If I'm driving in my car and a policeman pulls me over for speeding, whataboutism would be if I countered the charge with "that other guy was speeding too". The policeman might reply "but I caught you". I opposed the Iraq War with every fiber of my being. I also oppose the invasion of Ukraine. I think Bush and Cheney and others should have been brought up on war crimes. But as it turns out, of course I couldn't make that happen.
The evil of the Iraq War did bring a great evil upon the US. We didn't just miss out on lost opportunity costs, which were massive, but the hate and anger is palpable. A generation lost. There are broken veterans people like me tried to patch up. There's a political party openly calling itself christian nationalist. That party has also tossed aside a platform and replaced it with calls for loyal allegiance to one man. They are angry. They believe many things that aren't true. Insurrection. Uncivil society. We did it to ourselves.
It's always interesting to hear an argument that a classic logical fallacy is actually not a fallacy underneath the hood.
"Whataboutism" is a recent moniker attached to a very old form of ad hominem argument, viz., the tu quoque ("You're another" or "You're one, too") fallacy. Tu quoque ad hominems are best treated as attempts to refute an argument by pointing out that the arguer is a hypocrite. While I would agree with Ryder that hypocrisy is hardly a virtue, being a hypocrite does not somehow mysteriously affect the deductive validity or inductive strength of any argument.
If I argue, in between puffs on my cigar, that you shouldn't smoke tobacco because it contributes to heart disease, my argument stands or falls on its own merits. The fact that my own behavior is hypocritical or inconsistent with the conclusion of my argument has no effect whatsoever on the strength of my argument. That's why all versions of ad hominem fallacies are defective. That the person presenting the argument has personal defects simply does not somehow cause an otherwise strong argument to become weak. That's why whataboutism is always fallacious, irrespective of the subject matter. There is nothing deeper that can fix it.
Note that I could attempt to block a tu quoque attack on my argument that you shouldn't smoke tobacco by adding a premise that I can smoke cigars because God will protect my heart, but not yours, I now have turned my strong argument into an unsound one because of the new, specious premise.
If I'm driving in my car and a policeman pulls me over for speeding, whataboutism would be if I countered the charge with "that other guy was speeding too". The policeman might reply "but I caught you". I opposed the Iraq War with every fiber of my being. I also oppose the invasion of Ukraine. I think Bush and Cheney and others should have been brought up on war crimes. But as it turns out, of course I couldn't make that happen.
The evil of the Iraq War did bring a great evil upon the US. We didn't just miss out on lost opportunity costs, which were massive, but the hate and anger is palpable. A generation lost. There are broken veterans people like me tried to patch up. There's a political party openly calling itself christian nationalist. That party has also tossed aside a platform and replaced it with calls for loyal allegiance to one man. They are angry. They believe many things that aren't true. Insurrection. Uncivil society. We did it to ourselves.
It's always interesting to hear an argument that a classic logical fallacy is actually not a fallacy underneath the hood.
"Whataboutism" is a recent moniker attached to a very old form of ad hominem argument, viz., the tu quoque ("You're another" or "You're one, too") fallacy. Tu quoque ad hominems are best treated as attempts to refute an argument by pointing out that the arguer is a hypocrite. While I would agree with Ryder that hypocrisy is hardly a virtue, being a hypocrite does not somehow mysteriously affect the deductive validity or inductive strength of any argument.
If I argue, in between puffs on my cigar, that you shouldn't smoke tobacco because it contributes to heart disease, my argument stands or falls on its own merits. The fact that my own behavior is hypocritical or inconsistent with the conclusion of my argument has no effect whatsoever on the strength of my argument. That's why all versions of ad hominem fallacies are defective. That the person presenting the argument has personal defects simply does not somehow cause an otherwise strong argument to become weak. That's why whataboutism is always fallacious, irrespective of the subject matter. There is nothing deeper that can fix it.
Note that I could attempt to block a tu quoque attack on my argument that you shouldn't smoke tobacco by adding a premise that I can smoke cigars because God will protect my heart, but not yours, I now have turned my strong argument into an unsound one because of the new, specious premise.