All or Nothing Fallacy

68 All or Nothing

David Kyle Johnson

Laws cannot stop the madness.

Bill O’Reilly, The O’Reilly Factor (Fox News, October 5, 2015)

The all or nothing fallacy (AON) is a variety of the false dilemma fallacy that restricts a choice to total acceptance or total rejection when partial options are available. AON presents a false dilemma (see Chapter 81) by suggesting that there are only two options – either all or nothing – when in fact there are many more options in the middle ground between those two extremes. For example, someone might insist that you must either eat the whole pie or eat none, overlooking the possibility of eating a piece. That is a false dilemma if a partial serving is available; a host who sets an actual all-or-nothing rule is imposing a restriction rather than making this reasoning error.

It probably goes without saying that if “all” and “nothing” really are the only two options, then the fallacy is not committed. If you are playing roulette and bet on black, either it will land on black or it won’t, so you’ll either double your money or you will lose it. That is a good bit of reasoning. It really is all or nothing. But reality usually is not so black and red. Of course, in standard logic, every proposition is either true or false; but for any given circumstance, there is usually a number of different propositions that could be true or false. So usually there are more than just two options.

Propaganda can exploit this habit of thinking. In Mein Kampf, Hitler suggests taking advantage of people’s inclination to see things in black and white terms – making them think it’s either all or nothing (Surve 2008). It’s either us or them; you’re either with us or against us. Such framing can make alternatives seem unavailable or disloyal.

Sometimes AON involves actual wholes and parts. Biblical literalists, for example, will insist that you have to believe that every word of the Bible is literally true or believe none of it – that doubting just one part is equivalent to doubting it all. But, of course, even if one believes the Bible is God inspired, it’s possible to take parts of it literally (e.g., the gospels) and other parts of it metaphorically (e.g., the Genesis creation story). Inspiration aside, it’s also possible to embrace parts of it as true (like Jesus’s moral teachings), and reject other parts of it as fiction (like Jesus’s miracles). Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson actually published a version of the gospels that left out their miraculous supernatural elements; he called it The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Given that this kind of all or nothing biblical literalism is what motivates creationism, and that the pressure to teach creationism (and avoid teaching evolution) in public classrooms has greatly hindered scientific education in America, we can once again see the importance of avoiding the all or nothing fallacy.

Not surprisingly, AON also happens in the political arena anytime a politician insists that being against one of her policies is equivalent to being against all of them. Often people adopt a kind of all or nothing attitude when it comes to supporting a candidate or political party.

But AON also appears in politics when people are proposing or drafting laws and policy. Take, for example, gun regulations. When people call for gun regulations after a mass shooting, opponents of such regulations often say that gun regulations are useless (and should be avoided) because they cannot stop all gun‐related crime. No matter how strict gun laws are, criminals will still be able to get guns and commit crimes. After all, criminals (by definition) don’t obey the law – so how could a gun law prevent a criminal from committing a crime with a gun? Gun laws will only stop “good guys” from getting guns, not bad guys.

But this argument employs the all or nothing fallacy in many ways. For one, when it comes to laws and regulations, it’s seldom an all or nothing affair. Lawmakers don’t expect laws to eliminate all the behavior they are trying to restrict, but that doesn’t mean laws shouldn’t exist. Speeding laws aren’t going to keep everyone from speeding, but that doesn’t mean there should be no speed limit. Laws are often aimed at lowering the frequency of certain kinds of behavior. So the fact that a gun regulation would not eliminate all gun crime does not by itself settle whether it should be passed – Dowden (2015) calls this the “perfectionist fallacy.”

Of course, the argument also suggests that gun laws would be completely ineffectual – criminals would still find ways to buy guns. After all, criminals don’t obey laws. But, once again, this invokes the all or nothing fallacy. Sure, some criminals would find a way around the new regulation – but not all of them. The harder it is for criminals to acquire guns, the fewer criminals will have them. The argument seems to be suggesting that you can either stop all criminals from acquiring guns or none of them, when obviously there is a middle ground. Notice that it’s also true that no amount of illicit drug regulation will keep illicit drugs out of the hands of all users, but that doesn’t entail that drugs should be legal or unregulated.

The argument also invokes the all or nothing fallacy when it talks about the difference between criminals and “good guys” – as if a criminal is someone who disobeys all laws and a good guy is someone who disobeys none. But, of course, reality is far more nuanced; even the best of us have disobeyed some laws, and even the worst of us have obeyed others. What’s more, many of even the worst of us would not even know where to go to find an assault rifle on the black market – much less be willing to take the risk of buying illegal assault rifles on it. So, gun regulations could still prevent many criminals from buying guns despite the fact that it wouldn’t stop them all.

Sadly, however, many perpetrators of mass shootings don’t buy the guns they use; they acquire them from others who bought them legally. They don’t even steal them, per se; they “borrow” them (with or without permission) from a person they know (and often that person has been stockpiling). But that doesn’t mean that regulating gun purchases couldn’t lower the number of mass shootings. They could still lower the number of guns in the country, thus making it harder for potential mass shooters to “borrow” guns. Other possibilities include restricting certain kinds of extra‐lethal ammunition, extended ammunition clips, certain kinds of extra‐lethal weapons, or even the number of guns someone can own. We might even pass laws that would make a gun owner legally responsible if she (intentionally or accidentally) allowed her gun to be used in a crime.

Of course, the reduction of gun crimes is not the only thing to consider in such matters, and such regulations wouldn’t eliminate gun violence altogether. Laws cannot stop all the madness. But thinking that we shouldn’t pass a law unless it will be 100% effective commits the all or nothing fallacy. And since gun violence and gun regulation are two of the most pressing issues of our time, we have one last example of why we should take careful pains to avoid AON.