Glad to have this term. I do think there’s a non-fallacious, superficially similar argument that goes something like this:
“X leads to Y. This is obvious, and the only way you could doubt it would be some sort of motivated reasoning—motivated by something other than preventing Y. Therefore, if you don’t think X leads to Y, you aren’t very motivated to prevent Y.”
It’s philosophically valid, but requires some very strong claims. I also suspect it’s prone to causing circular reasoning, where you’ve ‘proven’ that no one who cares about Y thinks X doesn’t lead to Y and then use that belief to discredit new arguments that X doesn’t lead to Y.
Glad to have this term. I do think there’s a non-fallacious, superficially similar argument that goes something like this:
“X leads to Y. This is obvious, and the only way you could doubt it would be some sort of motivated reasoning—motivated by something other than preventing Y. Therefore, if you don’t think X leads to Y, you aren’t very motivated to prevent Y.”
It’s philosophically valid, but requires some very strong claims. I also suspect it’s prone to causing circular reasoning, where you’ve ‘proven’ that no one who cares about Y thinks X doesn’t lead to Y and then use that belief to discredit new arguments that X doesn’t lead to Y.