All posts by John Casey

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General discussion

Intellectual

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Here's a somewhat open-ended question, borrowed again from Bob Somerby, the Daily Howler:

First, a fairly simple question: With intellectual giants like Nozick and Rawls defining the world of “political philosophy,” how can it be that our daily political discourse seems to be drawn from the world’s largest sandbox? If giants like these have been striding the earth, consuming themselves with political theory, how can it be that the world’s dimmest, most childish, most unbalanced minds define our public discussion?

Here's my sense of this question.  Very few academics participate in political discussion for the reason Somerby mentions.  To elaborate: Engaging with a type like Goldberg or Will or Chris Matthews seems like picking on a child.  It's too easy to knock holes in shallw punditry, because, after all, it's shallow punditry.  Academics know that serious scholarship of the confidence-inducing kind involves a lot of hours of boring, hard work, and ever-so-subtle distinctions.  I can't think of one political show (even Charlie Rose's hour long program) that would have the patience for the kind of necessary parsing that academics engage in as a matter of course.  Besides, I'm not sure if a Rawls could get TV's greatest intellectuals to see the difference between a policy argument and a personal attack.  

Anyone? 

Ad hominem circumstantial, Politicians

I’m only saying this because

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Today I want to steal from the Daily Howler, Bob Somerby, because yet again he demonstrates the critical acumen of ten male persons.  He writes:

MADDOW MIND-READS MOTIVE: Quick disclaimer: We have an extremely low opinion of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a “progressive woman” who was willing to pander to Chris Matthews to land a key media spot. Disclaimer offered, let us say this: Appearing on Olbermann’s post-debate show, Maddow gave us an excellent look at the role of “motive journalism.”

Simply put: Pundits typically attribute “motive” to candidates whom they disfavor. [emphasis nonseq.]

At issue was Obama and Clinton’s discussion of the way illegal immigration affects working-class wages, specifically for African-Americans. (This issue was specifically raised by a question. Sorry: Transcripts aren’t available yet.) To simplify things a bit (but not much), Obama said that illegal immigrants don’t harm working-class blacks all that much. Clinton said she disagreed, and she said that all such groups will gain from comprehensive reform.

Why did the solons state these views? Let’s start with an obvious possibility; it may be that they stated these views because they actually believe them.  [bolded emphasis nonseq.] (As far as we know, academic research is a mixed bag on such questions.) But when Maddow was asked to share her views, she quickly began to trash Clinton’s motives, using extremely unpleasant code language. Clinton had been deliberately “driving a wedge,” she informed us, over and over. That’s right, Rachel—and Chris Matthews may well be the most brilliant man in the world.

Let’s understand how this works.

A mind-reader could have attributed “motive” to either Clinton or Obama. You could say that Obama was kissing up to Hispanic voters, for example, or that Clinton was courting African-Americans. But in the world of people like Maddow, “motive” is typically dumped on the head on the candidate who is disfavored. In saying that Clinton was driving a “wedge,” Maddow engaged in some ugly race-baiting—and she said that Clinton had a motive for her remarks. Obama’s “motives” were never considered, as was completely appropriate. [bold nonseq].

By the way: It’s widely held that Clinton needs major support from Hispanic voters next Tuesday. Why would she want to “drive a wedge” in a way which might offend these voters? To us, Maddow’s “analysis” didn’t even make sense. But so what? Typically, pundits like Maddow will mind-read and trash the “motives” of those they disfavor.

Sometimes a disagreement is just a disagreement. In assessing a disagreement like this, decent people will typically start with the thought that candidates may simply believe what they’ve said. But Rachel Maddow adores Chris Matthews—and she repeatedly, nastily said that Clinton was driving a wedge.

Two things.  First, this is what makes so much political reporting absolutely unreadable or unwatchable.  Candidates say things, they make arguments, stake out positions, and so forth, and between them and us stands a group of specialized interpreters who tell us what the candidates trying to say, or how people will take what they're trying to say, or, what is worse, why they're saying it.  The most basic question–whether what the candidate says is true or plausible or possible or sensible is a completely different question.  

