The "name one" fallacy.

When I was in the navy, this guy walked up to me and said, “I can prove that anything you do is selfish.” My curiosity piqued, I said, “Okay, go ahead.” He said, “Try to think of something that’s not selfish, and I’ll show you that it’s selfish.” I began talking about acts of self-sacrifice and things like that, and with each example I gave him, he was able to construe it in such a way that it appeared to be a selfish act. I told him about this time I let some girl take advantage of me. I’d do anything for her, and she treated me badly. He told me I was a masochist, and I liked being treated badly, so I was really acting selfishly in fulfilling my masochistic desires. I lost the debate, because I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t turn out to be selfish by his construal.

If I could go back in time, I would’ve handled the situation a lot differently. Hopefully, it would’ve gone something like this:

Egoist: I can prove that everything you do is selfish.

Sam: Okay, go ahead.

Egoist: Try to think of something that’s not selfish.

Sam: I can’t think of anything.

Egoist: See? That proves everything you do is selfish.

Sam: No, that just proves that I can’t think of anything. How does it follow that just because I can’t think of an example of an unselfish act that there therefore are no unselfish acts?

It doesn’t follow. The fact that I can’t think of an unselfish act only says something about my state of knowledge. It doesn’t say anything at all about the existence of unselfish acts. At best, all he proved was that I was ignorant.

This is just one example of a particular kind of argument people use. I call it the “Name one” argument. It’s where you claim that a certain kind of thing exists, and the other person says, “Name one.” If you can’t name one, then they think they’ve won the debate.

A few examples off the top of my head include unselfish acts, objective moral values, and a good reason for God to create a world with evil (see earlier blog). That’s not to say that you couldn’t think of examples of each, because I think you can. My point is that even if you couldn’t, it wouldn’t follow that no such things existed.

The “name one” argument is a fallacy, because it doesn’t follow that just because I can’t name one that there therefore isn’t one. This fallacy falls under a broader fallacy known as the red herring fallacy. A red herring fallacy is basically where you change the subject in such a subtle way that it isn’t obvious you changed the subject. It seems to work on a lot of people, because the new subject is harder to deal with than the first, and if the victim of the red herring can’t solve the second subject, it makes it look like he can’t solve the first.

The change in subject with the “name one” fallacy is from “The existence of a particular kind of thing,” to “Your knowledge of examples of a particular kind of thing.” It’s possible to know that there are members of a particular kind of thing without necessarily being able to name of them. For example, I know there are people who live in Paraguay, but I can’t name a single one of them. Just because I can’t name any people in Paraguay doesn’t mean there are no people in Paraguay, or even that I’m not justified in believing there are.

To continue, see More on the "name one" fallacy.

EDIT - 1/3/2024: It looks like what I was calling a "name one" fallacy is really the fallacy of argument from ignorance. My ignorance about specific examples was being used as evidence that there are no such examples, which doesn't follow.