What about Whataboutism?

ABSTRACT

In some recent literature, ‘whataboutism’ is analysed as a sometimes-reasonable argument or claim about inconsistency on an issue of dispute, akin to the ad hominem tu quoque. We argue that this doesn’t capture the peculiarly meta-argumentative failure (or success) of ‘what-about’ appeals. Whataboutist moves are appeals to evidence about whether one has assessed the total evidence or has made the right contrasting consideration and so need not be failures of consistency on the first order. Consequently, whataboutism is best theorized as a meta-argumentative fallacy. We argue, in light of this observation, whataboutism can come in two forms: the second-personal, which takes inconsistency to be an indicator of meta-argumentative issues, and the third-personal, which makes the case that there is a failure of total evidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Fallacies
• meta-argument
• whataboutism
• free speech fallacy

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Aikin

Scott Aikin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He specializes in epistemology, argumentation theory, and ancient philosophy. He is the author of Epistemology and the Regress Problem and Straw Man Arguments (with John Casey).

John Casey

John Casey is Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern Illinois University. He specializes in medieval philosophy and argumentation theory. He is the author (with Scott Aikin) of Straw Man Arguments (Bloomsbury 2022).