Teen Fallacy #1 — Two Wrongs Make a Right–Tu Quoque

Two Wrongs

The two wrongs fallacy is a teenage classic. It is committed when someone tries to justify a wrong action by pointing to another wrong action.  Ferris Bueller commits several of these fallacies.  Here are some examples.

This is from the opening scene:

“The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It’s a good non-specific symptom. I’m a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you a good phoney fever is a deadlock, but you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor’s office–that’s worse than school. You fake a stomach cramp, and when you’re bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It’s a little childish and stupid, but then so is high school.”

The Two Wrongs line is, “It’s a little childish and stupid, but then so is high school.”  Ferris justifies his childish behavior by saying that the alternative is high school and high school is as childish as faking sick or worse.

Later in the movie, when Ferris wants to take Cameron’s father’s car, the following dialogue ensues:

Cameron: The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California.  Less than a hundred were made.  My father spent three years restoring this car.  It is his love, it is his passion…

Ferris:  It is his fault he didn’t lock the garage.

Then later in the scene,

Cameron:  Ferris, my father loves this car more than life itself.

Ferris:  A man with priorities so far out of whack does not deserve such a fine automobile.

Ferris commits the Two Wrongs fallacy twice in the above scene.  In both cases, he justifies wrong behavior, by pointing to another bad behavior, that of Cameron’s dad.

Each of my teens has used this fallacy with me and use it more often around their friends.  When there is bad behavior that needs to be justified, it is convenient to look for an excuse for the bad behavior.  If the excuse is that there is an action that could have been taken but was not (and so we are told we should all be grateful that the worse action was not taken), then the two wrongs fallacy has been committed.

Tu Quoque

Jenny:  You really shouldn’t use your friends the way you have been using Mark.  You only call him when you need a ride somewhere, but you never invite him to parties and you avoid sitting by him at lunch.

Lauren:  Oh, right, Jenny.  You’re one to talk.  What about the way you use Chris whenever you need help on your math homework.

Lauren’s implied statement, that Jenny is a hypocrite may be true, however, Jenny’s hypocrisy has nothing to do with the question of whether or not Lauren is using Mark.  In her response, Lauren commits the Tu Quoque Fallacy.

One idiomatic way to use this fallacy is to say, “the pot calling the kettle black.”  It appears that the idiom was first used by Cervantes in Don Quixote.   It refers to cooking done over an open fire in which both pot and kettle would be equally blackened by smoke.  For the pot to call the kettle black (as an insult) would be hypocritical of the pot.

The above video is a classic Tu Quoque Fallacy.  Karl Rove makes the claim that Barak Obama is arrogant.  The response by the DNC is irrelevant to whether or not Rove’s contention is true or false.