False dilemma

A false dilemma offers two options and hides the rest. Evening hours or no culture at all. A perfect timetable or an incompetent manager. The two ends can both be unattractive, which is why the squeeze works. The missing step is the range in between, or a third option nobody named. You do not have to pretend every pair of choices is a trick. Some choices really are narrow. The test is whether the speaker has shown that these are the only options, not whether you dislike one of them.

Fallacy

False dilemma

A false dilemma pretends there are only two options when others are available, or treats the options as if you must take one extreme. Sometimes the pair is real. The fallacy is forcing a pair that has not been shown to be complete.

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Mini check

"Either we keep the museum open every evening, or the town will have no culture at all." What goes wrong here?

Evening hours and no culture at all are offered as the only options.An expert who is never named is treated as settling the whole question.Popular liking is treated as proof that the museum plan must be good.A later change is treated as caused by whatever happened just before it.

"Either the timetable is perfect or the manager is incompetent. The timetable has one error. So the manager is incompetent." Which description is fairest?

One error does not span the gap from perfect to incompetent.The either-or is fair, and really does exhaust the options.The argument attacks a character it never actually names.A large sample of timetables is doing strong inductive work.

Try it today

When a headline says there are only two choices, write one option it left out.

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