Sometimes Santa Gives The Presents

* From “The A**HOLE’S Guide To Arguing (Or, How To Succeed In Politics)”

The middle ground fallacy is one that can be tempting to resort to.

If someone asks you to settle an argument between two people, you might find yourself claiming that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, which sounds fair. Unless of course one or both arguments are clearly false. Share on X

Jane: “Santa gave me a colouring book.”
John: “There is no Santa. You got that from mum and dad. Tell her, mummy.”
Mum: “Sometimes Santa gives the presents, and sometimes it’s mum and dad.”

Here the mother is trying to settle an argument between the siblings by offering a middle ground argument. There is no Santa, so claiming that ‘sometimes Santa gives the presents, and sometimes it’s mum and dad’, is a lie. Just like it is a lie that dead people sometimes ride buses.

The following conversation between a lady with Alzheimer’s and a friend, shows that the middle ground fallacy can yield some interesting results. (Yes, this actually happened!)

“I talked to Jim Alcott (not his real name) on the bus yesterday.”
“Don’t be silly, Anna. He is dead.”
“He can’t be dead. I just talked to him on the bus.”
“Jim has been dead for years. Stop talking nonsense.”
“Alright, alright. So he’s dead. But I still talked to him on the bus yesterday.”

Here, Anna tried to offer up a middle ground argument to satisfy her friend. She agreed that the guy in question was in fact dead, while at the same time continuing to claim that the dead guy had spoken to her on the bus.

They guy who according to one should be under ground, was found by the other above ground, and the argument was ended by the strange middle ground fallacy that sounded something like this:

“While most of the time dead people have no trouble lying still in their coffins, sometimes they just feel like riding buses and striking up a conversation with their fellow passengers (and when they do, they are especially fond of old ladies with Alzheimer’s).”

So, before you make an attempt at the middle ground, make sure that the argument is a viable one, and not a zombie.

Some things are better off dead and buried, like ‘Jim Alcott’.

© Merlyn Gabriel Miller