Wonder if they're hiring over there at pundit school?
All posts by Colin Anderson
Critical Thinking Software
As I've been "preping" a course in ethics and critical thinking I've been considering the use of software to help layout arguments, and I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts or experience with them. Douglas Walton points to two programs in the first chapter of Argumentation Schemes.
Same sex marriage and begging the question
This is a bit of a departure from our usual analysis of particular arguments in the media, but because these arguments are fairly common and because we've been hashing these issues out in the comments to the earlier post "5,000 Years," I thought I'd try to synthesize the analysis of the argument as I see it.
Is there a non-question begging (secular) argument for the following claim?
C: Same-sex relationships cannot be considered "marriage."
Setting aside certain circular arguments about tradition (like Rick Warren's which was originally being commented on), the best argument seems to rest on the premise:
P: A necessary condition of marriage is the biological possibility of procreation.
Here biological possibility has to be understood as satisfying the counter-factual condition:
BP: If the functional organs of procreation are working in a species typical way, procreation would be biologically possible.
This condition is meant to include infertile and older couples within the scope of the condition, while still excluding same sex couples. I am not, of course, endorsing this exclusion: the question is whether a good argument can be constructed for C, as a matter of logic, that could justify arguments against same-sex marriage. I am tempted to claim that there cannot be any such argument after considering the various arguments.
Because the argument is trading in essences and definitions it would seem to be deductive: That is, it argues for the impossibility of same-sex marriage by appeal to a definition/essence. It has the form of:
1. X is a necessary condition of Y.
2. Necessarily, Z does not have X.
3. Therefore, necessarily, Z is not Y.
Triangles must have straight sides. Necessarily, Circles do not have straight sides. Therefore, necessarily, circles are not Triangles. Or, Nougaty filling is a necessary condition of being a Three Musketeers bar. Necessarily, Toffee does not have a nougaty filling. Therefore, necessarily, toffee is not a Three Musketeer's bar.
As such this looks like a valid deductive argument. But, a critic might wonder whether P understood in the light of BP really says anything more the following implicit premise.
IP: Only heterosexual couples can be married.
If this is so, then the argument might reasonably be accused of begging the question. But determining when the question is begged needs to be handled carefully, since a begged question can always be resolved by appealing to some further argument that independently justifies the problematic premise.
So, the question then becomes, what independent reason can be provided for P/BP? What sort of "warrant" can be given to claim that marriage has an essential link to the biological possibility of procreation?
In the comments, we identified two distinct strategies:
a) Appeal to tradition/Generalization from past practices–this can range from some sort of descriptive anthropological claim, to some sort of generalization to a normative claim, or a most often a simple stipulation on the basis of past stipulation.
b) Appeal to social function of marriage as defining its essence (coupled with an argument that marriage is the best means for attaining the relevant goals).
It seems to me that (a) either begs the question if it appeals to tradition, or, fails to attain the universality that seems to be needed to underwrite P/BP (at most the generalization can show is that marriage has been understood to have an essential connection to the possibility of procreation, not that this is essential for it. And counter-examples are too many to make the universalization possible (old people getting married, infertile couples etc. And it's no good saying that marriage has just been socially constructed this way, since we are aiming for an essential connection.)
The appeal to tradition seems to me to beg the question insofar as it takes the following form:
1. Marriage has been understood (in the past) to require P/BP.
2. Therefore, P/BP
[I probably don't have the logic right here. I'm realizing as I write that I'm not quite clear on how "appeals to tradition" really work, though I think that they are typically bad arguments. I guess they're a sort of temporally dispersed ad populum.]
Even if we can avoid begging the question here, the problem with this argument is that insofar as it appeals to people's opinions about marriage, it relies on a convention, which doesn't seem to be able to underwrite a claim about essence. At most it underwrites a sort of stipulation which isn't adequate to the purposes of this argument.
The strategy of (b) fails for slightly different reasons. The argument seems to run something like this:
1. Marriages provide for stable procreative units.
2. Society has an interest in stable procreative units.
3. Therefore, Society has an interest in recognizing marriages that are means to stable procreative unit
and,
4. Therefore, Society does not have an interest in recognizing relationships as marriages that are not means to stable procreative units.