Second, I think Somerby is on to something when he says we ascribe motive to people we disagree with–although I think pundits of the Chris Matthews variety ascribe it to everyone–that's their job, such as they think it is.  But Somerby's more basic point is that people who agree with you have reasons for their positions–they agree with you because you're right.  All of your beliefs are true, of course, as are all of mine.  But people who disagree with you fall into another category–the explanatory category.  This is different from the justificatory category into which you fall.  People who have false beliefs–obviously false ones because they're not like yours–should be accounted for and explained.  They believe those things because they "want to drive a wedge" or "want to appear" or "because they were raised that way" or "because of their experiences."  Try doing the opposite–give justifications for views you don't agree with and explanations for those beliefs you hold.

I only give this advice because I'm a logic teacher.

Straw Man

The weak man

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The Philosophers' Playground and a commenter point us to an article in Scientific American Mind by two Philosophers (Robert Talisse and Yvonne Raley) on two related logical fallacies–the straw man and, get this, the weak man.  Everyone is familiar with the straw man.  It's what I (perhaps unhappily) tend to call a fallacy of criticism.  In order to defeat an opponent one caricatures the opponent's view, defeats that caricature, and then claims victory over the opponent's real argument.  As the authors correctly point out, it's fairly common.  We have (on our very unscientific survey) identified 109 instances of it.  If we push the fight and defeat analogy a little bit, we might say that the straw man is the equivalent of pummeling someone named "Mike Tyson" (but not the one who is a boxer) and claiming that you beat up the real Mike Tyson.  That's about how relevant your victory will be (even to the Nevada Boxing Commission).  

The weak man works in a related fashion.  Only this time instead of caricaturing an opponent's view, one picks on the weakest of an opponent's arguments, easily defeats it, and claims victory over the opponent's real view.  Here's what the authors of the article say:

In what Talisse dubs a weak man argument, a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does.

So rather than fight a fully rested Mike Tyson, you drug him, get him to "agree" to a fight, then beat him up.  There, you beat up Mike Tyson, but it's not a victory to be proud of. 

It seems to me there are two ways to look at this (at least).  In one sense, it's not a fallacy unless you claim that you've defeated a stronger argument than you have.  Defeating a weak argument someone actually makes isn't a crime.  Lots of real arguments offered by real people are bad. 

In another sense, however, the fallacy seems to consist in exchanging the weak argument for the strong argument.  And that seems to be to be just what the straw man does.  The straw man, after all, consists in the switch at the end–you exchange the defeat of a weak argument for the defeat of the strong one.  The only difference is that the opponent in the weak man case gives you the weak version of his argument. 

Perhaps there is another difference I'm overlooking.  Anyone?  A more formal paper (co-authored by Talisse) on the subject can be read here.

Equivocation, Michael Gerson

But he tried

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Some talk of a kind of welfare for rich people.  Despite enormous advantages, standards for them really are lower than for the rest of us.  Some talk of a kind of welfare for conservative ideologues.  Few believe their ideas, so goes the claim, but they achieve national prominence anyway.  That may be the case.  Michael Gerson might be an example of the latter–he's a conservative ideologue, he was the President's speech writer for Pete's sake, and now he has a position in a national newspaper, where he can argue that the standards for Bush, a privileged prep school kid, ought to be lower: 

My goal is a humbler assessment: Did President Bush, in the course of seven years, cast aside compassion and become the "same kind of Republican"?

The answer is no. Proposals such as No Child Left Behind, the AIDS and malaria initiatives, and the addition of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare would simply not have come from a traditional conservative politician. They became the agenda of a Republican administration precisely because of Bush's persistent, passionate advocacy. To put it bluntly, these would not have been the priorities of a Cheney administration.

