No True Scotsman

noh troo skots-muhn

Another name for no true Scotsman is appeal to purity

The term originated in 1971 from Antony Flew's book An Introduction to Western Philosophy where in it he gives an example of a Scotsman doing something and another Scotsman says that no Scotsman would ever do that and the day after that he reads another example of a Scotsman doing the same thing and refutes it by saying "no true Scotsman would do such a thing" refusing to admit that some Scotsman do things he would never expect.

 The no true Scotsman fallacy is when one attempts to protect a universal claim from counterexamples by changing the definition to exclude the counterexample. For example those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group.

One might try to use this fallacy to help them win their argument because when their universal claim is proven wrong, they make their claim more specific.

This is faulty because the person who states the claim is totally denying the fact that they are wrong about others apart of the group and that not everyone that's apart of that group will only do certain actions.

1: Hey Jim!

2: Hey Ryan, what's up?