This is a fine argument as it stands, but it doesn't get close to showing that there is some sort of essential incoherence in the notion of a marriage for some other purpose (adoptive child-rearing for example). It needs to conclude something much stronger than this, something that would suggest that recognizing same-sex marriages is incoherent, since it aims at establishing P/BP. At most it has shown that from the perspective of society, whether there are same-sex marriages or not is a matter of ambivalence. I think typically the argument seems to succeed because it trades the elision of biological function and social function. A little dose of evolution seems to suggest that this necessity is somehow a species necessity, but I think those arguments are pretty empty. (That is, I don't think we can deduce the "right" social institutions from biology, though I certainly grant that there are lots of ways in which biological truths affect which institutions are desirable and which not).
I'm not at all sure about much of this, and I'm sure there are strategies that I've missed. And certainly it is always open to the arguer to appeal to the Bible or personal communications with God to justify P/BP. But, as far as I can see, I cannot find a viable strategy to make the argument non-question begging. The problem is that the opponent of same-sex marriage must offer a very very strong argument that concludes impossibility if they want to trade on an putative "essence" of marriage. But, the arguments that would establish this putative "essence" of marriage seem to be either too weak to do so, or end up begging the question. The problem is that the "tradition" of heterosexual marriage might have arisen because it was socially useful (and perhaps still is) for managing procreation and the family, but that does not enail the necessary link between marriage and procreation. If this is so, then the whole strategy needs to be rethought, as it is doomed to failure. But, maybe I'm missing something obvious.
Argumentum ad nit-picking?
Here's an interesting bad argument I think we've maybe touched on a few times before. Seems fallacious in the form described, but I'm not sure how to categorize it. Relevance? Ignoratio Elenchi?
1. Critics of W's policy X were right about the overall undesirability of X (because of hypothetical consequences Y).
2. But, those critics were mistaken in predicting the details of actual consequences Z as Y.
3. Thus, they were no more right about X than W.
You were right to tell me not to drink and drive, but not because I might wreck my car. It turns out I killed someone, so we're both right and we're both wrong about drunk driving. (You were right that I should not drink and drive, and I was right that the danger of wrecking my car was not the real reason to not drink and drive.) This would seem to be a nice ignoratio elenchi.
The difference between hypothetical consequences as reasons and unknown unintended consequences as reasons to do something seems to be an equivocation. Even if it turns out that I did not wreck my car, the danger of doing so is still a reason for not drinking and driving.
But the argument is interesting since forms of it seem to be good.
1. You said I had reason Y to do X.
2. I had reason Z to do X.
3. My not doing X is excusable because I didn't know that I had reason Z to do X though I knew that I did not have reason Y to do X.
Seems like sometimes the argument is really an attempt to conceal one failure in deliberation with another.
1. Your argument Y against policy X was a bad one.
2. And neither of us saw that there was a good argument Z against X.
3. Therefore, I wasn't wrong to do X.
In its political employment I suspect that it hangs on the falsity of the second premise, or on a different form of culpability if 2 is true. Either 2 is true and therefore you're incompetent (you ought to have known), or 2 is false, and therefore you're foolish. Though the first side of the disjunction is undermined by the claim "even my critics didn't see this" and so I should not be culpable for not seeing it either."
Anyone recall any good examples of this?
Speaking of Nonsense
Poems that is.
Anyone know of any modern mnemonics for the valid syllogisms?
Anyone set this to a modern tune?
Something I’ve Never Understood
Why is the condition of a conditionally valid categorical syllogism determined by the term in the syllogism that is "superfluously" distributed?
Can anyone give me, or point me to, a simple explanation of why this is so?
Holden Caufield Redux
Bashing the institutions that didn't accept your college application might be thought to be a national pass-time in our "class free" nation.There's something oddly satisfying about sneering at the elite schools and the "preppies" "elites" etc. that we suppose inhabit them. But, sometimes the reasons for sneering are more interestingly political and argumentative. Here's a nice example from the "left."
The multiple failures that beset the country, from our mismanaged economy to our shredded constitutional rights to our lack of universal health care to our imperial debacles in the Middle East, can be laid at the feet of our elite universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, along with most other elite schools, do a poor job educating students to think. They focus instead, through the filter of standardized tests, enrichment activities, advanced-placement classes, high-priced tutors, swanky private schools and blind deference to all authority, on creating hordes of competent systems managers. The collapse of the country runs in a direct line from the manicured quadrangles and halls in places like Cambridge, Mass., Princeton, N.J., and New Haven, Conn., to the financial and political centers of power.
