The Perfect Fallacy
“No X is perfectly free from Y; therefore, there is nothing wrong with injecting X full of Y.”
e.g. “Entertainment is never fully free from politics; therefore, it is good to make entertainment totally ideological.”
“No X is perfectly free from Y; therefore, there is nothing wrong with injecting X full of Y.”
e.g. “Entertainment is never fully free from politics; therefore, it is good to make entertainment totally ideological.”
Everyone can see the error in
“No kitchen is ever perfectly free of germs; therefore, there is no need to have a clean kitchen, and in fact, you should make your kitchen is disease-ridden as possible!”
“No kitchen is ever perfectly free of germs; therefore, there is no need to have a clean kitchen, and in fact, you should make your kitchen is disease-ridden as possible!”
Things like “apolitical” and “objective” and “unbiased” and “impartial” are IDEALS which serve to REGULATE our conduct.
While it is true we are NOT PERFECT, it is nevertheless GOOD and RIGHT to approximate to ideals as best we can.
While it is true we are NOT PERFECT, it is nevertheless GOOD and RIGHT to approximate to ideals as best we can.
Science, for example, only fails to be “objective” due to human failings. But that is nothing intrinsic to scientific knowing, which is, in principle, objective knowing — something if often succeeds at.
It is hard to see what bias is in “Water is H₂O."
It is hard to see what bias is in “Water is H₂O."
And it is OBVIOUSLY BAD to make scientific knowing subordinate to politics — Lysenkoism is the model here.
Trofim Lysenko’s “Marxist” theories in biology led to mass starvation in the Soviet Union, because they failed to model reality.
Trofim Lysenko’s “Marxist” theories in biology led to mass starvation in the Soviet Union, because they failed to model reality.
Anyone who wants to inject politics into science under cover of “science has always been political” is committing the Perfect Fallacy.
“Science has always been political” only means “human scientists have never been perfectly apolitical, although that is the ideal.”
“Science has always been political” only means “human scientists have never been perfectly apolitical, although that is the ideal.”
And you CAN’T GET TO “we should subordinate science to politics” FROM “scientists have never been perfectly apolitical.”
Apply it to comic books:
1 “Comic books have never been perfectly apolitical”
2 “Therefore, comic books should be reduced to vehicles of propaganda for political ideology.”
NON SEQUITUR
1 “Comic books have never been perfectly apolitical”
2 “Therefore, comic books should be reduced to vehicles of propaganda for political ideology.”
NON SEQUITUR
Captain America punching Hitler is arguably not so much a POLITICAL statement as it is a MORAL statement.
Hitler surely counts, after all, as “a bad guy.”
Hitler surely counts, after all, as “a bad guy.”
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