Lesson · 4 min Gentle

The False Dilemma

In one line Two choices are often a menu with options left off; name a third.

A false dilemma pretends the menu has two items when the kitchen has more. “Either you agree, or you hate the group.” The missing options are the trick.

Sometimes the world really is a pair. A light is on or it is not. The fallacy is the pair offered in place of a wider set, especially when one side has been made shameful so the other looks required.

The repair is to name a third path in a single sentence. If you can do it without inventing a fantasy, the dilemma was doing rhetoric, not logic.

With us or against us

At a neighborhood meeting, the chair says, “Either we fund the whole proposal tonight, or we do not care about the park.” Several people want a smaller first phase. That option is not on the chair’s menu.

Caring about the park and refusing the full bill can both be true. The chair’s “either” hid the phase.

Try this today When you hear “either A or B,” say one option that neither side offered.