Hey NS readers, John and I will be at this year’s Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA) meeting. We are planning on blogging the papers we attend, with thesis and argument summary and highlights from the Q&A. We did a run at this last year, and some of the discussions were very interesting. Here’s the conference website program with a good list of the paper abstracts. The papers start up in full force Thursday. Additionally, we’ll post our paper for our joint presentation for the NS readership to give some feedback, and we’ll make sure to post the most serious objections.
All posts by Scott Aikin
OK quoque
Just in: James Inhofe (R- OK) is now plugging for federal disaster aid for the tornado damage in Oklahoma. That’s fine. Ah, but he and his colleague, Tom Coburn (R-OK) were famously against similar aid for the East Coast after Hurricane Sandy. Oh, that’s weird. I wonder what Inhofe has to say about that:
That was totally different. . . . They were getting things, for instance, that was supposed to be in New Jersey. . . . They had things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.
First, off, he’s opposed to funding help for those battered by a storm because he’s worried about grift? Sheesh. Second, if it does happen in OK, is he on the hook then? Oh, and Inhofe and Coburn have a long history of opposing funding FEMA (despite the fact that OK has among the most disasters).
Senator Coburn wants the help, too. He proposes to pay for it by cutting other federal programs.
Again, we have a case where we must ask whether we have a case of acceptable tu quoque. We’ve regularly here at the NS argued that cases of tu quoque that show double standards are appropriate and relevant. Similar cases should be judged similarly, and it zip code is not a relevant reason to change one’s view on whether funding is deserved. So reveling in the hypocrisy charge here isn’t for the sake of feeling hate toward someone or to score points on a vice, but to show that someone’s not been an honest arbiter with reasons. That’s what’s happening here. It’s not schadenfreude, it’s not ad hominem abuse. It’s evidence that someone doesn’t proceed fairly. That’s what it shows, and when your constituency is suffering, you understand the role of government support. That’s what the hypocrisy charges amount to.
You would have noticed this hypocrisy… if you weren’t such a hypocrite
Jonah Goldberg at NRO rings up a fantastic subjunctive tu quoque:
Yes, it’s extremely unlikely he ordered the IRS to discriminate against tea-party. . . . And his outrage now — however convenient — is appreciated. But when people he views as his “enemies†complained about a politicized IRS, what did he do? Nothing.
Imagine for a moment if black civil-rights organizations, gay groups, or teachers’ unions loudly complained to members of Congress and the press that the IRS was discriminating against them. How long would it take for the White House to investigate? Answer honestly: Minutes? Hours?
The overall form of subjunctive tu quoque is not that you have actual inconsistent behavior or double standards, but that you would have them. You just know it! Of course, this form of tu quoque requires, for the subjunctive to be accepted, that the audience think the President is a hypocrite and an employer of double standards. So, often, the subjuctive form of the tu quoque isn’t an argument from hypocrisy, but one to it.
**A later addition to the post 5/21/2013**
For other discussions of subjunctive tu quoque, see Colin’s original post HERE, and John’s got a lengthy discussion HERE, and we three co-wrote a paper that appeared in INQUIRY about a year back, which I’ve posted on my Academia.edu page HERE. For cases that tu quoque arguments are regularly relevant, see one of my recent posts on it HERE, and my essay in Informal Logic HERE.
OMG. What if?
Mark Steyn’s recent contribution to NRO’s page is an exercise in (a) guilt by association, by way of (b) rampant speculation. The ultimate payoff is to criticize the food stamp program. Here’s how the line of argument goes:
[The House Audit and Oversight Committee] are now trying to discover whether the Tsarnaev brothers used [Food Stamp EBT cards] to pay for the Boston Marathon bombing
OK. So where it stands is: we don’t know if they did. But there’s an investigation into the funding. Ah, so we might have, in providing a safety net for millions, provided the means for a lunatic fringe to build a bomb from household and cooking supplies. (Pressure cookers.) Maybe.
Ah, but all the ‘maybes’ in the world won’t hold Steyn back.
