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Volume 4 Number 14 June
9, 2006 |
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Name that fallacy A rollicking romp through the wacky world of
fallacious reasoning If you've ever taken even an introductory course in logic, then you've at least been formally introduced to logical fallacies, those little bugaboos that turn argumentative prose into gibberish. Even if you haven't taken such a course, you've informally met fallacies thousands of times, as long as you've listened to political speeches, watched or read advertisements, or even read the occasional ethics columnist. We all, even those of us who should know better, use fallacies every day -- sometimes inadvertently; sometimes not. And, we all encounter them in the course of our daily activities -- whether from our spouses, children, bosses, employees, political "leaders," and our beloved advertisements, whether in print or on the aptly named "boob tube." There are scores of well-known fallacies, but even if you don't know them by name and can't explain them, they often ring false when someone tries to use them on you. Knowing their names and how they work helps you to refute the arguments -- or at least ignore them. Since ethics relies on principles and logic in order to reach acceptable conclusions, knowing how fallacies work can save you a lot of pointless "discussion." Argument Ad Hominem: This one comes in various shapes and sizes, but basically tries to refute or denigrate an argument by reference to the person making it, rather than the facts or logic involved. I encounter it frequently when having a discussion with someone, either in person, online, or by email. They make a claim. I refute it. They make a counter-claim. I refute it. They respond "Now, you're beginning to sound like [insert the name of the demonized person or group du jour]." If they want to be more emphatic, they might elevate it to "This just shows that you're a [again insert a demon du jour]." Basically, the other person is rejecting the validity of my argument based on my alleged membership in some group, which is, of course, totally irrelevant to the veracity of my facts or strength of my logic. By taking the emphasis off their own weak argument and placing it on my attributes, they try to deflect attention. From this point on, the argument is all downhill. Straw Man The old "straw man" fallacy, a very common one, consists of overstating or mis-stating your opponent's position -- often to the point of caricature -- and then arguing against the caricature you've created, instead of what your opponent's position really is. This is most easily done if the opponent isn't present -- unless you have a cable "news" chatter show where you can just yell "shut up" at someone who claims you're distorting their view. Example: Someone suggests a single-payer health-care system. Someone who opposes him claims: "Well, Hoople is in favor of a Soviet-style government-run health care, and we all know that it was a failure for the Soviets. It will be a failure here too." The person, of course, suggested nothing of the sort, but the opponent was able to knock over the straw man he set up. Biased Sample This is the fallacy that is at the heart of prejudice and bigotry, and works on the theory that if some members of a group have a certain characteristic, then all members of the group share the same characteristic. At its most extreme, it supposes conclusions about a group based on a very limited sample. The easiest place to find this is in online product reviews. Go to almost any Web site where members of the public can post "reviews" and you will find at least one -- perhaps more -- that claims that the product is totally worthless because of the sad experience of one person. Compounding that extreme is when the sad experience happened not to the person, but to his "sister's boyfriend's father." The truth is that the failure of one device among thousands doesn't mean that the rest of them are worthless also. In the political arena, the use of this fallacy is often calculated and cynical. Suppose there is a wetlands protection bill on the table. The side opposing it will drag in poor Grannie Smith who will have to give up the outhouse she and her family have had on the banks of the local river for a hundred years. Grannie Smith appears before the committee, red-eyed and sniffling, and tells of the unspeakable hardship she will have, if she has to relocate the facility. This biased sample, the opponents claim, is proof that the bill will create a tremendous hardship on everyone in the community. They fail to mention that 99.999 percent of the people will benefit if there is no poop in the river. Petitio Principii (Begging the Question) Before we start discussing this, let's clear something up. "Beg the question" is not the same as "raise the question," although it is increasingly used in that sense by people who want to sound erudite. "The forecasters are predicting rain for tomorrow. This begs the question of whether we ought to cancel the picnic now, while people can still make other plans." This is an incorrect use of the phrase. It should be "this raises the question." It's easier to understand the fallacy when you use the Latin term "petition principii," which means "appeal to the principle." Basically what it refers to is using the question on the table to answer the question on the table. In other words, an endless loop of logic. A classic example: Q. Is abortion justified? A. No, because it's murder. Unfortunately for this person, murder is best defined as the unjustified killing of a human being. Therefore, the person has just argued that abortion is unjustified because it is unjustified. There may be good arguments why abortion is unjustified. This isn't one of them. "Abortion is murder" is, at best, a conclusion, and not an argument. Argumentum Ad Populum The appeal to popularity is very seductive. "Nine out of ten people prefer KrustyBurgers." Well, then you're just an idiot if you don't, aren't you? In an culture where "fitting in" has become the national pastime, this sort of statistic has a magical allure. The only ones who can resist it are the self-styled contrarians. Even if they adored KrustyBurgers, they would say they hated them -- merely because everyone else liked them. And so, auto companies importune us to buy a particular car because it's one of the best-selling, and those with ideas to sell show us poll results that indicate we're in a dangerous minority, and we'd better jump on the bandwagon -- or wave goodbye forever. Politicians use this to maximum advantage. They sponsor poll after shoddy poll to convince us that everyone else hates their opponent in the hopes that we won't want to be the only one voting for him on election day. It's even more insidious when the pollsters solicit opinion on something that's a matter of fact. In this case, polls are totally worthless. A thing is either true or it isn't. The fact that a majority of people, or even most people, says or believes it's not doesn't mean anything -- except perhaps that the people are misinformed. Argumentum ad Consequentiam The Appeal to