The Volokh Conspiracy - Hypothetical Hypocrisy:

I think people are often too quick to charge others with hypocrisy; a lot of the "He said A here, but did B there" is explicable by some quite sensible distinctions between A and B. But I'm especially bugged by overconfident claims of hypocrisy -- "He said A, but I'm positive he would have done B there had the situation only happened." This is especially so when the claims name some particular person. If you're going to accuse someone of being a hypocrite, it seems to me that you ought to have pretty solid foundations for your accusation. Your guess as to how the person would have reacted in a hypothetical situation will only rarely qualify.

A concrete example: My post about the Halloweengate press release drew this comment:

By the way, I wonder how many people (ahem--Instapundit) would have taken the exact opposite stance on this issue if this had come out first.

A request for some clarification yielded this from the same commenter:

As we discussed in the prior thread, there is no obvious political valance or statement involved in this costume. So, I think what likely would have happened is that people who were looking for an excuse to bash an Ivy League university president would have become outraged at her taking offense and issuing a statement about it.

In fact, here was Instapundit's last line of his last update:

"I remain skeptical that a Klansman costume would be received in the same fashion, or that an Ivy League university President would be comfortable being photographed with someone wearing a Klan costume."

What I think we would have been reading instead is something like:

"I remain skeptical that a Fidel Castro costume would be received in the same fashion, or that an Ivy League university President would be uncomfortable being photographed with someone wearing a Castro costume."

OK, is there any real justification for assuming that Glenn Reynolds would have "taken the exact opposite stance on th[e] issue" if the press release had come out first, by "becom[ing] outraged at her taking offense and issuing a statement about it"? Is Reynolds noteworthy for thinking in other contexts that suicide bomber costumes are great, and that it's outrageous for university presidents to take offense at them? Is there any real support for the suggestion that Reynolds would have behaved this way?

And this isn't just this comment; I see it all the time, about what the ACLU or the Left or the Right or who knows who would surely have done in some hypothetical scenario. These people or groups are apparently so bad that we can accuse them of likely inconsistency even without their having actually done half of the internally inconsistent pair.

In rare circumstances, the targeted person is indeed so predictable that such a prediction is likely right. But my sense is that much of the time (including here) this just isn't so. The claims of hypothetical hypocrisy are based simply on the claimant's hostility to the target, rather than on any real evidence that the target would have indeed acted the way claimant alleges. It's basically argument by a presumption of bad faith -- not, in my view, the most enlightening form of discourse.

	[Eugene Volokh, November 3, 2006 at 4:04pm] Trackbacks Hypothetical Hypocrisy: I think people are often too quick to charge others with hypocrisy; a lot of the "He said A here, but did B there" is explicable by some quite sensible distinctions between A and B. But I'm especially bugged by overconfident claims of hypocrisy -- "He said A, but I'm positive he would have done B there had the situation only happened." This is especially so when the claims name some particular person. If you're going to accuse someone of being a hypocrite, it seems to me that you ought to have pretty solid foundations for your accusation. Your guess as to how the person would have reacted in a hypothetical situation will only rarely qualify. A concrete example: My post about the Halloweengate press release drew this comment: By the way, I wonder how many people (ahem--Instapundit) would have taken the exact opposite stance on this issue if this had come out first. A request for some clarification yielded this from the same commenter: As we discussed in the prior thread, there is no obvious political valance or statement involved in this costume. So, I think what likely would have happened is that people who were looking for an excuse to bash an Ivy League university president would have become outraged at her taking offense and issuing a statement about it. In fact, here was Instapundit's last line of his last update: "I remain skeptical that a Klansman costume would be received in the same fashion, or that an Ivy League university President would be comfortable being photographed with someone wearing a Klan costume." What I think we would have been reading instead is something like: "I remain skeptical that a Fidel Castro costume would be received in the same fashion, or that an Ivy League university President would be uncomfortable being photographed with someone wearing a Castro costume." OK, is there any real justification for assuming that Glenn Reynolds would have "taken the exact opposite stance on th[e] issue" if the press release had come out first, by "becom[ing] outraged at her taking offense and issuing a statement about it"? Is Reynolds noteworthy for thinking in other contexts that suicide bomber costumes are great, and that it's outrageous for university presidents to take offense at them? Is there any real support for the suggestion that Reynolds would have behaved this way? And this isn't just this comment; I see it all the time, about what the ACLU or the Left or the Right or who knows who would surely have done in some hypothetical scenario. These people or groups are apparently so bad that we can accuse them of likely inconsistency even without their having actually done half of the internally inconsistent pair. In rare circumstances, the targeted person is indeed so predictable that such a prediction is likely right. But my sense is that much of the time (including here) this just isn't so. The claims of hypothetical hypocrisy are based simply on the claimant's hostility to the target, rather than on any real evidence that the target would have indeed acted the way claimant alleges. It's basically argument by a presumption of bad faith -- not, in my view, the most enlightening form of discourse.