Special pleading, also known as stacking the deck, ignoring the counterevidence, slanting, and one-sided assessment, is a form of spurious argument where a position in a dispute introduces favourable details or excludes unfavourable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.
The lack of criticism may be a simple oversight (e.g., a reference to common sense) or an application of a double standard.
Read more about Special Pleading: Examples
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or pleading:
“The universal social pressure upon women to be all alike, and do all the same things, and to be content with identical restrictions, has resulted not only in terrible suffering in the lives of exceptional women, but also in the loss of unmeasured feminine values in special gifts. The Drama of the Woman of Genius has too often been a tragedy of misshapen and perverted power.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“Sweet, let me go! Sweet, let me go!
What do you mean to vex me so?
Cease, cease, cease your pleading force!”
—Unknown. Sweet, Let Me Go! (L. 1–3)