Argument to moderation
informal fallacy which asserts that the truth can be found as a compromise between two opposite positions
Argument to moderation (Latin: argumentum ad temperantiam)—also known as the false compromise, argument from middle ground, fallacy of gray, middle ground fallacy, or golden mean fallacy—is the fallacy of assuming that the truth or best solution always lies in the middle of two opposing positions.
It does not suggest that an argument for the middle solution or for a compromise is always fallacious, but rather that it is wrong to assume that compromise is correct in every situation. It thus applies primarily in cases where insisting upon a compromise position is ill-informed, unfeasible, or impossible, or where an argument is incorrectly made that a position is correct simply because it is in the middle.
For example, if one person correctly claims the daytime sky on Earth is blue and another incorrectly claims it is yellow, an argument to moderation would falsely conclude that the sky is green, an intermediate color, simply because it lies between the two claims.
“Argument to moderation” enters the record as informal fallacy which asserts that the truth can be found as a compromise between two opposite positions. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Argument, moderation and informal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q337980. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Argument to moderation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.