Inferences and fallacies

The thirty-fifth entry is o falso dilema, and English keeps a proper name for something that looks like it and is its exact opposite. « Hobson’s choice » is called after Thomas Hobson, a Cambridge carrier of the early seventeenth century who hired out horses and let no customer pick: you took the animal standing nearest the stable door, or you walked. The phrase therefore names one option dressed up as a choice, take it or leave it, and nothing else. A false dilemma is the opposite trick: it offers two options where there are more, and hides the ones in between. The two are confused constantly, and « Hobson’s choice » is now often written where the writer means a hard decision between two bad things, which is « a dilemma ». Keeping them apart is worth the trouble on a page like this one, because the faults are opposite faults: one pretends there is a choice where there is none, the other pretends there are only two where there are several. Portuguese names neither after a person. O falso dilema says plainly what it is, and for the other it says é pegar ou largar.