6 The All-or-Nothing MistakeThough truth is sometimes a matter of black or white, much more often it ranges through a whole spectrum of colors. One catches a train or fails to catch it. An electric light is on, or it is off. On the other hand, a government will never be simply "good" or "bad," for here the range of possible variations is infinite. Where a situation requires a relative judgment, it is a fallacy to wrap up a judgment on it into one hasty bundle labeled All or Nothing, Good or Bad, Blameworthy or Blameless. This kind of thinking peoples the mind with simple heroes and villains instead of characters that are true to life.
The all-or-nothing mistake assumes a naked dichotomy where no such simplification is warranted. Mr. Justice Frankfurter has called this "the great either-or." For example, an office holder may declare that others must either favor his policies or oppose them. This position overlooks the possibility of indifference as well as favoring some policies and opposing others. The assumption that there is no middle ground is a favorite weapon of persons desiring to force others to take sides in black-white terms even though the problem is not simple and though its fair solution requires an evaluation of several possibilities. Hitler takes shrewd account of this in discussing propaganda:
The task of propaganda is, for example, not a weighing of the various rights, but the exclusive emphasis of the one advocated by it. It has not to inquire objectively into the truth, so far as it favors the other sides, in order to represent it to the masses in doctrinary honesty, but it has to serve its own side continuously. . . .This feeling [i.e. the thinking of the masses] is not complicated, but very simple and conclusive. There are not many differentiations, but a positive or a negative, love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, but never half so and half so, or partially, etc.
Hitler, Mein Kampf
No one can wholly avoid this fallacy of treating complex things as if they could be divided into simple extremes. Sometimes action has to be taken according to an unambiguous decision even though a two-fold classification is unrealistic. Doctors squirm when the lawyer demands whether or not a certain individual shall be pronounced sane or insane. Medicine is more complicated than the gates of an insane asylum, yet someone has to know when to swing the gates open or shut. Again, the shortness of time and the demand for effective action forever press toward decisions which a man would blush to defend in the abstract. In the polling booth the claims and counterclaims, charges and analyses, promises and issues -- all the vast complication of the campaign -- must be reduced to simple votes for or against candidates, yes or no on propositions. The citizen most aware of the complexity of issues and personalities has no more choice of alternatives than the most irresponsible elector.
Where there is not the demand for an immediate decision, impatient individuals commit a fallacy when they cut through complexity as if everything has to be decided by simple affirmation or rejection. "Spare me the details -- is it good or bad?" This is the "sentiment" of the masses which Hitler says is the function of propaganda to exploit. To consider the all-or-nothing fallacy important chiefly as a tool of the demagogue is to miss its universal range. It is a constant attendant in discussion, as the following examples will attest.
EXAMPLE COMMENT The chairman of a prize committee: "In the case of all these prizes, you should notice that honor is often a more important motivation than money." Mr. Peter: "You mean that money doesn't matter?"
A crude example though not unknown in live discussion. To suggest qualifying an idea is often interpreted as full rejection by one who makes an intellectual habit of all-or-none. "The only way to convince this union crowd is to hold out until they're too damned broke to strike any more. You treat 'em kind, and they take a mile. Get tough, and they'll knuckle under." Better call in a mediator! The speaker may be right in his assessment of the particular union. But where there are many possibilities in a situation, the chances are that any only-way solution is an unwarranted attempt to cut through a complex problem. Paul: "Is Henry intelligent?" Peter: "Sure he is."
In casual conversation people don't insist on precision. But what can asking for or conceding Henry's intelligence mean? Men are not sharply divided into the intelligent and the unintelligent. Paul and Peter probably know this and in context understand each other well enough. The Communist Manifesto: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. "Workers of the world, unite!"
Proletarians! Lives, property, freedom may be lost. The world may be less than "won." But let no one underestimate the power of a slogan.