52 How to Win Every Argument
Dicto simpliciter arises whenever individuals are made to
conform to group patterns. If they are treated in tight classes as
'teenagers', 'Frenchmen', or 'travelling salesmen', and are
assumed to bear the characteristics of those classes, no oppor-
tunity is permitted for their individual qualities to emerge. There
are political ideologies which attempt to treat people in precisely
this way, treating them only as members of sub-groups in society
and allowing them only representation through a group whose
values they may not, in fact, share.
Look, you're a civil servant. Your representatives voted for this action
because they know it will be good for the civil service. It must therefore be
good for you.
(He only imagined those lost wages.)In discussing people of whom we have a little knowledge, we
often use dicto simpliciter in the attempt to fix onto them the
attributes of the groups they belong to. Knowing only that a
neighbour is civil to us and drives a better car, we try to deduce
things from the fact that he is a Catholic or a squash-player. Our
assumption of ancillary properties may, in fact, be correct; the
mistake is to suppose that it must be: 'We all know that children are
smaller than their parents. Well, now that I'm 50 and Dad is 80, I've
noticed that I'm quite a bit taller. Maybe he isn't my real father.'
Dicto simpliciter can be used to fit people into stereotypical
moulds. Since they belong to the class of Frenchmen, ballet-
dancers and horseriders, they must be great lovers, effeminate
and bow-legged. You must appeal to generally accepted truisms
in order to fill in details about individual cases which would
otherwise be resisted.
You should as a parent use dicto simpliciter to trick your child
into doing what you want instead of what they want: