No discussion of the False Dilemma Fallacy can ignore this famous example:
- 9. America, love it or leave it.
Only two options are presented: leaving the country, or loving it - presumably in the way that the arguer loves it and wants you to love it. Changing the country is not included as a possibility, even though it obviously should be. As you might imagine, this sort of fallacy is very common with political arguments:
- 10. We must deal with crime on the streets before improving the schools.
11. Unless we increase defense spending, we will be vulnerable to attack.
12. If we don't drill for more oil, we will all be in an energy crisis.
There is no indication that alternative possibilities are even being considered, much less that they might be better than what has been offered. Here is an example from the Letters to the Editor section of a newspaper:
- 13. I don't believe any sympathy should be offered to Andrea Yates. If she were really that seriously ill, her husband should have had her committed. If she wasn't ill enough to be committed, then she was obviously sane enough to have made the decision to distance herself from her children and seek mental help with determination. (Nancy L.)
Clearly there are more possibilities than what are offered above. Perhaps no one noticed how bad she was. Perhaps she suddenly got much worse. Perhaps a person sane enough not to be committed is not also sane enough to find help on her own. Perhaps she had too great a sense of duty towards her family to consider distancing herself from her children, and that was part of what led to her breakdown.
The False Dilemma Fallacy is unusual, however, in that it is rarely sufficient to merely point it out. With the other Fallacies of Presumption, demonstrating that there are hidden and unjustified premises should be enough to get the person to revise what they have said.
Here, however, you need to be willing and able to offer alternative choices which have not been included. Although the arguer should be able to explain why the offered choices exhaust all possibilites, you will probably have to make a case yourself - in doing so, you will be demonstrating that the terms involved are contraries rather than contradictories.
