Two wrongs make a right
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Two wrongs make a right is a logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that if one wrong is committed, another wrong will cancel it out. Like many fallacies, it typically appears as the hidden major premise in an enthymeme—an unstated assumption which must be true for the premises to lead to the conclusion.
It is often used as a red herring, or an attempt to change or distract from the issue. For example:
- Speaker A: President Williams lied in his testimony to Congress. He should not do that.
- Speaker B: But you're ignoring the fact that President Robertson lied in his Congressional testimony!
If President Robertson lied in his Congressional testimony, that does not make it acceptable or OK for President Williams to do so as well.
The ad hominem tu quoque fallacy is a specific type of "two wrongs make a right". Accusing another person of not practicing what they preach, while appropriate in some situations, does not in itself invalidate an action or statement that is perceived as contradictory.
This fallacy can be considered an appeal to emotion when it is used as an argument for revenge:
- They blew up our storehouses! So, we should burn down their village.
The wrongness of one action does not necessarily make it either morally good or rationally prudent to perform another wrong act in retaliation. Cycles of violence like this may also be justified using causal oversimplification, wrong direction and various attributional biases.
This fallacy is often committed by children. An example:
- Parent: Jim, why did you pull your sister's hair; don't you know that's wrong?
- Jim: I know, but she pinched me first.
To this, the parent may respond with the adage, "two wrongs don't make a right". However, note that if the hair-pulling was in self defense or as a deterrent, to prevent more pinching, then some people may argue that it is more justifiable than if it was done purely out of retaliation.
Responding to a wrong with a wrong can sometimes also be a useful policy. As a way of deterring wrong actions against oneself, one may always respond to such actions with equivalent or greater retaliation. For example, the policy of mutual assured destruction is generally credited with preventing either Cold War power from launching a first strike nuclear attack against the other. In case of a nuclear launch, a retaliatory attack would accomplish little and be of dubious morality, but the expectation of this retaliation did prevent any attack from happening in the first place.
Of course an action might not be considered a wrong by many if it is truly in self-defense or a good deterrent. Context must be taken into account. Thus, the schoolboy retort of "Two wrongs don't make a right, but what do a wrong and a right make?"
It is also important to note that two wrongs do not necessarily make a wrong either, but rather that the precise result is entirely dependent on the particular circumstances that lead into it: "two wrongs" are not strongly defined enough to lead exclusively to any particular result.
