Misattribution of blame/praise
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Original Question
What exactly is going wrong in the following examples?
"Verizon is a very unfriendly company, I called customer service and I was spoken to in a very rude manner!"
"The National Health Service has saved my life with their excellent care"
In both examples, a larger entity/the whole group is praised/blamed, when in reality, it is the actions of individuals, and is completely disconnected from the system they operate in.
With example 2, it's really easy to see why it's wrong, because doctors/nurses help you, not the system itself. It would be equally wrong for me to thank the Dutch private healthcare market after having been treated in a hospital. Note that this is not a case of generalising a group, as if stereotyping.
So is this a fallacy, or a mistake in reasoning, or is there actually nothing wrong at all? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Comments on Question
Answers
3This might be a case where you're being overly analytical. A person who says that is probably just using a shorthand for phrases that would be more precise but flow relatively poorly.
However, argument of this form fall to the hasty generalization fallacy.
We can say this is a hasty generalization .
Q1: To answer this question, it must first be determined what exactly it means that a company is unfriendly. If by that we mean that people from that company are rude at work when talking to others (this interpretation seems to be the most natural), and that happened once in your example, it cannot be concluded generally on the basis of only one case. That would be a Hasty generalization (Drawing a conclusion based on a small sample size, rather than looking at statistics that are much more in line with the typical or average situation).
Q2: Similar to the previous question, it depends on the interpretation of what it means that a system has helped an individual. Can a system be considered to help an individual, directly or indirectly, when the people who work for the system help the individual. If the answer is yes, then there is no mistake here.
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Could this be an example of assigning a universal from a particular case? Would that be induction gone wrong?
Particular to universal is a "mistake" we often make when attributing or over-generalizing. It is "better" or more reliable to go from the universal to the particular.
Thoughts?
Thanks.