Class vs Individual: Glenn Reynolds makes an error of composition*
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Darn. You’d think a guy as sharp as Glenn Reynolds—and a law prof to boot—would know the difference between an individual part and the whole in an argument. Read this post and come on back.
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Yes, I understand he never actually says that all Home Depot stores are like the store he refers to, but he “disses” Home Depot as a whole by implication by including in and framing his remarks around a reference to a site that does “diss” Home Depot Stores in general.
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Now, if he were to shop at the Home Depot and Lowes stores nearest me, he’d have a flip-flop of the experience he relates on his site. Does that mean that I should generalize the nature of the local Lowes store and mention a site that regularly “disses” all Lowes stores, as a group, just because I find the nearest Lowes store to be dysfunctional? Does it mean that I should imply that all Home Depot stores are as well-run as the one nearest me? No to both, because I do not know the other Lowes and Home Depot stores. (Well, I do know one more of each, and—in my neck of the woods—they are each like the ones nearest me: Lowes, so-so; Home Depot, very good.)
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Of course, do note that Glenn only implies (by framing his remarks in the context of another site’s “dissing” of Home Depots in general) that his experience at one Home Depot store is normative for the whole. But that’s a sloppiness that really ought not to be in such a widely-read blog… by a law prof.
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;Error of composition: assuming, implying or stating that what is true of the parts of an entity is true of the whole. “Some whites once owned slaves; therefore all whites were slave owners,” is one such error of composition. “I know a man who abused his wife, therefore all men are abusers of women,” is another such error of composition. “Shopping at my local Home Depot store is a lousy experience and The Corner doesn’t like them, either, therefore… ” heh. Indeed.