the same word having two contexts. (It is the "water heater" that is hot, not just the water.)
Is a picture of a fish really a fish? An artist, upon being asked that question, might reply, "No, THIS is really a fish!" and proceed to draw a picture. But I do not think that something is subjective or worthless merely because it is convenient. Why do I detect a certain snideness of voice in that accusation, an "Oh, that can't possibly mean anything, it's just convenient," kind of thing? There is a good reason we don't have a word for "picture of a fish," and that is that the existing word works fine; the separate contexts let you know in any given case which one is meant. Also, the similarities between a fish and a picture of a fish are very real and important; coining a separate word would tend to obscure them. hmm ... TheMapIsNotTheTerritory perhaps ...
The similarities are important, but they don't make them the same thing. Underwater art galleries are not aquaria, painting over a picture of a fish isn't murder, pictures of people don't deserve citizen rights, and I have never touched Jupiter regardless of what my telescope shows me. The snideness you refer to was not intended, but I honestly think it is a severe use-mention distinction to claim things and pictures thereof are the same thing. Certainly they are metaphorically related, but I don't think that's enough for your example.
Can you go all the way up to the ultimate superclass? Yes, but then you can only make very general statements. It's like in object-oriented programming, where if you cast something to Object, you can only call Object member functions. My contention is that isEvil() is not a member function of Object. It belongs further down.
I think we are seeing the same thing from different viewpoints. But you are running an interpreter that returns "false" instead of reporting syntax errors. Some computer languages actually do that; the approach is valid in its own way, just very different. But then to see if something is really false, you have to come up with a statement that should be its opposite and make sure it's true. I, on the other hand, get a syntax error. Just depends on which kind of query language you're using.
This is something I would agree with. You get a stolen concept fallacy when you keep your method low and a false dichotomy when you move it up. But keep in mind that, unlike programming, you don't have to implement isEvil() on every subclass. :)
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