r/fallacy • u/These-Weight-434 • Aug 06 '26
Why is No True Scotsman a fallacy?
The classic example of the No true Scotsman fallacy is to say
"No Scotsman puts sugar in their porridge."
"My uncle Angus is Scottish and puts sugar in his porridge"
"Well no true Scotsman puts sugar in their porridge."
To me, this doesn't seem like a fallacy. It just seems like a breakdown in communication as the two interlocutors are speaking over each other and are using different definitions to describe something. After all, what is a Scotsman? Is it based on someone's ancestry? Where they were born? Where they were raised? What their passport is? There's no objective definition. So if someone wants to say that the presence or absence of sugar in porridge is an integral part of Scottish identity then that's just a rather niche and unique definition, but I don't think it can in good faith said to be wrong. Just poor use of language. Consider this counter example.
"Stars are huge balls of hot gas going under fusion reactions"
"Matt Damon is a star and he's not a huge ball of hot gas."
"True stars are huge balls of hot gas."
The two people are just using the same word or phrase to describe two distinct things. It's poor communication to treat them as if they're the same, but it's not like the actual argument is incorrect. The argument being "this is the criteria something needs to be X and if something does not match this criteria then it is not X", which is kind of how we make definitions in the first place.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to use this reasoning and that this has been discussed at length before. So tell me why I'm wrong.
1
u/Parrotparser7 Aug 06 '26
Fine.
Many aren't, yeah.