Seems like the cause might be a tad oversimplified. There's plenty more ressentiment to be found here, but the conclusion of the piece seems interesting to me.
These elites, and the corporate system they serve, have ruined the country. These elite cannot solve our problems. They have been trained to find "solutions," such as the trillion-dollar bailout of banks and financial firms, that sustain the system. They will feed the beast until it dies. Don’t expect them to save us. They don’t know how. And when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes, and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, they will be exposed as being as helpless, and as stupid, as the rest of us.
There's some sort of interesting argument here, involving a sort of argumentum ad "I told you so," or a sort of appeal to fear that provides emotional cover for the unsupported conclusion.
"My view that the products of the ivy league are stupid and helpless will be apparent when the whole system that they are trying to maintain collapses."
1. If the whole system collapses, then the elites were stupid and helpless."
2. The elites are stupid and helpless.
To the degree that we fear that the antecedent of (1) might occur, we might conclude that (2) is true. But, there are other reasons that (1) might collapse other than the collective and stupidity and helplessness of the elites. So, even if we think it is likely that the whole system might collapse that should not provide us with reason to accept the conclusion.
There is sp,e other argument for (2) given throughout–but little of it seems particularly compelling. Some personal experience:
I sat a few months ago with a former classmate from Harvard Divinity School who is now a theology professor. When I asked her what she was teaching, she unleashed a torrent of obscure academic code words. I did not understand, even with three years of seminary, what she was talking about. You can see this absurd retreat into specialized, impenetrable verbal enclaves in every graduate department across the country. The more these universities churn out these stunted men and women, the more we are flooded with a peculiar breed of specialist.
And some anecdotes about how everyone in high school was a phony and not that smart.
I was sent to boarding school on a scholarship at the age of 10. . . These institutions, no matter how mediocre you are, feed students with the comforting self-delusion that they are there because they are not only the best but they deserve the best. You can see this attitude on display in every word uttered by George W. Bush. Here is a man with severely limited intellectual capacity and no moral core. He, along with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who attended my boarding school and went on to Yale, is an example of the legions of self-centered mediocrities churned out by places like Andover, Yale and Harvard.
But, as far as I can see, there's not much more argument here than an oversimplified cause, a lot of Holden Caufield, and the interesting "I will have told you so" argument.
A Simple One
Nothing fancy.
Teacher writes to the founder of the Helios project "which brings Linux to school kids in Austin."
"Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. … This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them…"
"Starks pens an eloquent reply, which contains a factoid I have not seen mentioned before: "The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way. Then again, being a good NEA member, you would spout the Union line. Microsoft has pumped tens of millions of dollars into your union. Of course you are going to 'recommend' Microsoft Windows."
I'll leave the question of eloquence aside, but the screaming ad hominem circumstantial is something a Logic teacher with an exam to write must love.
Have we embedded video before?
This is fun.
But, it raises a more interesting logical point. Commentators and pundits treat positions as though they are arbitrary "commitments"–this is some sort of political "decisionism" that reduces everything to ideology.This simplifies their job, the only thing they have to track is whether a candidate is 'for' or 'against' something. It also makes for nice narratives of the flip-flop sort.
What is obfuscated by this lens is that people hold their commitments for reasons. Obama might oppose opening the OCS and ANWR to drilling as a means to the goal of energy independence or lowering gas prices in the short term and long term because there is no reason to believe that they are a means to these ends.
He can quite consistently support the same policy for some other end–in this case, to gain investment in alternative energy that will probably help move us towards less dependence on foreign energy, help make transportation and other energy uses cheaper, and (pace Krauthammer, maybe "save the planet").
Of course, this subtlety can't be explained in an interview or you suddenly start to look all Al Gore. The viewer either gets this or she/he doesn't. The interviewer deliberately obfuscates a distinction (I suspect) he understands in order to play the "brash interviewer" role he's seen on Fox.
Even after O. makes the point, less pedantically than I have, the interviewer tries the same trick with Yucca mountain.
