What it is
Treating separable positions as a bundle that must be accepted or rejected together.
In the wild
If you accept the first point you must accept the rest.
How to answer it
Split the bundle and take a position on each item separately.
Values and premises
Package deal fallacy
Also called False conjunction of positions
In depth
Origin and naming
Meir Sternberg staked a claim to the name in Hebrews between Cultures (1998), describing a 'tendency to overconnection among essentially independent variables'. Ayn Rand had used the same phrase earlier for a related but distinct error — bundling dissimilar concepts as if they were interchangeable — in Philosophy: Who Needs It.
More places it shows up
'You can't support the carbon tax and fly to conferences' treats a policy view and a travel habit as one contract, each a referendum on the other.
A hiring manager assumes that if the candidate is strong on system design they must also lead meetings well, and is puzzled by the performance review.
In a family argument, accepting the medical advice on the vaccine is presented as signing on to everything the health ministry has ever said.
A student is told that valuing labor rights means opposing free trade — the two come as a set menu, no substitutions.
How to spot it
- Listen for the word 'then' doing the work of an argument: 'if you accept A, then B follows' — with no link shown.
- The speaker treats your partial agreement as full subscription.
- Try splitting the bundle: if the response is 'you can't have one without the other' without a reason, you've found the package.