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Appeal to Ignorance, Peggy Noonan

Maximum danger

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When I sit down to make up examples of fallacies for quizzes and tests, I try to make them fairly obvious.  Since the course I teach fallacies in is an introductory one, the idea is for the students to recognize a systematic argument problem, even if they may not run into one so obvious.  But then again, I'm often wrong about that.  Peggy Noonan, of Bush = Superman fame ("For a moment I though of earnest Clark Kent moving, at the moment of maximum danger, to shed his suit, tear open his shirt and reveal the big "S" on his chest."), forgets who was president on 11 September 2001.  She writes:

Back to the Christmas gathering. There was no grousing about John McCain, and considerable grousing about the Bush administration, but it was almost always followed by one sentence, and this is more or less what it was: "But he kept us safe." In the seven years since 9/11, there were no further attacks on American soil. This is an argument that's been around for a while but is newly re-emerging as the final argument for Mr. Bush: the one big thing he had to do after 9/11, the single thing he absolutely had to do, was keep it from happening again. And so far he has. It is unknown, and perhaps can't be known, whether this was fully due to the government's efforts, or the luck of the draw, or a combination of luck and effort. And it not only can't be fully known by the public, it can hardly be fully known by the players at all levels of government. They can't know, for instance, of a potential terrorist cell that didn't come together because of their efforts.

But the meme will likely linger. There's a rough justice with the American people. If a president presides over prosperity, whether he had anything to do with it or not, he gets the credit. If he has a recession, he gets the blame. The same with war, and terrorist attacks. We have not been attacked since 9/11. Someone—someones—did something right.

Someone may point out that the second paragraph is in the voice of the American people.  But that's just a pundit's trick; put the claim in the minds of the American people, and it's no longer really you talking, it's the American people.  That tactic, I think, ought to be illegal.  Besides, in Noonan's formulation, it's just contradictory.  George W. Bush was President on 9/11.  Shouldn't the American people blame him for that?  Rough justice.  Doesn't the Wall Street Journal employ editors?

Back to the point.  Noonan makes the not-too-controversial assertion that no one can really know whether or not our efforts in the war on terror have been successful.  To that I would add two things, by the way.  First, she should mention that it might be the case that nothing was planned in the United States, and that our reaction–the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan–was the objective.  Second, we have been attacked everywhere but here.  So it's false that we haven't been attacked.  We have, just not here.  Alright, now back to the point. 

With the standard set up of the argument from ignorance–no one knows one way or the other–she then, in the voice of the American people, a fallacy loving people apparently, draws the conclusion that the Bush administration has done something right, something to protect us.  If a really rich woman at a Christmas party full of Republicans is going to speak for the American people as a whole, can she please not make them sound so dumb?

Ad hominem tu quoque, General discussion, Good Arguments

G-O-R-E

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Many readers of this site know that the fallacious variety of ad hominem argument admits of many different types–the abusive, the circumstantial, the tu quoque, and much much more.  Some friends of The Non Sequitur, Scott Aikin and Bob Talisse, have written an illuminating and entertaining piece on the tu quoque variety for the magazine Scientific American Mind.  Read it here.

For those who don't remember, one is guilty of the the ad hominem tu quoque variety of fallacy when one charges one's opponent with hyprocrisy when such hypocrisy is irrelevant to the strength, cogency, validity or whatever of the opponent's argument.  Al Gore's riding in a private jet does not make Al Gore's claims about global warming false. Sure, it's rhetorically effective to talk about Al Gore's private jet riding, it's even fun, but so are a lot of sophistries.  That's why they're called "sophistries."  But, like all informal fallacies, it's a kind of cheating–and cheating is a kind of stealing in that one claims to have demonstrated what one clearly has not–and, as the mindless dogma of liberal academia has it, stealing is wrong.  In this case, one claims to have shown something about climate change by showing something about Al Gore.  To say anything worthwhile about climate change, however, you have to do the necessary work–pointing out Al Gore's electricity usage does not count.  

In addition to discussing the general questions of relevance central to the definition of the ad hominem tu quoque argument, Aikin and Talisse also point out that sometimes the hyprocisy may underscore rather than contradict the hypocrite's point. So, for instance, if a smoker recommends someone quit or not start for health reasons, we might look at that apparent hypocrisy more creatively.  Their not being able to quit underscores one of the dangers of smoking.

In addition to that insightful point, what is most interesting about the article are the clueless and unhinged responses in the comment section.  Some people simply cannot read the four letter string G-O-R-E without losing it.  

