The ‘Both-And’ Principle
Logic to fight the ‘false dichotomy’ fallacy and any situation in which a Sith may deal you an absolute
Lately I have been aware of occurrences of the logical fallacy labeled a ‘false dichotomy,’ which is exemplified by the following conversation between a certain happy yet presently perturbed couple:
MS. N: You’ve been working a lot in your free time, how come we haven’t gone out and done sometime like watch a movie?
MR. C: I’m sorry but it’s because these days you either have to work hard all the time or end up slacking off and accomplishing nothing!
MS. N: Yeah that doesn’t sound right to me…
See, the false dichotomy is when an ultimatum is dealt by someone pretending like the choices left to the other is all-or-nothing. Mr. C feels like all he has to choose from is working himself to death or partying all-day-every-day. Ms. N is sensible enough to hint that seeing a movie together tonight might be an altogether different choice for both romance and productivity (in the form of relaxing from work) which he has prematurely discounted.
What Ms. N. will say to Mr. C., under the guidance of the ‘Both-And’ principle, is:
MS. N: I’m sure you can strike a balance between your work and our relationship. What if instead of a movie, we went to Starbucks so you could work and I get to spend time with you?
MR. C: That’s it! We’ll do both at the same time! I love you, you know that, right?
Also take for example the situation a younger Obi-Wan Kenobi finding himself facing the late, great Anakin Skywalker pre-Vader:
OBI-WAN: Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!
ANAKIN: If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy.
No wonder Obi-Wan calls Anakin out and says, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” The false dichotomy is lain clear: Obi-Wan must either support Anakin and revoke the Republic/Jedi way, or he must absolutely be an enemy to Anakin.
As a friend and mentor to Anakin, Obi-Wan is heartbroken by Anakin’s false dichotomy. Although Anakin cannot see it, Obi-Wan cares deeply for Anakin; he wishes all this evil would come to a halt and the galaxy be at peace. Thus Obi-Wan invokes the Jedi way, or what I would say is the ‘Both-And’ principle. Too bad it didn’t work that time…hmm, I should write some sort of disclaimer to that effect…
What you’ll find is that in everyday life there’ll be a discussion where someone will throw their hands up and proclaim, “It’s a dead-end! There’s no other choice than this!” It’s tempting to be caught up in a fever of pessimism, or equally to optimistically say, ‘No, that can’t be,’ but have no action to take. The real approach, though, is somewhere in-between or a kind of higher, uniting 3rd option.
The pessimist complains the winds aren’t fit for sailing; the optimist hopes the winds will soon change; the realist, however, simply adjusts the sails.
Origins of the Both-And Principle
TL;DR Aquinas was a Jedi Knight
Early uses of the ‘Both-And’ principle were made by the well-known Medieval philosopher and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas. I can’t go into great length about his style and principles, but I can attribute the Both-And principle to his specific line of reason. If you’re interested in some background info keep reading this section, otherwise jump down to the next section a little further below.
It is not explicitly stated anywhere in St. Thomas Aquinas’ writings but the ‘both-and’ principle is nonetheless relied upon over and over again as he writes his lengthy answers to disputed philosophical and theological questions of his time. When asked a question and left with a false dichotomy by the questiones disputates, Aquinas relied on a third ‘Both-And’ option which was holistic and completely opposed to both dualistic ‘either-or’ choices.
For example Aquinas unequivocally answers the question about whether a human person is comprised of either just body or just soul with simply: ‘both, and necessarily so.’ To him, the human body is an organized whole in itself, an organism or organisms, what we identify as the height of the evolutionary chain. Yet the human person was altogether different because it was the union of both body and soul together, creating something neither could be on their own. To him and modern Catholics, the union of body and soul triumphs over the absolutes that what constituted a person was either their corporeal shtuff or their incorporeal shtuff.
Now you’ll be hard-pressed to find a good quote from the Good Doctor about the ‘Both-And’ principle; his writing is dense and all in Latin so I’ve deduced this principle myself. For instance, he answers part of the question at length in the article: “Whether a man is his soul?” ST I, Q 75, Art. 4 and yet never once says anything like ‘Well, both body and soul, really.’ He has to consider quite a lot of time-encapsulated objections and considerations, but as can be deduced he works towards his conclusions by adhering to this principle.
If you are someone not so inclined to pry through pages of his theological texts, know this: Aquinas questioned even the brightest, most respected religious minds of his time (i.e. St. Bonaventure) while siding often with both pagan and Muslim philosophers (i.e. Aristotle & Avicenna). While religion today is often a cause of dichotomy and dualism (i.e. good vs evil, church vs state), to Aquinas every question was on the table and the ‘Both-And’ principle helped him to provide unique answers that had never been offered before.
Both-And in an Agile Workplace
Now the most common place I’ve seen use for this ‘Both-And’ principle is in meetings I sit through at work. My office has adopted a very lively and healthy Agile environment—I’m only just getting caught up on all its philosophy—and one thing I’ve learned is how to boil down the simple from what appears to be complex situations. Let’s take an example, shall we:
BOSS: We are implementing this new process but we can’t cutover everyone cold turkey, that means we have to run both processes at the same time and we’re going to have a huge mess! Either we hold off the pilot or just suffer a major headache…UGH!
Please note my boss is not a Sith lord, this is just a real-world example
We were confronted with a situation at work where this conversation actually occurred. Our team was rolling out a new internal webapp and instituting a new Agile workflow by it. The old, Scrum-based process with hidden rules and gotchas was being replaced almost overnight for all of IT. Tossing out that old data was reckless, but to support the old process while granularly rolling everyone into the new was a mountain of an effort.
Everyone in that meeting felt the weight of possible work that lay ahead. Sensing that heaviness and with no clear solution brought forth by those more experienced and familiar with the situation than me, I decided to follow with the feeling that we were arriving at a false dichotomy of sorts and implement what my (so-called worthless) philosophy degree taught me:
ME: …Why not roll both processes into one?
<crickets chirping from the ceiling/>
I was asked to explain my position further. My answer: we could actually incorporate the old process into the new one and run them parallel as one whole process together. Instead of locking out the old process in its ill-begotten workflow, we stripped out every rule baked into its process, preserved its enormous amount of [backlogged] data, and simply made it a part of the new process. Anyone still managing their work in the old fashion would never know the difference. And anything that broke in the cutover or went missing was an invitation to learn the new process at their own pace.
The ‘Both-And’ solution proved invaluable to the rollout of our new app and new workflow. While there was, as always, hurdles and headaches to work through we were spared the insufferable weight of a false dichotomy and an either-or situation. Our customers did not have to use the old process or the new, or worse balance both at the same time—the two became one. Different, sure, but the transition was not as steep as would have been with. With enough marketing, training, and annoying e-mails everyone was on board with relative ease of mind, all thanks to just a lil’ ‘Both-And’ magic.
My final thought: not every choice is a false dichotomy. You should always be on the lookout for false dichotomies so you can save the day with the ‘Both-And’ principle. But sometimes all you are left with are two irreconcilable options that force you to choose between the two. A good way to tell the difference is whether your decision makes you, your team, and your customers more satisfied than otherwise,
So what do you do when you hear someone in a meeting or in your everyday life mention to you, “It’s either one way or the no way!” You say:
“Why not both?”
