When is a tu quoque not a tu quoque?

[mr friendly guy]

I see accusations of tu quoque being used, but it seems to me the accusation is used incorrectly several times. Maybe I just misunderstood it, but I will explain.

So for those who not know what an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy is, wikii has an explanation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Essentially its "you do it too" type argument. For example an obvious one. Daddy told me to stop smoking because its bad for you (quotes numerous scientific studies at that time), but he still smokes. (Therefore) smoking is ok. Its a fallacy because whether smoking is "bad for you" ie harmful to your health is irrelevant to whether your dad smokes or not. It tries to dismiss an argument based on the characteristic of the author (ie hypocrisy) and not the argument itself.

Here is an example which I question is a tu quoque. Country X accuses country Y of human right violations. But country X does it as well (albeit a different human right violation), so the criticism of country Y is invalid. Yes, the criticisms of either country are separate, however I could concoct a realistic situation where what country X believes what it does is not a human right violation. For example Japan, the United States, China has the death penalty, while Europe does not, and organisations like Amnesty International considers capital punishment a human right violation.

So if country X executes people, and criticises country Y for a different human right violation, its not even hypocritical, because their actions are still consistent within their avowed stance.

Now that above example is not to defend any of the policies mentioned, its merely to highlight what I consider an incorrect classification of the tu quoque fallacy. That might count as a general ad hominem, but not a tu quoque because there is no hypocrisy or inconsistency involved.

Now you might say, ok so what? They called the wrong fallacy. Where are you going with this? So I will now outline another situation where I think trying to dismiss an opponent's argument on the grounds is a tu quoque is wrong. First this situation is a tu quoque.

Person 1 : regardless of the legality its ok for country x to invade country Y because of reasons a,b ,c.
Person 2 : so given reasons a,b, c also apply to your country is it ok to invade yours.

Person 1 (who does not want his country to be invaded) : No, its different. Because, because....

Person 2 : hypocrite.

Person 1 : Thats a tu quoque fallacy.

In this situation, person 1 is correct. If person 2 just shouted hypocrisy ALONE then that would be a tu quoque, trying to dismiss the argument because of a characteristic of the author.

However if the conversation went a little bit different, I would consider it not a tu quoque. For example.

Person 1 : regardless of the legality its ok for country x to invade country Y because of reasons a,b ,c.
Person 2 : so given reasons a,b, c also apply to your country is it ok to invade yours.

Person 1 (who does not want his country to be invaded) : No, its different. Because, because....


Person 2 : So you're a hypocrite huh? Well you can't apply a different standard because that just becomes a case of special pleading. What is good for the goose is good for the gander as the saying goes. You have to concede either one of your two positions, that is its ok for your country likewise to be invaded, or withdraw your original claim that it was ok for country x to invade country y.

Person 1 : Tu quoque, tu quoque.

Obviously person 2 is hoping that person 1 would concede the first point, that it was ok for country x to invade country y. Even if person 1 "calls the bluff" and says its ok for his country to be invaded, its not necessarily the end of the argument. There are still other avenues for person 2 to attack that position. However back to the point at hand, I don't consider this a tu quoque because person 2 is asking the opponent to merely apply the same standard (ie cease the use of special pleading) rather than trying to dismiss it because of hypocrisy or inconsistency.

So have I misinterpreted the tu quoque? Are the times people calling out another person for using a tu quoque, really them mistaking the other poster for criticising their own use of special pleading.

[Elfdart]

The only thing Person 1 can do is whine and name-drop a "fallacy" because he/she is making a very dishonest argument. They are claiming that an invasion is morally justified because (let's fill in a few blanks, shall we?) Lemurian death squads are raping and killing gnomes, therefore Hyboria must invade. Person 2 smells a rat and decides to probe Person 1's rationale. Does Person 1 favor attacks on countries aside from Lemuria who also rape and murder gnomes -including friendly states like Thule?

If P1 answers yes, then the obvious question is "Why aren't you advocating wars against Thule and Hyboria, too?"

If P1 answer no, then the obvious question is "Why not? Are the gnomes in Thule and Hyboria less worthy of being raped and killed than those in Lemuria?" *

If P1 hems, haws or tries to change the subject, then he or she is bullshitting -but you knew that anyway.

In any event, Person 1 really doesn't care about the lost lives and violated bodies of Lemurian gnomes, except as agitprop to gin up a war they crave for other reasons. Reasons that are so suspect that they dare not mention them. So when they say "Hyboria must attack Lemuria to save the helpless gnomes being raped and killed!" they are bullshitting. By pointing this out, Person 2 is NOT making a tu quoque argument, he is pointing out that the very premise of #1's position is bullshit.

* Person 1 could make the argument that Hyboria's armed forces are too weak to win a war against Thule because they have way too many flying monkeys at their disposal, but Lemuria doesn't have flying monkeys with which to counterattack Hyboria, so a war against the latter is more feasible. At this point #1 is changing his/her story: Before, it was a moral imperative and now it's a kind of appeal to force ("We should do it because we can do it").

[Vaporous]

Is that necessarily changing the story? At that point the argument wouldn't be "We should because we can", it would be "We should because it's a moral imperative and we know we can so it would be worse if we didn't."

[Simon_Jester]

Adding "except when it's physically impossible" to "we should protect gnomes" isn't really changing the story. Unless you get so pedantic that even I have to walk away in befuddlement.

I see this a lot in manager-speak. Someone adds a few extra clauses full of common sense to a sentence, and pretends that this is a revolutionary new change.

So before, we were just "selecting a topic" for the lesson plan. Now we're "selecting a topic based on what students need to know!" Gee whiz, I'm sure glad of that; back when I was in school teachers only taught us things we didn't need to know!

I don't think it counts as changing your argument to acknowledge some obvious common-sense limit to what you originally phrased (without thinking very hard about it) as an absolute statement. That sounds more like the other party trying to gin up a straw version of the argument ("When he said fire is bad, he MUST have meant cookfires are bad too!") and score the illusion of an easy rhetorical victory.