# Package deal fallacy

*Also called: False conjunction of positions*

- **Cluster:** Values and premises — Hidden value claims doing the arguing
- **Page:** https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/package-deal/
- **In Arabic:** https://fallacy.wiki/ar/fallacy/package-deal.md
- **Licence:** CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## 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.

## 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.

## Nearby

- [False dilemma](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/false-dilemma.md)
- [Loaded question](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/loaded-question.md)
- [Circular reasoning](https://fallacy.wiki/fallacy/circular.md)

## Read more

- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package-deal_fallacy)

---

From fallacy.wiki — a bilingual field guide to 91 logical fallacies, published by phi holdings. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse freely with attribution to fallacy.wiki.