3 14 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



(/) PLURES INTERROGATIONES. The fallacy of many ques 

 tions consists in so putting a question that a single answer will 

 involve more than one admission. In its simplest form it com 

 bines many questions into one, and insists on a categorical &quot; Yes &quot; 

 or &quot; No &quot; for answer : &quot; Is he a socialist and a conspirator ? Yes 

 or No ? &quot; More frequently, the question is single, but is based upon 

 a certain admission which it wrongly assumes as already made : 

 &quot; Have you given up your intemperate habits? &quot; The traditional 

 example, &quot; Have you cast your horns ? &quot; gives the fallacy the 

 name of cornutus. Such traps must be met by a distinction 

 between the various parts of the question (&quot; Distinguo &quot;), or by 

 a denial of the assumed admission (&quot; Nego suppositum&quot;}. The 

 fallacy is rather frequently committed by giving reasons and argu 

 ments in explanation of some supposed fact which is not really a 

 fact at all. It is open to question whether, for example, it is not 

 committed by those who endeavour to show how protective tariffs 

 encourage the industries of a country ; or how communication is 

 effected with the souls of the dead ; or how dowsers detect subter 

 ranean springs. 



The policy of &quot; tacking,&quot; in the American Legislature, is 

 a sort of practical application of this fallacy. &quot; The President 

 of the United States can veto bills, and does veto them freely ; 

 but he can only veto a bill as a whole. It is therefore not 

 uncommon for the Legislature to tack on to a bill which the 

 President feels bound to let pass a clause containing a measure 

 to which it is known that he objects ; so that if he assents, he 

 allows what he disapproves of, and if he dissents, he disallows 

 what he approves.&quot; l 



On analysis, this fallacy will be found to involve misinter 

 pretation of an alternative or disjunctive judgment. The alternatives 

 enumerated or suggested are tacitly and erroneously assumed to be 

 exhaustive, when they are really not so. The alternatives that a 

 person &quot; either has or has not &quot; given up his intemperate habits, 

 is apparently exhaustive, but is not really so, for the desitive pro 

 position is not simple, but compound (95). &quot; Is he a socialist 

 and a conspirator ? Yes or No ? &quot; implies that the alternatives &quot; He 

 is both or he is neither &quot; are exhaustive. We have, in other 

 words, a wrong application of the principle of excluded middle. 

 The disjunctive premiss of a dilemma should enumerate all the 

 alternatives permitted by the subject-matter ; and failure to secure 

 1 JOSEPH, op. cit., p. 557. 



