- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that parent company Unilever has silenced its attempts to express support for Palestinian refugees, and threatened to dismantle its board and sue its members over the issue.
The lawsuit is the latest sign of the long-simmering tensions between Ben & Jerry’s and consumer products maker Unilever. A rift erupted between the two in 2021 after Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop selling its products in the Israeli-occupied West Bank because it was inconsistent with its values, a move that led some to divest Unilever shares.
The ice cream maker then sued Unilever for selling its business in Israel to its licensee there, which allowed marketing in the West Bank and Israel to continue. That lawsuit was settled in 2022.
Reducto ad absurdum
This is no time for casting spells.
Reducto ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy if that’s what you’re getting at. It’s a very important logical tool that happens to be a Latin phrase with a similar cadence to Latin names of logical fallacies. People on the Internet mess this up all the time, and it’s become a pet peeve of mine.
I don’t think OP is right–there’s lots of different layers to issues like this that can be explored–but not because of that.
Not inherently, no, but it is when used fallaciously. Like in this case.
Just like deliberate hyperbole is not a fallacy when used skillfully and transparently to underscore a point, it’s the context and the delivery that decides whether something is a valid reducto ad absurdum argument or a reducto ad absurdum fallacy.
In case you forgot while I was elaborating: this is a case of the latter.
Yeah, you’re doing it right now.
You’re sorta right about that: the way they expressed their wrongheaded opinion isn’t the cause of them being wrong, merely a symptom.
It never is. There might be some other logical fallacy at play. Slippery slope is a common one in cases where people cite reducto ad absurdum. But why not cite the actual fallacy rather than the one that isn’t a fallacy at all?
Or maybe don’t. Generally, logical fallacies are better used to pick apart your own arguments rather than tossing them in other people’s faces.
Nope. There is no such thing as reducto ad absurdum fallacy. I challenge you to find a citation otherwise, because I can cite a lot of stuff that talks about its use as a tool of logic and does not mention fallacies what so ever, or does so only as part of connected information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum - “In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for “reduction to absurdity”), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for “argument to absurdity”) or apagogical arguments, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction”. The word “fallacy” does not even appear on the page except as a link to “See Also - Argument from fallacy”.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/reductio-ad-absurdum - “reductio ad absurdum, (Latin: “reduction to absurdity”), in logic, a form of refutation showing contradictory or absurd consequences following upon premises as a matter of logical necessity.” Fallacies are only mentioned further down the page as connected information.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reductio ad absurdum - “1) disproof of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion 2) the carrying of something to an absurd extreme” Again, no mention of fallacy. It’s a tool to disprove something.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/cgi-bin/uy/webpages.cgi?/logicalfallacies/Reductio-ad-Absurdum - “A mode of argumentation or a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd conclusion. Arguments that use universals such as, “always”, “never”, “everyone”, “nobody”, etc., are prone to being reduced to absurd conclusions. The fallacy is in the argument that could be reduced to absurdity – so in essence, reductio ad absurdum is a technique to expose the fallacy.” Note that last sentence. Reducto ad absurdum is about exposing the fallacy, not creating one. This on a web site that’s all about logical fallacies, and they ain’t saying it’s a fallacy.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dnp/frege/reductio-ad-absurdum.html - “The Proof by Contradiction technique that we just described is a special case of a more general reasoning strategy called reductio ad absurdum. (Translate this literally as, “reduce to absurdity”.) We can use this more general strategy in everyday rhetoric as well as in mathematics”. Again, no mention of fallacy.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/69916/is-reductio-ad-absurdum-a-fallacy - Top level response explicitly says it’s not a fallacy.
Edit: a few more to pile on.
https://www.quora.com/Which-type-of-fallacy-is-reductio-ad-absurdum-Whats-its-definition-example-how-it-works-in-real-life-situations - Top level response explicitly says it’s not a fallacy.
https://www.thoughtco.com/reductio-ad-absurdum-argument-1691903 - "Like any argumentative strategy, reductio ad absurdum can be misused and abused, but in itself it is not a form of fallacious reasoning. A related form of argument, the slippery slope argument, takes reductio ad absurdum to an extreme and is often (but not always) fallacious. " Here again, the argument might be making a fallacy, but reducto ad absurdum is not it.
You’re fundamentally ignoring or misunderstanding what a fallacy is. Here’s the dictionary definition:
Note that, by any of those 3 definitions, the argument that it’s absurd to take Ben & Jerry’s freedom of speech seriously because Trump is a fallacy.
Just likely a slippery slope argument is valid when a certain course of action legitimately leads to increasingly negative outcomes (such as for example treating Trump as a serious candidate in the first place in 2015), a usually valid argument technique is fallacious when used fallaciously.
And in case you still believe that nothing can be a fallacy without having the word “fallacy” in the opening paragraph of Wikipedia, I invite you to look up “hyperbole” and “slippery slope” there.
If they’re guilty of hyperbole or slippery slope, then say that. Lumping in reducto ad absurdum takes away from a very powerful and useful tool of formal logic. Overloading the term makes understanding more fuzzy, not more clarifying.
I JUST told you about how hyperbole and slippery slope arguments aren’t inherently fallacious. Just like reducto ad absurdum arguments, they’re fallacies when used fallaciously and otherwise NOT fallacies.
Is that clear enough, or do you want me to Ask Figaro?
Let’s go back a few steps in the thread. The response was simply “Reducto ad absurdum” as if that explained it right there. Except, that’s not itself a fallacy. It might be used in a fallacious way, but simply stating “Reducto ad absurdum” does not point out any fallacy what so ever.
And that’s my whole point. People use the term in a muddy way that takes away from a tool.
So that’s where you want the goal posts now?
I specifically agreed that reducto ad absurdum isn’t inherently a fallacy in the first sentence of my first reply to you.
It is now that your original point that “there’s no such thing as a reducto ad absurdum fallacy” has been shot to pieces 🙄
That’s the case with almost every tool of every kind that people have access to.
Especially in the case of language, people are constantly using it wrong, and while I genuinely applaud your intention of projecting a useful tool from being dulled by misuse, the battle is an uphill one to begin with.
Don’t make it even worse by misstating your position and then defending that mistake like it’s the Korean border.