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Davo

Is "I'm just doing my job" a fallacy?

Is this Appeal to Blind Authority or a form of Appeal to Tradition when an employee obviously sees the ridiculousness of their actions but doesn't want to apply Reason to a particular task/process?
asked on Monday, Nov 10, 2014 05:10:07 PM by Davo

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Answers

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Bo Bennett, PhD
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I think that is a good example of a fallacy. Whether it be more of an appeal to blind authority or tradition would be based on the reasoning one uses to justify the action beyond the "I'm just doing my job" response (e.g., "I'm just doing what it says to do on this checklist").

There is a legal and psychological aspect to this fallacy as well. It has been called the Nuremberg Defense based on the famous Nuremberg trials after WWII. In the early 60's, psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to find out if there was more to this phenomenon than just bad people doing bad things. He conducted his famous obedience to authority experiment where he demonstrated that this is more than a reflection of a "bad person," but a psychological phenomenon common to humanity. Today, we would consider this a fallacy (i.e., error in reasoning), but it is one of those errors that is deeply ingrained and difficult to correct.
answered on Monday, Nov 10, 2014 05:33:30 PM by Bo Bennett, PhD

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Davo
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Gotcha...

I didn't know if this would qualify since there is no specific authority referenced in that statement (there aren't any "orders" being followed, per se).

It's almost as if that statement could be used as an example of the Just Because Fallacy when the employee is lazily implying that there should never be an expectation of reasonable policies in the workplace.
answered on Monday, Nov 10, 2014 05:49:46 PM by Davo

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John
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There is also the concept of non-intelligent actors performing intelligent actions.

For human beings, this explains the survival benefits of tradition, education and faith. One can act intelligently, even if one is not intelligent, by following the orders of a guiding intelligence.
answered on Sunday, Aug 02, 2015 01:28:13 PM by John

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