I guess that there is a sort of scope fallacy, or a sort amphiboly. "Obama opposes drilling for reason x." becomes "Obama opposes drilling." Or maybe a mistake in generalization: "Obama opposes drilling for reason x" "Obama always opposes drilling."
Krauthammer and Krugman
I began writing this thinking that I was going to accuse Krauthammer of suppressing evidence when he argues for drilling in ANWR and lifting the moratorium on outer continental shelf drilling since at first glance he seems to completely ignore the environmental argument based on global warming.
His argument runs like this:
- Reducing dependence on foreign oil is in the national interest.
- Opening up domestic energy resources for development will reduce dependence on foreign oil.
- Therefore we should open up ANWR and the outer continental shelf for development.
Notice that this isn't McCain's silly and discredited argument that opening up these resources will address pump prices. Instead it looks like perfectly nice argument: A practical syllogism arguing for a means to an end. Presumably he is arguing that 2 is the best means to achieve 1. If that's so, then he should consider alternatives such as reducing our consumption of oil.
Consider: 25 years ago, nearly 60 percent of U.S. petroleum was produced domestically. Today it's 25 percent. From its peak in 1970, U.S. production has declined a staggering 47 percent. The world consumes 86 million barrels a day, the United States, roughly 20 million. We need the stuff to run our cars and planes and economy. Where does it come from?
Skipping the results of several hours of reading DOE reports on the oil resources (see comments) it looks like the best case from opening up both of ANWR and OCS is around 1 million barrels of oil per day in the late 2020's. That's pretty significant given our current imports of 15 million barrels a day (7%)–roughly equivalent to the imports from Nigeria this year). So, it seems that we must grant as plausible that these measures would reduce dependence on foreign oil.
But the interesting part of the argument is this
The net environmental effect of Pelosi's no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. oil production does nothing to lessen worldwide environmental despoliation. It simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world — thereby increasing net planetary damage.
I had thought that he was just ignoring Pelosi's real concern with opening up these resources, that is, I believe, their contribution to anthropogenic global warming. He only focuses on "environmental despoiliation" which looks at first like the effects local to the extraction and transportation of oil, and not its consumption.
The assumption he makes is that the rate of consumption of oil will be unaffected whether we open up these resources or not. The question then is merely one of where the oil is extracted. And, if opening up these resources has as little effect on price as opponents of drilling say, then it can't be argued that not exploiting these resources will contribute to a reduction in consumption.
The argument opposed to drilling has three options it seems to me:
1. NIMBY (we just don't want to mess up our environment–we're happy to let others do it).
2. Detailed argumentation that opening up ANWR and OCS have a likelihood of greater local environmental damage than drilling in Nigeria etc.
3. The total carbon consumption argument. Any increase in access to carbon based fuels is undesirable because of the the dangers of climate change.
I probably believe that 3 is a good argument (1 is probably a good argument though it might have moral difficulties, and I don't know enough to judge 2). But, if we really believed it (generally) we would probably have to support capping of imports or bans on importing oil from new developments. We would have to either accept that oil prices should continue to increase or that the rest of the world should stop developing.
Krugman attacks McCain's ridiculous claims linking the moratoria on OCS development and gas prices. But he draws a more significant lesson from this.
Hence my concern: if a completely bogus claim that environmental protection is raising energy prices can get this much political traction, what are the chances of getting serious action against global warming? After all, a cap-and-trade system would in effect be a tax on carbon (though Mr. McCain apparently doesn’t know that), and really would raise energy prices.
The only way we’re going to get action, I’d suggest, is if those who stand in the way of action come to be perceived as not just wrong but immoral. Incidentally, that’s why I was disappointed with Barack Obama’s response to Mr. McCain’s energy posturing — that it was “the same old politics.” Mr. Obama was dismissive when he should have been outraged.
This doesn't address Krauthammer's security based argument, but it does point out that we are still far from ready to defend never mind implement the consequences of the total carbon consumption argument. To oppose ANWR and OCS exploitation on these grounds commits us to an argument that no new carbon fuel resources should be developed and that the only way to address rising fuel costs is to reduce demand worldwide.
If there is a flaw in the argument it is this: The argument that Krauthammer needs to address, however, is whether it would be a better means to energy independence to reduce consumption by those same 1 million barrels a day in 2030 than to open ANWR and OCS to drilling.