Is there a name for the widespread logical fallacy in which you prove your point by 'eliminating' anyone who contradicts you?

Question

I've encountered this relentlessly in my life. You offer proof that someone is wrong, or even simply state something more obvious than the sun that they don't like, they ban you or do something else to silence you, as if that proves their point. They literally don't even bother to address whatever you said, they just think silencing anyone who says otherwise proves their right.

I've seen a lot of logical fallacies listed, but I've never seen this one. What would you call the fallacy where you claim the sky isn't blue, by silencing anyone who says it is?

Answer 1

Suppression is not an argument at all, so it isn't a fallacious argument.

Instead, suppression is an example of one of the reasons why appeals to authority or popularity may generate false conclusions, even when the expert or population is somebody who seems like they ought to know the right answer.

See: argument from authority, argument from popularity, and sampling bias.

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Named fallacies are useful because they make it easier to bring to mind a particular way that a flawed argument can be mistaken for an airtight inference.

"Off with his head, therefore X" would be a fallacious argument. But it doesn't need a special name because it obviously doesn't follow.

Answer 2

The closest I can think of to what you describe is pound the table:

3. (figuratively, law) To base an argument on bluster or rhetoric when unsupported by more substantive elements. There's an old legal aphorism that goes, "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table."

Answer 3

Here I've tried to describe longer what a fallacy is in the first place. But according to that one. Well it depends on the context. There are examples in closed logical systems where the range of options is limited and where "not A" is equivalent to "A", where eliminating all the wrong answers inevitably reveals the correct answer.

Though for most real life purposes, the number of possible options far exceeds anything that can be solved by elimination and just because a lot of other options are wrong doesn't necessarily means that your option is correct (that would indeed be a fallacy because that conclusion doesn't follow from the premises).

With regards to personal attacks that's likely an ad hominem fallacy where you shoot the messenger rather than the message. Though that is basically just Latin for "against the person", so more important than remembering such a term you should realize that it is not an argument that produces a valid or sound conclusion. Technically the argument is not related to the person stating it.

That being said in practical real world examples the argument and it's meaning depends on words that derive their meaning through context so the author could indeed matter as a plumber and a chemist might refer to vastly different things when speaking of something unionized. So there's also something like a fallacy fallacy where you yourself might fall into the trap of thinking that a fallacious argument is wrong, but it doesn't have to be wrong, all a fallacy means is that the presented order of logical steps leading to the conclusion, does not or rather doesn't HAVE TO lead there.

Answer 4

Someone might suppress dissenting opinions to "control the narrative" (which is not explicitly a fallacy). They have a particular narrative they want to promote (in terms of how they interpret some facts, selectively sharing or lying about facts, etc.), and dissenting opinions can interfere with that goal of theirs.

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Someone might also suppress voices that are rude or mean, regardless of where those voices stand on the issue. So someone might suspect their voice is being suppressed for disagreeing, when in fact it's because they're being rude.

Some people also suppress misinformation. Although, depending on where someone stands on the issue, and their views on free speech, they may or may not see this as a form of inappropriately trying to control the narrative.

Things that are off topic might also be suppressed, as well as anything that's deemed to fall outside the rules of the platform it's posted on (Stack Exchange, for example, discourages discussion in comments, so comments may be deleted for merely being too conversational).

Someone destroying evidence (as per your example) would probably be closer to a form of lying or a "cover up" or concealment.

Answer 5

It is not a logical fallacy. It is called gate keeping. Gate keeper has a policy document ,in hand or in mind, to allow or disallow a person or group of person based on the policy. For example - Army can enter the parliament and take over the control of a country ,giving possibly logical reasons, but they can’t do it because they adhere to constitution. Similarly, this site allows only certain topics and not all because they adhere to a policy which can be challenged elsewhere. There are several examples where gate keeping policy is employed to prevent chaos or anarchy.

Answer 6

As other answers have mentioned, there's no fallacy unless there's an argument. But there IS an implicit argument here.

Other Person: I believe X
You: Here is Y, a disproof of X
Other Person: Z (something that disregards Y) supports X, therefore X

This is called the fallacy of "cherry-picking," where you pay attention only to the evidence that supports your chosen conclusion, and ignore everything else. It's something that has to be guarded carefully against in proper scientific experimentation.

