No True Scotsman

In a recent online post by Ben Stevens entitled, Is Anders Breivik a European Fundamentalist? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-stevens/what-kind-of-fundamentali_b_910071.html), on the comment stream some in opposition to the claims of Stevens appealed to what is called the No True Scotsman fallacy – a logical fallacy coined by Anthony Flew in 1975. Flew tells of a story about a Scotsman who opens the morning paper to discover that a heinous act was committed in the Scottish town of Brighton. The man mutters to himself that “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” The following morning the man opens the paper and observes that a horrific crime is committed in the Scottish town of Aberdeen that makes the previous report pale in significance. The man then adds a qualification to his prior conclusion, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.” Flew was a prominent atheist (until the last few years of his life when he accepted a form of deism) and sought to counter the claims of religious belief by pointing to what he saw as an inconsistency of those who sought to deny the validity of a particular individual’s profession of faith with that of his/her actions by the simple retort that the individual in question was not a "true" believer. The supposed faulty argument of those who seek to counter the claims of Stevens by appealing to this fallacy coined by Flew is this:


All Christians are not to commit murder

Breivik is a Christian who committed murder

All true Christians are not to commit murder


It is considered begging the question to form the conclusion out of the initial premise. The qualification “true” does not advance the argument. However, the simple way to address this is claiming that the second premise is false. The problem is a matter of definition. What does it mean to be a Scotsman or a Christian? Flew has the reader assume that since the crimes were committed in Scotland then the culprit was Scottish. This does not necessarily follow. The actions could have been committed by tourists. Even if we grant that the crimes were committed by Scotsmen, there is a categorical difference between national identity and religious identity. Religious belief or lack thereof transcends national barriers, but national identity encloses the individual within the particular nation he/she is a citizen. It is one thing to say “no Scotsman would do such thing” and quite another thing to say “no Christian would do such a thing” (even without the redundant qualifier “true”). Now, it could be argued that what it means to be a Scotsman transcends citizenship, which is what the man in Flew's example seems to be indicating. The basis then for whether or not an individual would or would not be a Scotsman, according to a particular definition, would be found in what that definition stipulates. It would not be wrong for someone to say no Scotsman would do such a thing if part of what the individual meant by the term "Scotsman" was that such a person does not commit henious crimes. This does not place truth at the whim of the individual. It rather accounts for how important it is to consider context and intent. Flew did not account for authorial intent and believed in objective neutrality.

Looking at Breivik’s definition of what it means to be Christian, he presents us with a dualism: cultural Christians and religious Christians. While identifying himself as a cultural Christian, he even considers atheists and agnostics to be among this group. Surely, Breivik’s beliefs may not be considered by many to be sane, but perhaps that is another important factor to consider. If his words are not to be trusted because any sane man would not do such a thing, than can we take his word that he is a Christian (cultural or religious)? How about this No True Scotsman argument:

No sane man would kill 70+ people

Breivik is a sane man

No true sane man would kill 70+ people

Ah, but what does it mean to be sane or insane? Perhaps the No True Scotsman fallacy suffers from the oversimplification of a by-gone era.