Identify the argument or fallacy

April 5, 2006 8:03 PM

Is there a name for the argument or fallacy that states, essentially, that "Everyone is subject to the injustice that I have created-- the fact that you disproportionately bear the burden of this injustice is immaterial."
posted by Kwantsar to Religion & Philosophy (13 answers total)

Dunno, but O'Connor uses similar language in the Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey

A significant number of women will likely be prevented from obtaining an abortion just as surely as if Pennsylvania had outlawed the procedure entirely. The fact that § 3209 may affect fewer than one percent of women seeking abortions does not save it from facial invalidity, since the proper focus of constitutional inquiry is the group for whom the law is a restriction, not the group for whom it is irrelevant.
posted by Brian James at 9:25 PM on April 5, 2006

Kwantsar: can you give a more spesific example? Immaterial to whome obviously not the person who bears the burden.
posted by delmoi at 9:56 PM on April 5, 2006

Logical Fallacies and the Art of Debate is a good place to start. I've always liked the Wikipedia article too.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:06 PM on April 5, 2006

I usually hear this used in defending Income Tax Schedules.

The basic argument is that it doesn't matter that a poor person pays $10,000 and a rich person pays $100,000 (or even that a poor person pays 10% while a wealthy person pays 35%) -- the fact that the government has decided to tax us period makes us all equally screwed.

My guess is that Kwantsar had a different example in mind, but that's the one that leapt to my bourgeois mind.

Unfortunately I don't know of a name for this particular fallacy.
posted by tkolar at 10:11 PM on April 5, 2006

Response by poster: Well, okay, delmoi. I'm not going to give away the true context, since I'd prefer to be careful, but I'll draw an analogy.

Say the authorities decide to levy a tax, and they go from door to door. They tell people to choose a number between one and ten, but they only levy a tax on people who choose eight.

The citizens complain, but the authorities respond that everyone was subject to the same rules, thus, the process was fair.

I'm beginning to realize that this is way too obscure to be a "fallacy," per se, but perhaps it belongs to some subset or something...
posted by Kwantsar at 10:43 PM on April 5, 2006

I think the reason no one has a name for the logical fallacy here is because it is not a logical fallacy at all. This isn't about fallacious argument, it is about values. Kant's categorical imperative and Rawls's theory of justice might be good places to start looking for an answer.
posted by nyterrant at 10:48 PM on April 5, 2006

Hmm..missed that on preview. Anyway, I still think it's more a values thing, i.e., "What you are doing is arbitary and wrong" as opposed to "What you are doing is logically unsound."
posted by nyterrant at 10:50 PM on April 5, 2006

It's a bit like the division fallacy...where a characteristic of the group is falsely said to be a characteristic of each component of the group. So, all members of the group share the same injustice, without accounting for the differences. The reason I'm not sure this is the right answer is because this fallacy, rather than rejecting the disparity of injustice, merely ignores it.
posted by apple scruff at 11:00 PM on April 5, 2006

That was in response to your original premise...your example isn't really one that can be served by analytical deductive reasoning. Unfair != unsound.
posted by apple scruff at 11:08 PM on April 5, 2006

I think the term you're looking for is "disparate impact".
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:12 PM on April 5, 2006

I believe the contemporary nomenclature to note on this is "Ex Parte Quirin"
posted by scarabic at 11:27 PM on April 5, 2006

Not a name, but a relevant popular quote:

"The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
-- Anatole France
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:13 AM on April 6, 2006

Kwantsar, I think you're having trouble getting responses because you have a specific concept in mind, but you're struggling (or reluctant) to pin it down so that we get it. In any case, a metaphor you might invoke is bottom trawling, a controversial fishing method described in this op-ed piece:

In bottom trawling, fishing boats drag heavy nets up to a quarter-mile wide along the ocean floor, bulldozing deep-sea coral and sponge forests and other ecosystems where major commercial species live and breed.... Using bottom trawling to catch these fish is the equivalent of clearcutting forests to hunt deer, according to a recent report by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

So, in your example, the tax authorities are casting as wide a net as possible.
posted by rob511 at 3:24 PM on April 6, 2006