The politician's syllogism, also known as the politician's logic or the politician's fallacy, is a

logical fallacy In logic and philosophy, a formal fallacy is a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure. Propositional logic, for example, is concerned with the meanings of sentences and the relationships between them. It focuses ...

of the form: #We must do something. #This is something. #Therefore, we must do this. The politician's fallacy was identified in a 1988 episode of the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

television political sitcom '' Yes, Prime Minister'' titled " Power to the People", and has taken added life on the Internet. The syllogism, invented by fictional British civil servants, has been quoted in the real

British Parliament The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of ...

. The syllogism has also been quoted in American political discussion. As a

meme A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that Mimesis, spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying c ...

, the quasi-formal name "politician's syllogism" is clunky and not widely known; the notion is often conveyed by invoking the central phrase this is something with

ironic Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what, on the surface, appears to be the case with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has a ...

import, such as when a major league sports team whose season is in dire straits exchanges an aging athlete with a bad leg for an aging athlete with a bad arm.

Overview

In ''Yes, Prime Minister'', the term is discussed between the

Cabinet Secretary A cabinet secretary is usually a senior official (typically a civil servant) who provides services and advice to a cabinet of ministers as part of the Cabinet Office. In many countries, the position can have considerably wider functions and powe ...

Sir Humphrey Appleby and his predecessor Sir Arnold Robinson, who are concerned about the prime minister's plans to reform

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...

due to political opposition from one local council, believing that it would result in regional government and, as they would argue, a series of ill-considered policy decisions. On this issue, as with many other issues humorously explored by the show, the civil servants believe that doing anything is worse than doing nothing because actions tend to undermine the dominance of the civil service. They identify the politician's logic as a fallacious

categorical syllogism A syllogism (, ''syllogismos'', 'conclusion, inference') is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true. In its earliest form (define ...

: #All cats have four legs. #My dog has four legs. #Therefore, my dog is a cat. This invalid form of argument, labeled AAA-2 among syllogisms, commits the

fallacy of the undistributed middle The fallacy of the undistributed middle () is a formal fallacy that is committed when the middle term in a categorical syllogism is not distributed in either the minor premise or the major premise. It is thus a syllogistic fallacy. Classical f ...

: it says nothing about all things having four legs (the middle term) and thus the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises, even if the premises are true. The politician's syllogism similarly says nothing about all known "somethings" that could be done. As is common with fallacious undistributed middle arguments, it can also be seen as the fallacy of

affirming the consequent In propositional logic, affirming the consequent (also known as converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency) is a formal fallacy (or an invalid form of argument) that is committed when, in the context of a ...

when restated as an equivalent

hypothetical syllogism In classical logic, a hypothetical syllogism is a valid argument form, a deductive syllogism with a conditional statement for one or both of its premises. Ancient references point to the works of Theophrastus and Eudemus for the first investiga ...

: #To improve things, things must change. #We are changing things. #Therefore, we are improving things.

References

Political terminology Yes Minister Informal fallacies {{Yes Minister , state=expanded

Overview

See also

References