Paying Islamic terrorists to blow you up is more like assisted suicide.
And… Scene.
Earlier in the post, Steyn complained about the fact that the EBT cards had been used to buy porn, piercings, and manicures. Add funding terrorist attacks to the list. (Maybe.) Well, that’s enough to be up in arms about the welfare state — we, as Steyn sees it, not only encourage dependence, but irresponsibility and wantonness with welfare. And terrorism. (Maybe.)
Oh, and Steyn’s analogy is flawed: in providing the minimal means to live to the Tsarnaevs, we weren’t paying for them to blow us up. We were paying for them to survive and eventually prosper. That they used that generosity against us is simply more testament to the fact that their minds were infected with hate — they were aggressive toward a society and state that had showed them some consideration. We didn’t deserve that. Would Steyn’s alternative be that because we don’t want that, we’ll cut off all those other people welfare helps? I’m pretty sure that’s the plan.
Pretty in pink
Check out Charles Krauthammer’s downplaying analogy over at the NRO for Obama’s ‘Red Line’ ultimatum with Syria using chemical weapons and what the Right thinks is dithering (or “fudging and fumbling”) in the face of the worry they’ve used them. The headline:
Pink Line over Damascus
Get it? Not red, but pink. You see what he did there? Replaced red with pink. So, it’s like a girl’s ultimatum, which is, you know, not very decisive:
He would have it both ways: sound decisive but never have to deliver.
Yeah, just like a little girl, so pink.  And conservatives wonder why they have a problem with women.
Do you want firm, weasely abs?
Weaseling is a form of informational misdirection. You get your audience to agree to a very weak version of a commitment, then proceed as if they’ve agreed to a stronger version. The greatest weasel ever was in Dumb and Dumber when unattainable romantic interest in the film says that one of the dumb guys only has a one-in-a-million chance of ever having something with her, and he giddily replies “So you’re telling me there’s a chance!” (See the clip HERE)
Beachbody, the giant exercise company that has brought you the Sunday morning infomercials about P90X and Insanity!, has a product called HipHopAbs (don’t click the link if you hate frenetic pop music). They have all the perfunctory before and after photos, but this awesome weasel caught my eye:
Jump-start your weight loss with this easy-to-follow plan that will help you lose up to 3 inches off your waist in your first week!
Up to 3 inches. Now, that means: no more than 3 inches. But you hear: 3 inches. Now you own HipHopAbs. So you’re sayin’ there’s a chance!
TU to-the-evah-lovin’ QUOQUE!
We’ve had a number of discussions here at the NS about how ad hominem tu quoque can sometimes actually be a relevant form of argument. (See one of mine HERE, Colin on it HERE, John on it HERE, and my publication on it at IL HERE) In short: the argument form, when properly presented, can show in speaker inconsistency: incompetence, insincerity, or evidence that a proposed practice is impractical. I have one that seems a glaring case of insincerity. Thomas Sowell’s syndicated piece (here at the American Spectator) is that because liberals control (most of) education, there’s no actual fact-checking from critics of conservatives. Instead, all liberals do, from his experience, is give counter-assertions, and that’s what’s supported by the educational institutions producing them. Well, at least that’s what happened when Sowell read an email from a liberal critic.
It is good to check out the facts — especially if you check out the facts on both sides of an issue…. By contrast, another man simply denounced me because of what was said in that column. He did not ask for my sources but simply made contrary assertions, as if his assertions must be correct and therefore mine must be wrong.
He identified himself as a physician, and the claims that he made about guns were claims that had been made years ago in a medical journal — and thoroughly discredited since then. He might have learned that, if we had engaged in a back and forth discussion, but it was clear from his letter that his goal was not debate but denunciation. That is often the case these days.
OK. So Sowell got an email from someone with outdated information. From a medical journal, but outdated information. Well, that’s not so bad, is it? Apparently so, because Sowell takes this email to be representative of how liberals think:
If our educational institutions — from the schools to the universities— were as interested in a diversity of ideas as they are obsessed with racial diversity, students would at least gain experience in seeing the assumptions behind different visions and the role of logic and evidence in debating those differences.
