The Origin of the Justification of the Two-Wrongs Argument: A Conjecture

Abstract

Different analyses of two-wrongs reasoning are presented and provide relief for the Groarke, Tindale, and Fisher analysis which is suggestive of the origin of this type of reasoning in Bentham and Mill. Aquinas's doctrine of double effect is entertained as a possible counterexample (which it is not). Two-wrongs reasoning can be either acceptable (reasonable) or unacceptable, and there are conditions that can be laid down for both situations in discourse. A negative version of the utilitarian principle assists us in understanding two-wrongs reasoning in moral contexts.Resume: On pn5sente differentes analyses du raisonnement de «deux erreurs}) qui apportent un appui a I'analyse Groarke, Keywords: Two-wrongs argument, two-wrongs fallacy, justification of a wrong, principle of utility, doctrine of double effect.The two-wrongs argument has grown out of the discussion of the two-wrongs fallacy, a movement from excuse or mitigation to justification. This type of fallacy or argument has a fairly recent history in the informal logic literature. The first contributor is Howard Kahane, who in 1969, introduced two-wrongs make a right as the tu quoque fallacy-if they can do it, so can we (Kahane, 252). He notes that the two-wrongs is not always fallacious. It is not, he claims, for example, when we "fight fire with fire" or killing enemy soldiers in a justified war. This last example he expands upon: "Thus, in wartime (declared or otherwise), charges that our side commits atrocities are often answered by the countercharge that the enemy engages in similar or even worse atrocities, as though this somehow absolves us from moral responsibility for our acts" (253). Professor Kahane also ©

Doping and Moral Disapprovals

“…Sympathetic sadness towards the wrongdoer in decision-makers' speech is typically a combination of two wrongs: there is an original wrong committed by the wrongdoer and additional wrong targeted towards the original wrongdoer. This scheme occurs when a decision-maker is sad for the excessively harsh treatment of famous Finnish cross-country skier Mika Myllylä who was caught In a sense, the sympathetic sadness towards the wrongdoer is founded on an assumption that this is a case where two wrongs do not make one right (see Wertz 2000;Groarke 1982).…”