07/09/2007

"Blaming the Victim"

Jeremy Freese observes:

...the phrase "blaming the victim," (...) has indisputable cautionary utility for moral and social thought but has come to be understood by many sociologists as a logical fallacy...
(italics original) Put differently, if someone argues that, say, group X is disadvantaged because of the behaviour of the members of group X, this is an empirical hypothesis which may be true or false; calling it "blaming the victim" does not speak to the veracity of that claim.

I would like to add that the same goes for calling an explanation "biologistic".

1 comment:

jeremy said...

Anybody who thinks calling an explanation "biologistic" makes it wrong is probably too far gone for reason.