Instead, a student can go all the way from elementary school to a Ph.D. without encountering any fundamentally different vision of the world from that of the prevailing political correctness.
Well, first, I smell weak manning here — thanks, Tomas Sowell, for picking a bad arguer for a liberal talking point and generalizing to all liberals. Perhaps we could do the same for you and use Michele Bachman as the representative voice for conservatism?
At this point, Sowell then turns to the institutions that produce what he takes to be shoddy arguments, that is, universities. And he’s got one case in point:
The student at Florida Atlantic University who recently declined to stomp on a paper with the word “Jesus†on it, as ordered by the professor, was scheduled for punishment by the university until the story became public and provoked an outcry from outside academia.
Ah, but then there’s the old fact-checking, getting the other side’s version of the story. You know, like what a well-educated person would do. The exercise did take place, but the student who refused wasn’t up for punishment for not stepping on ‘Jesus’, but for threatening the professor with violence. And that’s where we know that Sowell’s not playing fair – when his side gets criticized, he wants his critics to be entirely up to date on all the details of the matter. And when they aren’t, well, that’s evidence of how stupid, horribly educated, and disinterested in actual debate they are. But when it’s his side, well, it’s just a matter of saying what his favored audience wants.
A final question, but now about the FAU case: why would Christians care about stepping on the word ‘Jesus’? The name’s not holy. The letters aren’t either. This strikes me as another case of hypocrisy — they’ve got their own graven images. The name of god in their own language. Christians who threaten Professor Poole with death over this don’t understand their own religion.
True tolerance
Chris Broussard at ESPN said that Jason Collins, the NBA player who’s come out as gay, isn’t a true Christian and is “in open rebellion to God.” So what? Well, he got some blowback from a variety of sources. So what? Well, he’s now got to clarify things, and when he does, he also needs to clarify a concept for all of us:
true tolerance and acceptance is being able to handle [differing lifestyle beliefs] as mature adults and not criticize each other and call each other names
I don’t think that’s true tolerance. Tolerance means that even when you think someone else is wrong about something that matters, you don’t exclude them or prohibit them from doing the things that they do. Tolerance isn’t tolerance if you like what they do. It means putting up with things you hate. That, by the way, was one of the reasons why the stoics thought of themselves as the ones who kept the old Republican virtues alive, by the way. But, notice, that doesn’t mean that you have to hold your tongue. In fact, tolerance without care for criticism and correction isn’t much of anything — it’s more like ignoring each other. Oh, and convenient that he’s NOW saying that tolerance is not criticizing others. Again, sometimes inconsistency is evidence of a double standard.
Doctor, but not a real one
A quick lesson on equivocation and how not to charge that it’s occurring. Charles Cooke has a piece over at NRO about how Jill Biden, who has a Ed.D., has been tweeting under the handle ‘DrBiden’. The tweets have been about educational issues in the US and updates about her recent work promoting educational initiatives. Cooke objects to her use of ‘Dr’ as part of her title. It’s primarily that those who have doctorates aren’t real doctors.
Wherever she goes and whatever she does, Dr. Biden is always referred to as “Dr. Biden.†“Is Joe Biden married to a physician?†wondered the Los Angeles Times in January. “You might have gotten that impression while watching television coverage of the inauguration.†Yes, you might have indeed. Dr. Biden isn’t a physician, of course. She has a doctorate – in “educational leadership,†whatever the hell that is….
One can only wonder what Dr. Biden’s response would be to the urgent question “Is there a doctor in the house?!†Perhaps “Yes! Don’t worry, I’m here! I’m not too sure how to do a tracheotomy, though . . . â€
OK. So Cooke’s objection is that ‘Dr’ carries with it a lot of weight in this culture, and it comes from the status that Medical Doctors have. Then there’s a quick lesson about why folks with still get called ‘doctor’.
