I want to get back into posting regular F.F.’s, so here’s to that. But today is once again a Fallacy Friday. In order to start things off again, I just want to start slow. We’ll only discuss one fallacy for today. I hope you don’t mind. As usual, the original source for this fallacy is right here. Let’s get started!

The appeal to rigor. This is an unusual one. It’s not a common one at all to discuss, despite the fact that examples can be found in plenty of places. If you want to think of a way to visualize this argument, think of that time that Trump roared on about killing the families of Islamic extremists. Now that’s an extreme example, but does that make this easier to understand? It’s a weird type of argument which appeals to people’s anger at certain “evil-doers” and appeals to basic/baser instincts in the audience. Some examples of it in Abrahamic religions could be when people enjoy the fact that according to Christianity “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Now to most many of these things sound like they shouldn’t be punishable by super death, but there are some who relish this. That could also be considered an appeal to rigor. This sort of mercilessness isn’t reasonable. Especially not forever.

How is this a fallacy? It implies that problems can ONLY or even be best solved by unrelenting force, or harshness of some kind. There’s no reason to believe this can be the case, or is the case, by default. But it is also, especially when applied to people, an over-extension of force. It’s not right to use unrelenting force or to act like you’ll do that, to people who have done nothing wrong. This is not a reasonable response to a rough situation, even if it feels like it is at the moment when the statements which are appeals to rigor are stated. There’s no reason to believe that unrelenting force and mercilessness will solve interpersonal conflict. And if we act like allowing that unrelenting force is a reasonable response, then we don’t do anything to prevent future situations of the same kind, even if we know that we can merely respond the same way again. It also assumes that mercilessness will solve whatever problem it is being used to try and solve in the first place. Oh and it oftentimes insults those who aren’t being “merciless”, such as in the Trump example, Trump claiming that Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Any thoughts on this fallacy? I think it’s a real shame that it’s not being talked about as much as it ought to be. Especially politically. Doing things like demanding 100% deportation for any undocumented immigrant can be considered an example of this, given that at least some of the undocumented immigrants, in the United States and in other nations are children, teenagers, and young adults who were brought here when they were infants or very young children, and “sending them back” wouldn’t be good for them, and even possibly not good for us either. This is a fallacy that ought to be discussed more. I’d love to know what you think of this fallacy.

Let’s chat! If you like what I’ve got to say about certain topics, let’s chat on my page.