“Versus: you think I should be forbidden from eating tic-tacs; tic-tacs are nonsentient; therefore you think I should be forbidden from eating nonsentient things”
Isn’t that a completely different fallacy?
In the case (C1) “You think it’s okay to eat tic-tacs; tic-tacs are sentient; therefore you think it’s okay to eat sentient things.” You say “You say doing f to A is OK, A is B, therefore, you think it is okay to do f to B”. (Because if not, you could not do f to A because A is B)
But in the case (C2) “you think I should be forbidden from eating tic-tacs; tic-tacs are nonsentient; therefore you think I should be forbidden from eating nonsentient things” it is “you think I should not do f to A, A is B, therefore you think I should not do f to B” That is wrong!
If there exist A and C which are all B, then in case C1, we say because f can be done to A, f cannot not be done to B, or else A would not be a member of B (which it is). But in case C2, if f cannot be done to A, then f cannot be done to B reasons the wrong way around: saying something about members of B does not say something about all members of B.
...
Basically, pedantry about the default case of negative statements about groups applying “none of” descriptors and the default case for positive (or atleast non-negative) statements about groups applying “some of” descriptors.
Hiding behind anon account because I didn’t want to go through signup hoops before losing my train of thought.
I took the meaning to be “therefore you think there are some nonsentient things I should be forbidden to eat”. I agree that as written the other meaning is a more natural interpretation, but in the context of the rest of the article I think my interpretation is more likely (exactly because otherwise it would involve an entirely different logical error). philh, would you like to confirm or refute?
[EDITED to fix an idiotic mistake: for some reason I thought Elo, not philh, was the author. My apologies to both.]
“Versus: you think I should be forbidden from eating tic-tacs; tic-tacs are nonsentient; therefore you think I should be forbidden from eating nonsentient things”
Isn’t that a completely different fallacy?
In the case (C1) “You think it’s okay to eat tic-tacs; tic-tacs are sentient; therefore you think it’s okay to eat sentient things.” You say “You say doing f to A is OK, A is B, therefore, you think it is okay to do f to B”. (Because if not, you could not do f to A because A is B)
But in the case (C2) “you think I should be forbidden from eating tic-tacs; tic-tacs are nonsentient; therefore you think I should be forbidden from eating nonsentient things” it is “you think I should not do f to A, A is B, therefore you think I should not do f to B” That is wrong!
If there exist A and C which are all B, then in case C1, we say because f can be done to A, f cannot not be done to B, or else A would not be a member of B (which it is). But in case C2, if f cannot be done to A, then f cannot be done to B reasons the wrong way around: saying something about members of B does not say something about all members of B.
...
Basically, pedantry about the default case of negative statements about groups applying “none of” descriptors and the default case for positive (or atleast non-negative) statements about groups applying “some of” descriptors.
Hiding behind anon account because I didn’t want to go through signup hoops before losing my train of thought.
I took the meaning to be “therefore you think there are some nonsentient things I should be forbidden to eat”. I agree that as written the other meaning is a more natural interpretation, but in the context of the rest of the article I think my interpretation is more likely (exactly because otherwise it would involve an entirely different logical error). philh, would you like to confirm or refute?
[EDITED to fix an idiotic mistake: for some reason I thought Elo, not philh, was the author. My apologies to both.]
Yes, that’s what I was going for.
My apologies for writing “Elo” where I meant “philh” in the grandparent of this comment. I’ve fixed it now.
Can I take the credit for writing things I did not write? Cause that would be sweet.