Accident, Contradictions, Equivocation, Red Herring, Weak Analogy

Plagiarism

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Paying a stranger to write a paper for you when you're a college student is called plagiarism.  The other day NPR's On the Media did a story on someone who ghost wrote what he called "model papers."  When pressed about what would justify his actions, he produced a blizzard of sophistry:

BOB GARFIELD: Let me just quote from you here. Quote, “Writing model term papers is above-board and perfectly legal. Thanks to the First Amendment it’s protected speech, right up there with neo-Nazi rallies, tobacco company press releases and those ‘9/11 was an inside job’ bumper stickers.”

So, I mean, I don't want to be putting words in your mouth, but I think what you’re saying is legal but repulsive, sleazy.

NICK MAMATAS: Oh, sure.

BOB GARFIELD: Unethical, morally disgraceful. Am I leaving anything out?

NICK MAMATAS: No, that pretty much sums it up, yeah.

BOB GARFIELD: So Nick, how do you rationalize your behavior? I mean, it sounds kind of whorish to me.

NICK MAMATAS: Mm, well again, I also think that prostitution should be legal, and I've written several term papers about that over the years.

As far as my own work in term papers, basically I felt my other writing was more important. You know, everyone makes these decisions. What about people who work in munitions factories, or who work for defense contractors?

So we all make these decisions. It’s just a cost benefit analysis. In the end, I felt I benefited from writing these papers ‘cause it allowed me to work at home and write novels and short stories and articles. And the people who were buying the papers, well, they – that was their decision. They could take that as a model paper, and many of them did. They could hand it in and roll the dice, ‘cause I was always happy, always thrilled, actually, to hand in a paper to a professor. If the client, you know, was trying to pull one over on me, or was even nasty to me sometimes, I'd just sort of like secretly fax it.

So Mr. Mamatas seems to think that ghost writing term papers is morally disgraceful, yet despite not being morally justified, it's morally justified.  What follows are his justifications and in parentheses what I think is their appropriate interpretation.

(1) He was able to do his other writing with the income from writing "model papers" (I only lied and cheated because it benefited me!—something is morally justified if you benefit in some way from it).

(2) Everyone makes cost/benefit decisions (a general and irrelevant rule which doesn't apply to my circumstance in particular applies to it).

(3) Other people work for munitions factories and defense contractors (other people have jobs I have improperly characterized as morally questionable so that makes it ok for me to have a self-evidently morally unjustifiable job).

(4) Whether the paper which was produced for the sole purposes of cheating–otherwise there would be no income, as professors provide model papers all of the time–was used for its stated purpose depended on the person who turned it in, not on the person who profited from that person's attempted deceit (I produced papers for entertainment purposes only, should anyone actually use it for its intended purpose, the purpose for which I produced it and the reason I was paid for it, well, I can't be held responsible for that).

(5) There is no honor among thieves, if you're mean to Mr.Mamatas, he'll turn you in (I'm not only a dishonest person in regards to honest people, I'm a dishonest person in regards to dishonest people–so it's ok).

Ignoratio Elenchi, Straw Man, William Kristol

Strategery

Much like everyone else, terrorists aim to achieve an objective.  They are not extra-rational, off-the-charts insane, quite often the contrary.  They are capable of some rather cold calculation.  The colder the better (for them).  The immediate objective of most terrorist acts is to bring violence upon people.  Who the people are doesn't necessarily matter.  But the second objective of the terrorist is that the response to their terrorism further their cause.  So if terrorists from region x or ethnicity y or religion z kill a bunch of people of a different region, ethnicity, or religion, they want as their second objective indiscriminate violence to be brought upon them and their non-terrorist fellows.  That violence will create more sympathy for their cause, more terrorists, and so forth.  Why?  Because that violence (1) legitimizes their cause; (2) treats them as combatants, in a war, which is what they want.  Someone explain this to that maniac Bill Kristol, who just does not get it.  He writes:

Consider first an op-ed article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times by Martha Nussbaum, a well-known professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. The article was headlined “Terrorism in India has many faces.” But one face that Nussbaum fails to mention specifically is that of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamic terror group originating in Pakistan that seems to have been centrally involved in the attack on Mumbai.

This is because Nussbaum’s main concern is not explaining or curbing Islamic terror. Rather, she writes that “if, as now seems likely, last week’s terrible events in Mumbai were the work of Islamic terrorists, that’s more bad news for India’s minority Muslim population.” She deplores past acts of Hindu terror against India’s Muslims. She worries about Muslim youths being rounded up on suspicion of terrorism with little or no evidence. And she notes that this is “an analogue to the current ugly phenomenon of racial profiling in the United States.”