Consequences has a certain, pardon the expression, appeal. None of us wants something bad to happen. But, in reality, the consequences of an argument or belief have nothing to do with its veracity. Just because believing X has an unsavory outcome, it's no reason to say that X is, ipso facto, false. A current example: "If I believe in evolution, it means I'm descended from an ape. And I don't want to be descended from no ape." The speaker's preference about his phylogenic provenance have absolutely nothing to do with the truth or falsity of evolutionary theory. That has to be decided on much more solid evidence. Argumentum ad Nazium This name for the fallacy is a neologism, but can also be referred to as "Guilt by Association." The Nazis believed X or did X. Therefore, X is wrong. I used to go to great lengths to caution my students that "People you like aren't always right, and people you don't like aren't always wrong." (Although lately I've come to question my own advice. Some people seem to have an unbroken string of being wrong.) We see this fallacy a lot in discussions around euthanasia and assisted suicide. Someone will announce that the Nazis practiced euthanasia, and look where that led. So, we shouldn't even consider it. Just because the Nazis called the killing of disabled people "euthanasia" doesn't mean that it was -- any more than because they called the gas chambers "showers" meant that they were real showers. Their program of killing the disabled was merely another form of eugenic extermination dressed up as "euthanasia," and was done not for the benefit of those killed, but rather to "improve" society. No one would be taken seriously if they claimed that we shouldn't take showers because the Nazis killed people under the guise of giving them showers in the death camps. Knowing how this fallacy works is important in light of Godwin's Law, which states: "The longer any Internet discussion goes on, the probability that someone will make a comparison to the Nazis approaches one." Weak Analogy "All analogies limp," an old philosophy professor of mine used to bellow at me (back when professors were allowed to bellow at students without being brought up on charges), "but, Vogt, yours was carried in on a stretcher." The problem with analogies is that they're not binary -- either true or false -- but run along a continuum from weak to strong. Weak analogies are seductive in that they can trap the unwary with seemingly impeccable, but terribly misleading logic. I'm sure you've seen the gleeful "analysis" that makes the rounds of the Internet from time to time. It catalogues the number of people killed by handguns and then catalogues the number of people "killed" by doctors, which is, for the purposes of the email, is dramatically higher. Then, it suggests we'd be better off banning doctors than banning handguns. One problem here is the two types of "killing" are incommensurate -- doctors don't "kill" patients in the same sense that handguns kill people. Some people may die while under a doctor's care, but that's not quite the same as taking a bullet to the brain, while sitting on your porch sipping a Diet Dr. Pepper and minding your own business. There may be the occasional doctor who just drives by and pops a few rounds into an unsuspecting neighbor, but that's pretty rare. Even if it were more common, the analogy is pretty weak. The role of doctors and the role of handguns in society is quite different, and doctors in general do a tremendous amount of good. The harm, if any, that might derive from tighter handgun control pales in comparison to the harm that would be caused by banning doctors. The whole email is patently silly, but still manages to gull quite a few people -- mostly those, I suspect, who haven't "descended" very far from the apes. (Note: Before you crank up the word processor with your second-amendment screed, I'm not taking a position on gun control; merely pointing out the fallacy involved in this email.) Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc For the Latin impaired, this is translated "After this, therefore because of this." This is one of my favorite fallacies -- and also one of the most popular. At the heart of the fallacy is the claim that because B follows A, B was caused by A. "We took prayer out of the schools, and since then the divorce rate has been going steadily up." The chronological coincidence doesn't even imply, much less prove, any causal relationship. A higher divorce rate could come from any number of things, including longer term societal changes that were underway long before the Supreme Court ruling on prayer, as well as the fact that many states made their divorce laws more lenient. In some states, it used to be the case that the only acceptable reason for divorce was adultery, leading some people to actually commit adultery, or pretend to and lie about it, simply to get divorced. Now, people can just claim "irreconcilable differences." Any claim that A caused B requires some reasonable argument of causality, and perhaps proof of it, and not merely a chronological sequence. Slippery Slope Another all-time favorite. The slippery-slope claim is that if we do A, which is somewhat acceptable, then there's not reason not to do B, which is slightly less acceptable. And, if we do B, then there's no reason not to do C, which is even less acceptable. Before you know it, the proponents say, we'll be doing Z, and Z is absolutely gross. No one wants to do that. We see this argument frequently when we discuss voluntary euthanasia. "Hah," say the detractors. "If we let you practice euthanasia on people who are suffering terribly and who ask for it, the next thing you know you'll be practicing it on unconscious people, and then on people who are merely poor and unconscious or who have no one to speak for them. And, then doctors will be killing people willy-nilly just to make a few bucks or because the person's existence is inconvenient." And, of course, this is the point at which they will resort to the Argumentum Ad Nazium (see above) and will explain fallaciously how the Nazis' program of "euthanasia" led inevitably to the death camps. The implication is that once we start along these lines, we will lose all control -- so it's better not to start at all. The argument is nonsense. We allow doctors to cut organs out of patients and remove limbs, when necessary. Hospitals and the medical community have managed to put extensive controls in place to ensure that healthy organs and limbs aren't removed. While that system isn't perfect, generally we do know how to manage these sorts of things. Willy-nilly killing isn't the inevitable and unstoppable outcome of voluntary euthanasia. So, the slippery slope argument fails. This is just a sampling from scores of delicious fallacies. There are many more. Try googling on "logical fallacies" and follow the links there. Some of the lists and explanations are very good. Next week, I'll talk more about some of these fallacies and show home sometimes arguments are painted as the above fallacies, where they're really not fallacious at all. |
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© Copyright 2006 Carlton Vogt |