Not a standard fallacy by any stretch or means, rather, I would argue it as a variant of a red herring. The name I gave to it, comes from reductio ad absurdum which is a logical device, wherein one attempts to disprove a statement by showing that it leads to an absurd conclusion. Alternatively, to prove that a statement must be true, as it not being true would lead to an absurd conclusion. Combined with “ethica” the Latin word for ethics. The impetus for the creation of this new variant of logical fallacy, is that it is becoming quite common to observe that people engaged in a debate, seek to turn a debate regarding facts, into a debate regarding ethics.
While ethical considerations are important, they are not the be all, end all of argument. When one pivots from a debate on solid factual foundations, to one based in ethical considerations one at the same time moves to a foundation of sand. Furthermore, the concept of “Virtue signalling” where a person asserts opposition to an opponents position based not in fact, or logic, but in order to increase their social status within a group or groups.
The fallacy takes place when someone changes the premise for the discussion to be a primarily based in ethics. Continue reading
I suppose we’ll never know for sure who had the radical idea that “people should be free to express their views without fearing reprisal”. I know that it was a somewhat popular idea when Socrates took his final shot of hemlock, and that a lot of was absorbed into the Roman Empire, and the Hellenic empire after that. After all, at that time they were the greatest cultures and empires the world had ever seen, both in terms of social progress. The Ancient Greeks wrote works that are still central to many modern fields of inquiry, such as Plato’s treatise of government, “The Republic“, Aristotle’s work on logic, and ethics, the Pythagorean theorem, and Archimedes’ law.