You’re making an error of the type (a is responsible for c) therefore (b cannot be responsible for c).
Multiple things have to conspire for a person to make any decision—if I had not learned the recipe from my family, I would not have been able to make delicious cranberry jello mold yesterday. And if I had not been in the kitchen looking around for a desert to make for movie night, I also would not have made delicious cranberry jello mold. Laid out in terms of jello mold, it is clearly a mistake to say “That I learned the family recipe is a fact about me, only relevant because of the way it affected me. Me standing in the kitchen preparing for movie night is not the cause of this jello mold at all!”
I’m not making that error because my conclusion is not “b cannot be responsible for c”.
My point is that if she was to identify the external situation as the (main, etc.,) cause of her nervousness, her stated reason should refer to the elevator situation. But her reason actually refers to a totally different situation!
If in general it’s impossible to decompose the cause of something into external or internal, then the Fundamental Attributation Fallacy is not a fallacy. I don’t wish to make so controversial an argument here, so I merely pointed out that if it is possible to decompose in such a way, then her argument is inconsistant with the view on the decomposition she is supposed to have in this instance.
My point is that if she was to identify the external situation as the (main, etc.,) cause of her nervousness, her stated reason should refer to the elevator situation
Ah, okay. I thought you were actually defending the fundamental attribution error, when it turned out you were just critiquing her communication. Or at least, that’s what I hope. You still seem to be focusing on “the cause” a bit oddly—what are you going to use the cause for?
Speaking of which :)
If in general it’s impossible to decompose the cause of something into external or internal, then the Fundamental Attributation Fallacy is not a fallacy
Well, when it’s right, it’s not a fallacy. For example, if someone eats my jello mold and thinks “man, he must know a good recipe,” that’s successfully identifying an internal cause, which nobody could have any quibble with.
The trouble comes in two ways: the first is when people just do straight-up classification into types. “He’s angry because he’s a member of the type ‘angry people.’” is not a good guess, because people are more complicated than that, but somehow (cough brains are lazy) this guess comes up a lot.
The second kind of trouble is when people think they see an internal cause, and then proceed to ignore external causes. From the wikipedia article: “Subjects read pro- and anti-Fidel Castro essays [...] when the subjects were told that the writer’s positions were determined by a coin toss, they still rated writers who spoke in favor of Castro as having, on average, a more positive attitude towards Castro.” Weird, right? These people just ignored information.
In the anecdote at hand, it’s totally fine to say “she was nervous? I bet she had a bad experience in the past.” I mean, one has to keep in mind that it’s less certain than the recipe thing, but that’s fine. A “fundamental attribution error” type guess would be “she was nervous? She must be of the type ‘nervous people’,” which is still a well-formed guess but is made by the human brain more often than it should be. And then the fundamental attribution error par excellence would be to say “she was nervous because she’s a member of type ‘nervous people,’ the situation didn’t cause it.”
You seem to be confused about “the situation causing her nervousness” and how that relates to the mentioning of her previous experience at a party. I really don’t see how
But her reason actually refers to a totally different situation!
seems like strong evidence for the “cause” (I agree with what buybuydandavis says above about the use of the word in this situation) being the woman in question.
It seems obvious to me that she has beliefs based on her experience at the party that make the elevator situation worrying. This is not a difference in type from, say, one’s beliefs about what a gun looks like informing one’s nervousness in a situation in which one sees a gun, and I think it would be pretty silly to say that one’s external situation was not the “cause” of one’s nervousness in that case.
You’re making an error of the type (a is responsible for c) therefore (b cannot be responsible for c).
Multiple things have to conspire for a person to make any decision—if I had not learned the recipe from my family, I would not have been able to make delicious cranberry jello mold yesterday. And if I had not been in the kitchen looking around for a desert to make for movie night, I also would not have made delicious cranberry jello mold. Laid out in terms of jello mold, it is clearly a mistake to say “That I learned the family recipe is a fact about me, only relevant because of the way it affected me. Me standing in the kitchen preparing for movie night is not the cause of this jello mold at all!”
I’m not making that error because my conclusion is not “b cannot be responsible for c”.
My point is that if she was to identify the external situation as the (main, etc.,) cause of her nervousness, her stated reason should refer to the elevator situation. But her reason actually refers to a totally different situation!
If in general it’s impossible to decompose the cause of something into external or internal, then the Fundamental Attributation Fallacy is not a fallacy. I don’t wish to make so controversial an argument here, so I merely pointed out that if it is possible to decompose in such a way, then her argument is inconsistant with the view on the decomposition she is supposed to have in this instance.
Ah, okay. I thought you were actually defending the fundamental attribution error, when it turned out you were just critiquing her communication. Or at least, that’s what I hope. You still seem to be focusing on “the cause” a bit oddly—what are you going to use the cause for?
Speaking of which :)
Well, when it’s right, it’s not a fallacy. For example, if someone eats my jello mold and thinks “man, he must know a good recipe,” that’s successfully identifying an internal cause, which nobody could have any quibble with.
The trouble comes in two ways: the first is when people just do straight-up classification into types. “He’s angry because he’s a member of the type ‘angry people.’” is not a good guess, because people are more complicated than that, but somehow (cough brains are lazy) this guess comes up a lot.
The second kind of trouble is when people think they see an internal cause, and then proceed to ignore external causes. From the wikipedia article: “Subjects read pro- and anti-Fidel Castro essays [...] when the subjects were told that the writer’s positions were determined by a coin toss, they still rated writers who spoke in favor of Castro as having, on average, a more positive attitude towards Castro.” Weird, right? These people just ignored information.
In the anecdote at hand, it’s totally fine to say “she was nervous? I bet she had a bad experience in the past.” I mean, one has to keep in mind that it’s less certain than the recipe thing, but that’s fine. A “fundamental attribution error” type guess would be “she was nervous? She must be of the type ‘nervous people’,” which is still a well-formed guess but is made by the human brain more often than it should be. And then the fundamental attribution error par excellence would be to say “she was nervous because she’s a member of type ‘nervous people,’ the situation didn’t cause it.”
You seem to be confused about “the situation causing her nervousness” and how that relates to the mentioning of her previous experience at a party. I really don’t see how
seems like strong evidence for the “cause” (I agree with what buybuydandavis says above about the use of the word in this situation) being the woman in question.
It seems obvious to me that she has beliefs based on her experience at the party that make the elevator situation worrying. This is not a difference in type from, say, one’s beliefs about what a gun looks like informing one’s nervousness in a situation in which one sees a gun, and I think it would be pretty silly to say that one’s external situation was not the “cause” of one’s nervousness in that case.
The problem is that her beliefs are inaccurate.