Fallacy: Appeal to Common Practice
The Appeal to Common Practice is a fallacy with the following structure:
The basic idea behind the fallacy is that the fact that most people
do X is used as "evidence" to support the action or practice.
It is a fallacy because the mere fact that most people do something does
not make it correct, moral, justified, or reasonable.
An appeal to fair play, which might seem to be an appeal to common
practice, need not be a fallacy. For example, a woman working in an
office might say "the men who do the same job as me get paid more
than I do, so it would be right for me to get paid the same as
them." This would not be a fallacy as long as there was no relevant
difference between her and the men (in terms of ability, experience,
hours worked, etc.). More formally:
This argument rests heavily on the principle of relevant difference.
On this principle two people, A and B, can only be treated differently
if and only if there is a relevant difference between them. For example,
it would be fine for me to give a better grade to A than B if A did
better work than B. However, it would be wrong of me to give A a better
grade than B simply because A has red hair and B has blonde hair.
There might be some cases in which the fact that most people accept X
as moral entails that X is moral. For example, one view of morality is
that morality is relative to the practices of a culture, time, person,
etc. If what is moral is determined by what is commonly practiced, then
this argument:
would not be a fallacy. This would however entail some odd results.
For example, imagine that thereare only 100 people on earth. 60 of them
do not steal or cheat and 40 do. At this time, stealing and cheating
would be wrong. The next day, a natural disaster kills 30 of the 60
people who do not cheat or steal. Now it is morally correct to cheat and
steal. Thus, it would be possible to change the moral order of the world
to one's view simply by eliminating those who disagree.
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Description of Appeal to Common Practice
Examples of Appeal to Common Practice