Answer 7

What you are describing is a refusal to listen to relevant evidence. To avoid considering data that is meaningful and on point, there are as many fallacies as there are arguments. The particular fallacy in use at any given time is simply the one that best justifies avoiding the evidence in that instance.

As a general matter, the best answer was offered earlier as a comment by Conifold:

Argumentum ad baculum ("argument to the cudgel" in Latin, a.k.a. appeal to the stick):"A mainly discursive Argumentum ad Baculum is that of forcibly silencing opponents, ruling them "out of order," blocking, censoring or jamming their message, or simply speaking over them or/speaking more loudly than they do".

Answer 8

Looking at this it feels like a first cousin of Hempel's paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox

Hempel's paradox is a fallacy (argue most philosopers/logicians, they aren't the same!), because eliminating non-relevant propositions about non-ravens, doesn't show very much about ravens.

In a toy world with a finite, countable number of objects that might be a more reasonable approach.

Answer 9

I can hardly see this topic and its description as a philosophic one. Neither has it anything to do with logic. There's no fallacy of any kind kind here.

It's all about only autocratic, domineering and authoritarian behaviour.

(I wonder how this question has not been rejected as off-topic. Instead it has received upvotes. Why? Because it presents general interest?)

Answer 10

Mark Andrews and Conifold are on the right path.

Generally, such a circumstance is called an appeal to force. If you read the WP article carefully, you'll see they cite in support the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article Fallacy. From that article:

11. The ad baculum fallacy is one of the most controversial because it is hard to see that it is a fallacy or even that it involves bad reasoning. Ad baculum means “appeal to the stick” and is generally taken to involve a threat of injury of harm to the person addressed.

Why such a fallacy might be controversial is because there are two different concepts of what an argument is. On the one hand, an argument might be taken to be two explicit propositions that serve as premises reaching a conclusion through a combination of relevance, inference, etc. But there's a looser definition of argument that involves intended to persuade someone as to a conclusion by more implicit reasoning. If I point to a book, and you point to a gun, and we both understand that these are both symbolic, rhetorical acts, then abstractly, it might be seen as a language-game. Such symbolic acts are sometimes referred to as symbolic speech.

In philosophy of language, such a symbolic gesture which attempts to intimidate or scare an opponent (perhaps into altering their testimony in a court of law) is called a perlocutionary act. From WP:

A perlocutionary act (or perlocutionary effect) is the effect of an utterance on an interlocutor.1 Examples of perlocutionary acts include persuading, convincing, scaring (emphasis mine), enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise affecting the interlocutor. The perlocutionary effect of an utterance is contrasted with the locutionary act, which is the act of producing the utterance, and with the illocutionary force, which does not depend on the utterance's effect on the interlocutor.2

Of course, many thinkers simply resist simple symbolic gestures as argumentative. It is a fact that Aristotle's syllogism is seen as the prototype of what an argument is. The subject in linguistics that studies where meaning can be transferred without explicit language use is called pragmatics. For some thinkers, the ambiguous nature of a pragmatic communications is troubling.

Of course, if an interlocutor explicitly threatens someone in an argument, as some former world leaders are known to do, then it's quite clearly a fallacy of irrelevancy. In such a case, the appeal to force is quite obvious. It's important to remember that rhetorical acts need not be logical in nature.

Answer 11

@J D has brought up the case of "appeal to force", which indeed looks like it fits the case here. However, certainly I cannot considerusing force and threats as having anything to do with logic. It is an action or behavior of its own, which can be used not only in (replacing actual) argumentation but in anything one can imagine. It is not even like "appeal to authority", which indeed is used in philosophical and other discussions, and which at least can be used as a substitute of one's own reasoning or argumentation because of lack of one's own. Thus, it is not actually a fallacy either, in a strict sense.

A fallacy is a statement or series of statements based on an invalid or faulty reasoning.

So, by looking at the description of the two kinds of "fallacies" mentioned above, we can easily realize that the term "fallacy" is abused. In both "fallacies" there is no reasoning of any kind. Using force or threats, in one case, and refering to some other source, in the second, is not reasoning.

So, once again, using force or theats to make a point is not a fallacy. It's just condemnable behavior.