This leaves critics of the Bush administration with a "besides" problem. Bush is a heartless and callous conservative, "besides" the 1.4 million men, women and children who are alive because of treatment received through his AIDS initiative . . . "besides" the unquestioned gains of African American and Hispanic students in math and reading . . . "besides" 32 million seniors getting help to afford prescription drugs, including 10 million low-income seniors who get their medicine pretty much free. Iraq may have overshadowed these achievements; it does not eliminate them.

Many have convincingly argued that these programs have been rhetorical successes–like, for instance, the term "compassionate conservatism"–and not much else.  One could and no doubt one will examine the evidence of the success and actual earnestness of these programs, against the ones that were vetoed or the problems that were ignored or the federal agencies staffed with incompetent cronies, and so forth.  But Gerson's invocation of Dick Cheney has some kind of meaningful comparison in compassion really makes that point on its own.

George Will

Routine mendacity

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Bill Clinton said some dumb things, so it's now up to everyone to pile on the scripted indignation, everyone including the usually very indignant George Will (Yes, that one).

The week before South Carolina voted was the week when, at last, even some Democrats noticed. Noticed, that is, the distinctive cloud of coarseness that hovers over the Clintons, seeping acid rain.

That cloud has been a constant accouterment of their careers and has been influencing the nation's political weather for 16 years. But by the time Bill Clinton brought the Democratic Party in from the wilderness in 1992, the party had lost five of the previous six, and seven of the previous 10, presidential elections. Democrats were so grateful to him, and so determined not to resume wandering in the wilderness, that they averted their gazes to avoid seeing, and hummed show tunes to avoid hearing, the Clintons' routine mendacities.

Then, last week, came the radio ad that even South Carolinians, who are not squeamish about bite-and-gouge politics, thought was one brick over a load, and that the Clintons withdrew. It was the one that said Obama endorsed Republican ideas (because he said Republicans had some ideas). The Clinton campaign also accused Obama of praising Ronald Reagan (because Obama noted the stark fact that Reagan had changed the country's trajectory more than some other recent presidents — hello, Bill — had).

This was a garden-variety dishonesty, the manufacture of which does not cause a Clinton in midseason form to break a sweat. And it was no worse than — actually, not as gross as — St. John of Arizona's crooked-talk claim in Florida that Mitt Romney wanted to "surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do" in Iraq because Romney "wanted to set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster."

Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, the Clintons should bask in the glow of John McCain's Clintonian gloss on this fact: Ten months ago, Romney said that President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki should discuss, privately, "a series of timetables and milestones." That unremarkable thought was twisted by McCain, whose distortions are notably clumsy, as when Romney said, accurately, that he alone among the candidates has had extensive experience in private-sector business.

That truth was subjected to McCain's sophistry, and he charged that Romney had said "you haven't had a real job" if you had a military career. If, this autumn, voters must choose between Clinton and McCain, they will face, at least stylistically, an echo, not a choice.

I'm all for the honesty and sophistry test.  But let's start with the people who count–I mean, have counted for the past 7 years, and still count now.  For the Clinton mendacity narrative, and all of the craziness surrounding them, start here.

 

Ad Hominem Abusive, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Straw Man, Unclassifiable

The Goldberg variation

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It seems to me that affirmative action need not be derived from essentialist claims about racial identity.  But's its convenient that some do, because then people who oppose affirmative action programs can claim their opponents are the real racists, because essentialism is a variety of racism (they claim).  One might call that the Goldberg variation, as you turn–speciously–the accusation of racism (or fascism, or whatever) around. That said, the following claim seems to me to be a Goldberg variation:

The conventions that govern America's racial discourse derive from the odious "one drop" rule. According to it, anyone with any admixture of black ancestry — one drop of black "blood" — is black. So, Connerly is an African American. One of his grandparents was of African descent, one was Irish, a third was Irish and American Indian, and the fourth was French Canadian. Two of the grandchildren of Connerly and his Irish wife have a Vietnamese mother. Are these grandchildren African Americans?

Will the superstitions surrounding race ever fade away? Not before governance is cleansed of the sort of race-based policies opposed by Connerly, who intimately knows the increasing absurdity of racial classifications and the folly of government preferences based on them.

In addition to the Goldberg element (and really, I think Goldberg's schtick is strongly reminiscent of George Will's), you have a kind of feigned and convenient skepticism: who's to say what race is anyway?  Who really counts as Black?  And any answer to that question will invite charges of racism.  See–if you answer Will's question, you're a racist.  But not him.  He's colorblind.

**Update:

Had occasion to revisit this George Will piece arguing for the election of George Bush this morning.  Poor Jonah, he can't even build a weaker straw hominem than George Will:

THE CASE for electing George W. Bush begins with a mundane matter: A president fills several thousand policy-shaping positions in the executive branch. The two parties have very different talent pools from which the next administration will be staffed.

The Democratic pool swarms with people who share Al Gore's bossiness, his regulatory itch and his hubristic belief that clever people like them can wield government as creatively as Rodin did his chisel. The Republican pool is disposed to regard government as a blunt instrument. Which is to say, a Gore administration would have the mentality of Washington's Northwest quadrant; a Bush administration would have a West Texas attitude.

Congress's drunken sailor approach to the surplus makes the political case for Bush's tax cut: Leave the money in Washington, it will disappear like water into sand. The economic case for the cut is that Bush's advisers, who fortunately include some people capable of bearish thoughts, think the economy may need energizing sooner than many people think.

 

Appeal to Ignorance, Politicians

Simply saying

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Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee shows the world that the WMD fiasco can remain a never-ending source of hilarity.  He first alleged that the weapons were spirited out to Jordan (our ally), when asked (by Fox News of all organizations) whether he has any evidence of that, he replies:

I don’t have any evidence. [Saddam] was the one who announced openly he had weapons of mass destruction. He’s the one who had used similar weapons in the past. Let’s remember that both Democrats and Republicans and our intelligence agencies believed that he had them.

My point was that, no, we didn’t find them. Did they get into Syria? Did they get into some remote area of Jordan? Did they go some other place? We don’t know. They may not have existed. But simply saying — we didn’t find them so therefore they didn’t exist — is a bit of an overreach.

Not quite.  It's not a matter of simply saying, but rather simply scouring the country, then re-examining the evidence for simply saying they had WMD,then, and only then finally simply saying, gee, oops, I suppose we were wrong about that.  Boy is our face red.

General discussion

Fun with fallacies

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This from James W. Benham and Thomas J.Marlowe is hilarious.  Can anyone think of any others?

  • Ad hominem arguments are the tools of scoundrels and blackguards. Therefore, they are invalid.
  • If you had any consideration for my feelings, you wouldn't argue from an appeal to pity.
  • What would your mother say if you argued from an appeal to sentiment?
  • I don't understand how anyone could argue from an appeal to incredulity.
  • If you argue from an appeal to force, I'll have to beat you up.
  • You are far too intelligent to accept an argument based on an appeal to vanity.
  • Everyone knows that an argument from appeal to popular opinion is invalid.
  • Circular reasoning means assuming what you're trying to prove. This form of argument is invalid becuase it's circular.
  • As Aristotle said, arguments from an appeal to authority are invalid.
  • Post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments often precede false conclusions. Hence, this type of argument is invalid.
  • Using the Argumentum ad Consequentiam makes for unpleasant discussions. Hence, it must be a logical fallacy.
  • The argumentum ad nauseam is invalid. The argumentum ad nauseam is invalid. The argumentum ad nauseam is invalid. If three repetitions of this principle haven't convinced you, I'll just have to say it again: the argumentun ad nauseam is invalid.
  • Ancient wisdom teaches that the argumentum ad antiquitatem is invalid.
  • An argument is emotional and no substitute for reasoned discussion. But proof by equivocation is a kind of argument. Thus, a proof by equivocation is no substitute for a valid proof.
  • If we accept slippery slope arguments, we may have to accept other forms of weak arguments. Eventually, we won't be able to reason at all. Hence, we must reject slippery slope arguments as invalid.
  • A real logician would never make an argument based on the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. If anyone who claims to be logical and makes arguments based on this fallacy, you may rest assured that s/he is not a real logician.
  • An argument based on a logical fallacy often leads to a false conclusion. Affirming the consequent often leads to a false conclusion. Therefore, affirming the consequent is a fallacy.
  • The fallacy of the undistributed middle is often used by politicians, and they often try to mislead people, so undistributed middles are obviously misleading.
  • Reasoning by analogy is like giving a starving man a cookbook.
  • Non sequitur is a Latin term, so that's a fallacy too.
  • And I bet the gambler's fallacy is also invalid – I seem to be on a roll!

