#14: The "What if Everyone Did That" Argument

Often, when a child does something the adults think bad, they ask the child, "What if everyone did that?", thinking that there is some salutary lesson in this counter-factual question. Actually, there is not. The argument is either inapplicable to the case or an enthymeme, an argument depending upon a suppressed or tacit premise which is quite evidently false. To begin, the argument is ambiguous between a "moral" one and a prudential one.

The moral one relies on our intuition that there are acts we consider inherently objectionable. If it is the act itself that constitutes the problem, then it does not matter who performs it -- it is objectionable whether others perform it or whether we perform it ourselves. But if the act in question is indeed inherently objectionable, then there is no need for the counter-factual thought experiment since it will be evident to the child from a consideration of the act itself that it is objectionable. Indeed, we sometimes chide a child who appeals to the "fact" that "everyone else is doing it," by asking another counter-factual question: "If everyone else jumped off a roof, would you do that too?" thus making the point that he should be making a judgement independent of what others do or do not do. The case will either be one in which an independent judgment is made possible by the very nature of the act or it will not. If it is the first case, then it would seem that the counter-factual question argument should not be applied, since the child will see that the act should not be done regardless of what other people do. But what if the act is not evident in this way?

A valid argument on non-moral purely prudential grounds could be constructed if a certain suppressed premise is made explicit (or added), but that argument would not be sound, since the premise is baldly false.

The suppressed premise is that there exists a causal relationship between what the child does and what the rest of the world does. No such causal relation exists. If the child were logical, he would respond that he would certainly not like it if everyone did as he did (since this would be bad for himself). Fortunately, he would continue, my doing this will never bring it about that everyone else does so, and so I will continue doing as I have done. I certainly prefer that others not do as I do, but also am quite content to do as I do. If it is claimed that I hold "inconsistent" preferences, that does not bother me in the slightest; I have no obligation to be "consistent" (whatever that might mean here) in my preferences.

We can see that the premise is needed simply by noting that the denial of a universal affirmative claim does not yield its contrary (which is what the argument wants). The universal affirmative would be "all men do x." The child is asked to agree that he would not want this, therefore wanting the denial of the universal affirmative. But this denial only yields the proposition's contradictory, namely "It is not the case that all men do x" or "Some men do not do x." But this will not do the job for the argument, since it still leaves the child the option of continuing to do x, while all the others do not.

What the argument really wants is a conclusion to the effect "No men do x," which excludes the child's doing x. The only way that the argument can achieve this is by making it the case that if anyone at all does x, then all do x. In effect, by making it impossible that some do x and some do not. This can be done only by the assumption of a causal relationship between anyone doing x and everyone doing x. Therefore, unless the child abstains from doing x, everyone will do x. But this causal assumption is transparently false.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you see it, the vast majority of children are not that logical and continue to be influenced by this argument all the way into university political indoctrination classes.