Two Wrongs Make a Right
Taxonomy: Logical Fallacy > Informal Fallacy > Red Herring > Two Wrongs Make a Right1 > Tu Quoque
Example:
The operation cost just under $500, and no one was killed, or even hurt. In that same time the Pentagon spent tens of millions of dollars and dropped tens of thousands of pounds of explosives on Viet Nam, killing or wounding thousands of human beings, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. Because nothing justified their actions in our calculus, nothing could contradict the merit of ours.2
Analysis
Exposition:
This fallacy is committed when people attempt to justify a wrong action by pointing to another wrong action. Attempting to justify a wrong on the grounds that someone else is guilty of another wrong is clearly a Red Herring―that is, a fallacy of irrelevance. If this form of argument were cogent, one could justify anything, that is, assuming that there is another wrong to point to, which is a very safe assumption. Such arguments often succeed as distractions, just as a pickled herring drawn across the trail would throw bloodhounds off the scent. Don't be distracted!
Exposure:
- Why do people think that two wrongs add up to one right? This is speculation, but perhaps they are misled by the logical fact that two negations cancel out, or the similar mathematical fact that multiplying two negative numbers produces a positive number. It is common to think of wrongs as morally "negative", but this is distinct from the logical notion of negation and the mathematical notion of negative number. The analogy between moral negatives and logico-mathematical negatives is a weak one, because moral negatives do not cancel each other: one wrong plus another wrong equals two wrongs, not a right.
- Often, the wrong action pointed to in a Two Wrongs Make a Right argument is one supposedly committed by an accuser, in which case it is the subfallacy of Tu Quoque―see the Taxonomy, above. In fact, the fallacy may be more likely to be committed in the form of a Tu Quoque, in which the wrong pointed to was supposedly committed by the accuser. Even in its more general form, the second wrong is likely to be one committed by someone that the accuser will feel obliged to defend, which is why the fallacy may succeed as a distraction. For instance, in the Ayers example above, critics of the bombings committed by the Weathermen may feel that they have to defend the Pentagon against Ayers' criticisms. However, whether the Pentagon's bombing of North Vietnam was unjustified is logically irrelevant to the actions of the Weathermen, that is, it is perfectly possible to hold that both were unjustified.
- Two Wrongs Make a Right needs to be distinguished from retaliation or punishment, as it would not do to condemn these on logical grounds, though they may be morally objectionable. So, when children defend themselves by hitting or kicking another child, they may be morally to blame but not logically. If a parent spanks a child for hitting another child, this may be bad parenting, but it is not a logical mistake. Punishment, or retribution, is behavior aimed at modifying behavior, not argument.
This is a very clear example of the fallacy. The terrorists tried to justify bombing the Pentagon on the grounds that the Pentagon had unjustifiably bombed Viet Nam. The gist of the fallacy is contained in the last sentence, which claims that the wrongness of the Pentagon's actions justified a similar wrong: "Wrong + wrong = right."
Notes:
- Nicholas Capaldi, How to Win Every Argument: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (1987), pp. 147-148.
- Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, from his memoir Fugitive Days, defending a bombing attack by the Weathermen on the Pentagon. Quoted in "Radical Chic Resurgent", by Timothy Noah, Slate, 8/22/2001.
Revised: 9/16/2024