Special Pleading

An argument which, though strictly true, presents its case slanted by leaving out relevant information or by giving undue emphasis to one part of the story. For some (estate agents, barristers), slanted arguments go with the job; and all arguments with persuasive content have special pleading within them somewhere, so we tend to be alert to the risk and to make allowances. In other cases, unless there is someone around to put the other side, the potential to mislead is powerful.^S91

Most arguments can be understood as statements arising from a particular context. Taking the fifth form on a hill walk would be a bad thing from the point of view of health and safety, insurance, cost, wear-and-tear on the mountain paths, and time away from studying; it would be a good thing from the point of view of cardiovascular fitness, fun, friendships, knowledge of geography, learning how to cook bacon and eggs in the rain, getting away from television, and having something to talk about. Emphasis on any of those arguments would be a case of special pleading.

So, what would we do without it? Would every enthusiasm get bogged down in impartial balance and indecisiveness? Perhaps a more tolerant name for this fallacy is “advocacy”. Lean Logic is an advocate for lean thinking, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas), ritual, carnival, anarchism and many other things, claiming that these are support systems for freedom of thought. But they are all expressions of particular contexts, and introduce bias. That does not make them wrong, but it makes them forms of special pleading.

Advocacy provides a service: it makes a case: it is the energy- and data-source for argument, an expression of the ethic of incrementalism, guided in conversation and in practice by serial correction of error. Without advocacy, no errors would be corrected; no case would be made. There would be no impertinence. It would be night. There would be nothing to do, except . . .

. . . the sable Throne behold
Of Night primaeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy’s gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rain-bows die away.

Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, 1742.^S92