Quite the contrary.  Nussbaum's goal, unlike Kristol's, is not to create more terrorists by treating every muslim as complicit in the actions a few.  Kristol's bloodthirsty cluelessness is in even greater evidence in the following passage:

Jim Leach is also a professor, at Princeton, but he’s better known as a former moderate Republican congressman from Iowa who supported Barack Obama this year. His contribution over the weekend was to point out on Politico.com that “the Mumbai catastrophe underscores the importance of vocabulary.” This wouldn’t have been my first thought. But Leach believes it’s very important that we consider the Mumbai attack not as an act of “war” but as an act of “barbarism.”

Why? “The former implies a cause: a national or tribal or ethnic rationale that infuses a sacrificial action with some group’s view of heroism; the latter is an assault on civilized values, everyone’s. … To the degree barbarism is a part of the human condition, Mumbai must be understood not just as an act related to a particular group but as an outbreak of pent-up irrationality that can occur anywhere, anytime. … It may be true that the perpetrators viewed themselves as somehow justified in attacking Indians and visiting foreigners, particularly perhaps Americans, British and Israeli nationals. But a response that is the least nationalistic is likely to be the most effective.”

If, as Leach says, “it may be true” the perpetrators viewed themselves as justified in their attacks, doesn’t this mean that they did in fact have a “rationale” that “infused” their action?

Leach's point is that these terrorists should not be characterized as legitimate political agents involved in a war with the West of us.  Of course they have a rationale, and a purpose, but it's one that ought not to be entertained by granting them privilege of our bombs.

Op-Eds and other opinions, Unclassifiable

de Malo

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NPR's Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, reflected in his weekly essay about the nature of evil and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.  He writes:

I get increasingly uncomfortable with the convention of journalism that requires us to say that so far, we don't know the motives of the people who carried out this week's attacks in Mumbai.

A word like "motive" seems to imply there was reason or purpose. It suggests that, however profane their actions, the terrorists had the incentive of some goal in mind.

But after covering too many killings, as a reporter or host, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Oklahoma City or Somalia, I've come to the conclusion that the perpetrators of such crimes might just be … evil.

Evil is a word that many people of my generation shrink from using. It seems so imprecise and uneducated — biblical, rather than cerebral and informed.

But there are times and crimes that remind me how often the Bible gets it right.

I wonder in the first place which part of the Bible he's talking about here.  Is it this part?

“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. 11 “If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. 12 “However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 “When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. 14 “Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. 15 “Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby. 16 “Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 “But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, 18 so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God.

Beyond the mysterious reference to the Bible, Simon urges that we adopt that very Nine-Twelve understanding of the world.  Don't bother understanding someone's motives and purposes, call them evil and be done with it.  In my book, one is evil on account of one's motives and purposes (as well as of course one's actions).  If one, for instance, lies, cheats, steals, or kills to glorify the purposes of the Lord, then that person is not evil, because his motives are pure.  That's an important difference.    

Reporting, Weak Analogy

Never been kissed

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Here's a couple that makes a Jane Austin novel look like an adult film.  

The "no-kissing" rule came up as a way to prevent things from getting out of hand.

You see, Fabien and LaLuz both teach abstinence courses to Chicago Public Schools teens. And they say they practice what they preach.

To avoid temptation while dating, they made sure they were never alone with each other in a house. When they watched movies on the couch, they snuggled sitting straight up, never lying down.

"It really tested us and encouraged us to grow closer in our hearts and our minds, just expressing things verbally," Fabien said.

He found other ways to show LaLuz his passion—like by cleaning her car. And washing the dishes.

Despite abstaining, they have no anxieties about their upcoming Bahamas honeymoon.

Yes, they've heard "test drive the car before you buy," but LaLuz has her own analogy.

"You can't take the car out of the parking lot until you pay for it," she said.

You can't really test drive the car in the parking lot however.  But maybe women (or men) aren't like property in the first place. 

Anyway–here's an interesting article about the success or (rather the failure) of abstinence-only education programs.  

George Will, Ignoratio Elenchi

Fight for your right to party

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Here's a fun assignment.  Think of all of things you can do with yourself, then ask, do I have a constitutional right to do this? If it's not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution in unambiguous language, like the second amendment's unequivocal guarantee of your individual and unrestricted right to pack heat, then no, you don't have a right to it.  The second part was kind of a joke.  The first part not–you'll find that you have no explicit constitutional right to do most of the things you do.  So the fact that something you do or can do is not explicitly mentioned in the constitution does not ipso facto mean it's not a guaranteed right.  Or so I would think.  Not so much George Will.

In Roe, the court said that the 14th Amendment guarantee of "due process" implies a general right of privacy, within which lurks a hitherto unnoticed abortion right that, although it is "fundamental," the Framers never mentioned. And this right somehow contains the trimester scheme of abortion regulations.

