It’s a presidential election year, which means that the season of either/or will soon reach fever pitch.
The candidates running for high office and their supporters will cite diverse reasons—ending war, lowering taxes, improving the schools—as to why they deserve to be president, governor, or a member of Congress. Common to all will be an endlessly repeated refrain: “Vote for Candidate X or Y will die.” For Y, insert democracy, equality, or a dozen other code words.
Of course, this either/or mentality isn’t restricted to politicians. I know a young man who recently graduated from high school and has now worked for a year while he decides whether to attend college. He’s a bright fellow and a hard worker who will likely succeed at whatever he attempts, and his employer has already offered him the possibility of promotion and a higher salary. So does he go to college, likely piling up debt along the way, or does he take a job offering immediate benefits?
Both of the either/or propositions mentioned above create false dichotomies. Sometimes called the “black-and-white fallacy,” sometimes the “fallacy of bifurcation or false alternatives,” the either/or fallacy all too often brushes aside possibilities. The either/or rhetoric of some politicians, for instance, ignores all sorts of alternative prospects, unforeseen events such as a war, or resistance by the public to certain policies. As for my young friend, he could easily blend his ambitions, attending community college for a couple of years while continuing to work or entering college with the intent of finding a job while there.
When we realize that we have become entangled in the false web of a binary fallacy, two other word equations, “both/and” and “neither/nor” may provide ways of escape. Rather than choosing either/or between two medical treatments, a man afflicted with cardiovascular issues might seek help from both his physician and a homeopathic online doctor. The woman who is told by her friend, “I don’t care how much you love him, you either need to leave your husband or be miserable for the rest of your life” may apply “neither/nor” to that advice, and then search for alternatives to save her marriage.
How we construct, use, and interpret either/or propositions is important, even vital to our well-being. Sometimes, the premise may actually be valid, and a problem may have only one of two solutions. Much of the time, however, we tumble into the rabbit hole of a false dichotomy, our creativity shackled, our possibilities limited to two outcomes.
For more practice, I’ll leave you with this follow-up exercise: “Either the bacon statement is valid, or the writer brought it into play as a means of conclusion for his article.”
Have at it.
