That’s old fashioned rationalization.
Doesn’t necessarily have to be a logical fallacy
Can you elaborate?
I can provide an example, but you might hate me for it. I swear this is just to explain what I mean by this fallacy because I can’t think of another example right now.
Justifying killing/using an animal for its skin/hide (e.g. leather or fur), because you’re already killing the animal for its flesh, when in actual fact the killing of the animal doesn’t need to take place at all (hypothetically).
Or justifying the killing of calves for veal as a necessary component of dairy production, when in fact dairy production isn’t necessary, either.
I hope that makes sense
One I can think of is false dilemma/false dichotomy (a false premise that erroneously limits what options are available, and forces us to choose between 2 options (either cause unnecessary harm and waste the full usefulness of the harm, or cause unnecessary harm and maximise its usefulness) when there is a third option to not cause the unnecessary harm in the first place.
However that’s more general and I was looking for something more specific that refers to assuming something is necessary because it’s an unavoidable component of another thing which itself is unnecessary.
Neither of those are good examples. The killing of calves is not necessary for dairy production, they could always be sold to be raised to adulthood which is what happens to most of them since that’s more profitable.
And the using of the animal skin/hide IF you’re already killing it for food is a perfectly valid argument for using the skin/hide, the alternative being killing the animal and disposing of the skin/hide. You might then shift your argument to attack the need to eat the animal which is another (and a lot more complex) discussion, but the initial of why using the skin/hide is solved to both parties satisfaction so you reached a common ground, i.e. you agree that IF one were to kill the animal for food, the use of his skin/hide would be acceptable, now the argument needs to shift to whether it is acceptable to kill the animal for food.
If then the person argues he’s killing for food because he’s already using the skin/hide then he’s using a circular argument. If he can provide an argument you consider acceptable for eating the animal you would also agree that it is acceptable to wear him.
It’s an example which demonstrates the concept since in both cases, the overall process/system is unnecessary. Neither dairy farming nor killing animals for meat is necessary. It’s not shifting the argument to say that the killing isn’t necessary in the first place, that simply is the main point that the fallacy ignores.
With regard to dairy farming, it’s not more profitable to raise, house a male calf who won’t produce milk in their life, and feed them until adulthood (still only a few years old when they can live until 20-25) and kill them for beef. In most cases male calves get killed for veal, though they can simply be killed immediately and discarded, while some are raised until 1.5-2 years and killed for beef. Most female calves usually become dairy cows and then ultimately beef cows as well at 4-6 years old.
On a mass scale of dairy production, the killing of cattle for veal and beef is absolutely necessary. And yet, these components are part of an overall unnecessary system that is dairy production. Of course it’s cruel in a variety of other ways too, but the primary use of the fallacy is assuming that we need to eat/utilise veal and beef due to them being necessary for dairy production, when dairy itself is unnecessary.
I love how everyone jumped on the example I used to defend these cruel practices instead of understanding how they were an example of the fallacy I was describing. And are trying to claim they’re not an example of the fallacy when they clearly are. Shows the world we live in…
I’m going to come up with a neutral one here for you. Mostly so you can get better replies… I would need to do some research to find a name for it.
Jess wants to draw a picture of a bird, using only red and black. She gets her art supplies out and finds she has no green markers. She cannot draw a picture of a green field without a green marker. Jess says she can’t draw her bird picture because she has no green marker.
Or…
When Alan plays tennis, his knee hurts. Alan has a strange condition that his knee only hurts after he plays tennis. When his knee hurts, he has to put ice on it. He stops playing tennis for good. Alan needs to get a new refrigerator. One is affordable with no ice machine, but another is unaffordable and has an ice machine. Alan bemoans he can’t get the refrigerator he needs because he needs the ice machine for his knee.
One of these?
Thanks, that’s almost what I mean, but I might modify your examples slightly. They’re good examples to work from lol (I’m pretty bad at coming up with scenarios that fit what I’m talking about). Sorry if this sounds kind of crazy:
Jess wants to draw a picture of a bird. For this, since Jess is completely broke and homeless, she would need to rob an art store to get art supplies. (Let’s say for sake of example that there is genuinely no other way for her to obtain art supplies to draw the picture). Jess justifies this act of robbing the store in order to draw her bird picture because there’s no other way she can make the picture otherwise. She makes the claim that robbing the art store is necessary in absolute terms, while overlooking or ignoring the fact that drawing the picture of the bird isn’t necessary in the first place (even though she might desire to draw it, she doesn’t need to, and therefore doesn’t need to rob the art store, either).
Or…
When Alan plays tennis, his knee hurts. Alan has a strange condition that his knee only hurts after he plays tennis. When his knee hurts, he has to put ice on it, which requires an expensive refrigerator with an ice machine since that’s the only way he can possibly get a good supply of ice in his situation (hypothetically). Alan then decides to buy the expensive refrigerator with stolen money from his grandma, and claims that it’s an absolute requirement for him to, without considering the fact that he doesn’t actually need to play tennis, though he might want to.
In both cases, someone is claiming that something (an action, state, etc) is necessary overall, because it’s part of a larger goal/endeavour; without addressing the reality that it would only be necessary as a component of that larger goal that it would be in service of, if that larger goal was necessary, which in fact it isn’t (and therefore neither are any components that would be required to achieve it).
I hope this makes sense :)
I know it’s just an example but I wanted to point out that almost no calves end up as veal.
Actually almost all male calves do (in the dairy industry), because they can’t produce milk and it wouldn’t be profitable or financially feasible to keep them alive otherwise
“Male dairy calves are surplus to the requirement of dairy production, and thus, are often sold from the dairy farm in early life. In the United States, male calves are generally sold within days of birth (Shivley et al., 2019) for veal or dairy beef production (Perdue and Hamer, 2017). Raising young male dairy calves for meat, particularly veal, is a contentious issue that has received public scrutiny in the United States (e.g., California Prop 2, 2008) and globally (reviewed by Bolton and von Keyserlingk, 2021).”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fanim.2022.1000897/full
I think you mean false premise or argument from false premises. “A, therefore B”, even though A is false.
Post rationalization perhaps?
It could also be similar to the logic of phrenology, where they pointed at objective measurements of various features of people’s skulls to make wild conclusions about the superiority or inferiority of different races. It’s not that they were falsifying the measurements, they just skipped a step and treated the sensibilities of the most privileged and influential members of society as objective fact.