Since 1973 the court has been entangled in the legislative function of adumbrating an abortion code the details of which are, Wilkinson says, "not even remotely suggested by the text or history of the 14th Amendment." Parental consent? Spousal consent? Spousal notification? Parental notification? Waiting periods? Lack of funding for nontherapeutic abortions? Partial-birth abortion procedures? Zoning ordinances that exclude abortion facilities? The court has tried to tickle answers for these and other policy questions from the Constitution.

Last thing first.  According to the Constitution, it's the judiciary's job to interpret the law.  The Supreme Court interprets all laws in virtue of their consistency with the U.S. Constitution.  That's its job.  Second,  did you think of any of the things  you do which aren't explicitly mentioned as rights?  

George Will, Stanley Fish, Things that are false

Job Market

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Anyone who has gone through the relentless misery known as the academic job market knows that one's political affiliations are the farthest thing from one's mind (and the least likely subject of conversation at any of one's many interviews).  One worries rather about the really long CV of one's competitors.  Having gone through that myself, I can say that George Will's whining about ideological imbalance in the humanities is uninformed and silly.  Speaking of a recent and most likely annoying book by Stanley Fish, he suggests that one ought to study the causes and consequences of there being so many lefties in academia.  Laying out his case for affirmative action for conservatives, Will writes: 

Fish does not dispute the fact that large majorities of humanities and social science professors are on the left. But about the causes and consequences of this, he airily says: It is all "too complicated" to tell in his book, other than to say that the G.I. Bill began the inclusion of "hitherto underrepresented and therefore politically active" groups.

Then, promiscuously skewering straw men, he says, "these were not planned events" and universities do not "resolve" to hire liberals and there is no "vast left-wing conspiracy" and inquiring into a job applicant's politics is not "allowed" and "the fact of a predominantly liberal faculty says nothing necessarily about what the faculty teaches." Note Fish's obfuscating "necessarily."

The question is not whether the fact "necessarily" says something about teaching but whether the fact really does have pedagogic consequences. About the proliferation of race and gender courses, programs and even departments, Fish says there are two relevant questions: Are there programs "with those names that are more political than academic?" And do such programs "have to be more political than academic?" He says the answer to the first is yes, to the second, no.

The "consequences," however, of this phenomenon have been studied.  Turns out, say some, students are unlikely to be indoctrinated.  I know I say this a lot, but I'm tired of being called an indoctrinator: I can't even indoctrinate my students to underline or italicize the title of that leftist handbook, The Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics.  When they get that, perhaps will move on to my views about race and gender. 

General discussion, Plain Bad Arguments

White Christmas

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Daniel Henninger of the L'Osservatore Romano Wall Street Journal opines on the true cause of our current economic crisis.  He writes:

Notwithstanding the cardboard Santas who seem to have arrived in stores this year near Halloween, the holiday season starts in seven days with Thanksgiving. And so it will come to pass once again that many people will spend four weeks biting on tongues lest they say "Merry Christmas" and perchance, give offense. Christmas, the holiday that dare not speak its name.

This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin — fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.

One had better explain that.

Yes indeed.  One had better explain how a newspaper with "Wall Street" in the title has published an op-ed linking the simple courtesy of not wishing non Christians a happy-holiday-they-don't-celebrate and the various and nefarious causes of the current economic meltdown.  Someone had better explain that.

Via commenter Gary and the rest of the baffled blogosphere.

General discussion, Thomas Friedman

One can only dream

If you haven't seen the Yes Men in action, then I recommend you do.  Since explaining what they do would ruin it, here's an example of their latest work.

Go read it here.  Enjoy the op-eds especially.  Here's an excerpt from "Tom Friedman's":

In any case, I have made a decision: as of today, I will no longer write in this or any other newspaper. I will immediately desist from writing any more books about how it’s time for everyone to climb on board the globalization high-speed monorail to the future. I will keep my opinions to myself. (My wife suggested that I try not to even form opinions, but I think she might have another agenda.)

Baffled? I don’t blame you. So I’ll cite some facts to support my decision — a practice, I must admit, I have too seldom followed.

Let’s start with the invasion itself. I was pretty much all for it. Mind you, I was not one of the pundits, reporters, or public figures who said that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. I knew better — but I said it didn’t matter!

Back in February of 2003, I wrote in this space: “Saddam does not threaten us today. He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice — but it’s a legitimate choice.” In other words, we should invade a sovereign state and replace its government in order to remake the world more to our liking.

Now the simple fact is, an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state is a war crime, even when linked to grand ideas of the future of mankind. In fact, that’s exactly what Hitler did, for exactly the same reasons. The Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal called it the “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

What was I thinking? And more importantly, why didn’t anyone stop me?

One can only dream.