If so, post them in comments and I'll send them to the author.

By way of update, I'm not happy with the use of "valid" here nor would I consider all of these to be fallacious.  But you get the idea.

Academics, Unclassifiable

de Causis

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There's another new book out about how God doesn't exist, this time by a mathematician (where are the philosophers?). It got panned in a quotation-rich review in the New York Times.  If the quotations are representative, then no wonder:

In his opening chapters Mr. Paulos uses simple logic to point up the gaping holes in the so-called first-cause argument. “Either everything has a cause, or there’s something that doesn’t,” he writes. “The first-cause argument collapses into this hole whichever tack we take. If everything has a cause, then God does, too, and there is no first cause. And if something doesn’t have a cause, it may as well be the physical world.”

What’s more, he notes, “the uncaused first cause needn’t have any traditional God-like qualities. It’s simply first, and as we know from other realms, being first doesn’t mean being best. No one brags about still using the first personal computers to come on the market. Even if the first cause existed, it might simply be a brute fact — or even worse, an actual brute.”

Doesn't seem the author has much familiarity with first-cause arguments.  They typically make the distinction between the idea of a first cause and the idea of an uncaused cause.  A first cause comes first in a series; an uncaused cause may not be a member of a series.  As any student of intro to philosophy of religion knows, these represent entirely different arguments and one can't just lump them together. I might wonder about the author of the book, but I'm rather more perplexed by the review.

If I might whine a little bit here.  The reviewer doesn't seem aware that there's an entire specialty that concerns itself with this kind of business.  It's been at it for maybe 2500 years.  While it's astounding that a non-specialist could simply thrust himself into this discussion completely unaware of its manifold iterations, it's depressing that the reviewer of the book doesn't bother to point out that simple fact.  

 

Inexplicable, William Kristol

Modernity

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It's Bill Kristol's day again.  Not that he has to write on anything in particular, but it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  And Kristol writes about the anti-modern paragon of moral virtue, John McCain.  One might however find Kristol's sense of "modernity" intriguing:

The young Henley had written this following the amputation of his foot because of tubercular infection. He lived until age 53, apparently unbow’d and unafraid, a productive poet, critic and editor. (The one-legged [eds.: shouldn't this be "one-footed"?] Henley also served as an inspiration for his close friend Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” character Long John Silver.)

One can see why “Invictus” might have appealed to the young McCain. One can see why snatches of it might have stuck in his mind while a prisoner of war, and after. But his allusion to its coda reminds us of what’s so distinctive about McCain as a contemporary political figure: He’s not thoroughly modern.

In this he differs from his competitors. Mitt Romney is the very model of a modern venture capitalist. Mike Huckabee is the very model of a modern evangelical. Rudy Giuliani is the very model of a modern can-do executive. They are impressive modern men all. But John McCain is a not-so-modern type. One might call him a neo-Victorian — rigid, self-righteous and moralizing, but (or rather and) manly, courageous and principled.

Others can point out the strange and ever-shifting principles of the "Straight Talk Express" (a brand name, which, unsurprisingly, has beguiled even the <sarcasm> uber-liberals </sarcasm> of NPR.  I'd just be curious to know how those traits are "Victorian" in anything but a self-refutingly ironic sense.  But I suppose I wonder that because I'm modern.