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Stolen Concept Fallacy

Description: Requiring the truth of the something that you are simultaneously trying to disprove.

Example #1:

Reason and logic are not always reliable, so we should not count on it to help us find truth.

Explanation: Here we are using reason to disprove the validity of reason, which is unreasonable -- reasonably speaking.

Example #2:

Science cannot be trusted.  It is a big conspiracy to cover up the truth of the Bible and the creation story.  Besides, I saw fossils in the creation museum with humans and dinosaurs together, which proves science is wrong!

Explanation: Geology is a branch of science.  Using science (examining fossils through the science of geology) to disprove science is absurd, a contradiction and, therefore, a fallacy in reasoning.

Exception: Intentional irony.

References:

Peikoff, L. (1993). Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Penguin.

Questions about this fallacy? Ask our community!

Eat Meat... Or Don't.

Roughly 95% of Americans don’t appear to have an ethical problem with animals being killed for food, yet all of us would have a serious problem with humans being killed for food. What does an animal lack that a human has that justifies killing the animal for food but not the human?

As you start to list properties that the animal lacks to justify eating them, you begin to realize that some humans also lack those properties, yet we don’t eat those humans. Is this logical proof that killing and eating animals for food is immoral? Don’t put away your steak knife just yet.

In Eat Meat… Or Don’t, we examine the moral arguments for and against eating meat with both philosophical and scientific rigor. This book is not about pushing some ideological agenda; it’s ultimately a book about critical thinking.

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