PSYCHOLOGY | CRITICAL THINKING | BULLETPROOF
How to Bullet-proof Your Reasoning #3: Watch out for Special Pleading!
Justifying a demonstrably false claim by making up exceptions for it
INTRODUCTION
The goal of this How To Bullet-proof Your Reasoning series is to equip the reader with a better understanding of how to use critical thinking in daily life. Today we examine what Special Pleading is.
You need to understand how this works to avoid being tricked by someone who tries to use this sort of incorrect logic on you, as well as to avoid using it yourself accidentally.
UNDERSTANDING WHAT “SPECIAL PLEADING” IS
Special pleading*: a person makes an unsubstantiated claim that conflicts with a general or universal principle, but exempts themselves from being subject to that principle without justifying this special exception. In other words, they are applying a double-standard** when it comes to evaluating their own unproven claim.
*Note: Considered to be an ”informal” fallacy because the structure of the argument itself is logical, but it doesn’t prove anything because it exempts itself from the need to provide evidence for the claim being made.
**This commonly takes the form of moving the goalpost, which means that the person changes the criteria for evaluating their claim to allow for their explanation to be uncontradicted. This is sometimes done repeatedly in the midst of a discussion.
Two common reasons for this fallacy being committed are…
1. The speaker is intentionally trying to deceive the listener
2. The person is emotionally invested* in a belief and will come up with any excuse to justify it
*Note: This is easier to identify in other people’s arguments, but much more difficult when you are the one committing this error in critical thinking.
REAL-LIFE EXAMPLES:
The “Psychic” (fraudster):
This person claims to be receiving messages from the dead relatives of the people who are buying tickets to come to his show. He appears to choose people at random* in the audience and mentions some of their dead relatives’ names and the messages they want to communicate to those family members. This is emotionally-charged information that people are especially vulnerable to. In this case, those who are hurting from the passing of a loved one and “looking for answers”.
This “psychic” is asked to join two scientific researchers in a lab to test his psychic abilities and he agrees. However, when he tries to contact their dead relatives he claims that he is unable to do so because the scientists don’t believe in his special gift, and belief in his gift is a condition for it to work, to begin with.
*Note: Later investigation would reveal that the so-called “psychic” had employees performing background research on some of the attendees ahead of time using the information that they had provided when they registered for the event. And those employees are talking to him through an earpiece during the show to tell him which audience member to call upon (physical description, name, relevant details, etc) so that he is able to pick “random” people and come up with “secret details” that he hears from those who have died.
For a period of around 50 years, there was a challenge issued to anyone who claimed they could demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under carefully-controlled scientific testing. The financial award for doing so started at US$1,000 and went all the way up to US$1,000,000 over that timespan. Everyone who took on the challenge failed to demonstrate their ability.
The emotionally-invested person:
This is perhaps the one to watch out for the most because it is easy for human beings to go out of their way to justify their reasoning when their personally-held beliefs are called into question. In this situation, there is often a tendency to double down on the belief. And this even greater commitment to the belief is often when the person starts to move the goalpost* to justify it.
*This terminology comes from sports. Imagine a soccer game (European football) where a player kicks the soccer ball toward the goal area and sees that they are going to miss. And, before this happens, they claim that the soccer net is smaller than what the regulations state and that they would have successfully scored if the correct regulations were followed, such as to make up for them missing the net and their ball rolling right outside of it.
Obviously, this sort of claim would not be taken seriously in the context of such a game, because the size of the net was already known and agreed upon by all of the players before the game started. So to suggest that it should be expanded in the midst of a game while a ball is rolling toward it would be ridiculous.
Yet, this is exactly what someone does when they commit the special pleading logical fallacy to support their claim.
Here’s an example of it in a more realistic situation:
Robert and his friend are discussing which sports motorcycle is the fastest.
Robert: I just bought a 2021 Suzuki GSX-R 1100! [a] It’s the fastest motorcycle in the world!
Lynn: It’s cool that you bought that bike. It’s a really nice one. But it’s not the fastest, though. During the trials around a track last year, the 2021 Kawasaki Hayabusa 1200 completed its laps in less time than all other motorcycles, including the GSX-R 1100.
Robert: But that’s not the same. [b] You are comparing a 1100cc motorcycle to a 1200cc motorcycle. The results show that no other 1100cc motorcycle can go as fast as the GSX-R.
Lynn: Actually… the new 2022 Kawasaki Ninja 1100 model just recorded a faster time than the 2021 GSX-R around the same track two months ago.
Robert: Maybe… [c] But until they do the official trails with all of the manufacturers and motorcycles later this year, we won’t know for sure.
Explanation:
[a] Robert is emotionally-invested in his purchase. He clearly cares about having the “fastest motorcycle in the world”.
[b] When presented with evidence to the contrary, Robert moves the goalpost from “all motorcycles” to the “1100cc category” only.
[c] When presented with additional evidence that still contradicts his claim regarding the 1100cc motorcycle category despite his modified evaluation criteria, Robert moves the goalpost again by claiming that it’s not “official” until all motorcycles in the 1100cc category have been tested at the same event later in the year.
PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR REASONING
Special pleading is used by politicians, advertisers and marketers, social media influencers, writers, and so on. Basically, anyone with an agenda (positive, neutral, or negative) and who is claiming things or trying to push a point of view on you without having to provide sufficient evidence that would warrant believing in what they say.
Those topics can range from being completely trivial and harmless to some that can have serious implications on your decision-making surrounding your life, work, society, who you associate with (or not), etc, if you were to believe those claims at face value.
We must question everything, especially ourselves.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
CONCLUSION
Beware of fallacious reasoning associated with special pleading. On one hand, you can become a victim of someone’s scam if not careful. And this is especially true when a person makes claims that appeal to your feelings about something that you deeply care about.
Furthermore, you could also easily fall into this trap when presenting your own arguments to someone about the things that are very important to you. This is why it’s absolutely necessary to apply critical thinking to everything we evaluate and believe, and not just the things that we naturally tend to disagree with.
PREVIOUS ARTICLES IN THE HOW-TO BULLET-PROOF YOUR REASONING SERIES
How to Bullet-proof Your Reasoning #1: Watch out for Confirmation Bias!
How to Bullet-proof Your Reasoning #2: Understand the Burden of Proof
All the best,
Pascal
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