It’s somewhat by chance that the recipients of Ph.D.s may even presume to call themselves “doctors,†the unfortunate product of a thousand-year-old liberal-arts tradition …. “Ph.D.†stands for “Philosophiae Doctor,†a Latin term that (rather obviously) means “Doctor of Philosophy†in English. The “Philosophy†bit was intended loosely, in the classical sense of “love of learningâ€; the “Doctor†bit derives from “docere,†which simply means “to teach.â€
Erm. That’s all totally backwards. So it’s not really by chance that Ph.D.’s are called ‘doctor.’ That’s, like, what the degree means — the one who teaches others about the area, the one who is nobody’s student. It’s actually by chance that medical doctors are the ones who get all the cred for the title. Cooke’s got the implications of his own evidence entirely backwards.
But now Cooke pauses to concede that sometimes it’s appropriate to use the title ‘doctor’ for someone with a doctorate:
American etiquette books tend to mark this dichotomy, holding that it is acceptable for Ph.D.s to use “Dr.†within the context of their business but inappropriate everywhere else.
Oy. And what was Jill Biden tweeting about? Matters regarding education. Precisely what her doctorate is in. KA-BOOM. And now Cooke has provided all the evidence to show that he has absolutely no point at all, other than to complain that someone he doesn’t like uses a term of intellectual distinction. Good things conservatives don’t do anything like that. (Oh, yes they do.)
Just little old me…
Dennis Prager’s post at NRO today is literally a series of conservative talking points on Islam and terrorism. All pretty much familiar fare, from identifying a persecution complex in their opponents (the irony!) to blaming the Left for encouraging them to their acts of violence, to just stopping short of calling Islam an ideology of indecency. But it’s with the last line of thought that Prager has an interesting line of argument. He holds that “Any religion or ideology that is above good and evil produces enormous evil”, and then he plays to make a contrast.
Unfortunately, most religious and secular ideologues find preoccupation with human decency boring. The greatest moral idea in history, ethical monotheism, doesn’t excite most people.
First, there are factual things in question. One is that most of the ideologies run on making the case that they are the last and best hope for decency. They wouldn’t be convincing otherwise. Liberalism is posited on the appeal of decency, by the way. Second, is ethical monotheism really “the greatest moral idea in history”? Solve the problem of evil before you say that, buddy. Moreover, I don’t even seen ‘ethical monotheism’ as really a moral idea — it’s more a meta-ethic, that God is the source of moral norms. That’s more a metaphysical idea. And aren’t there actual moral ideas that seem to be considerably more powerful than ‘ethical monotheism,’ anyhow? Deontology? Eudaimonistic ethics? Consequentialism? (It’s one thing you can say for Roger Scruton is that he’d never write anything this stupid. NRO and The American Spectator will miss his intellectual heft for sure.)
Finally, I suspect Prager’s got a very specific monotheism in mind when he says this… but, you know, his favorite ethical monotheism doesn’t have a particularly good track record, either.  Would we want Christianity judged by the decisions made by George W. Bush?
Factual questions aside, Prager’s case is interesting argumentative strategy. It’s a kind of downplayer, but on his own side. As if to say, “Well, nobody pays attention to little old me… I just try to do my best to be moral and upright and stuff…” The implicature of the speech act, of course, is to make the contrast — so as to say that popularity is a kind of negative authority of what’s right and true.
I’ve started calling strategies like this ‘persecution strategies,’ those that set up the dialectical board in a way that makes it inappropriate to overtly challenge the view. It runs: this view has had a long line of critics and rejections, and most folks think it’s crazy. But it hasn’t had a fair hearing. The strategy, then, is to identify most of the going criticisms of the view as mere expressions of the standard knee-jerk rejection of the view. Now, for sure, some views haven’t had a fair hearing, and it’s worth making the case they should be given it. But, as we’ve noted with the iron man, not all views need to be fully developed before we can see they are losers. And sometimes, it’s not worth our time and effort to do the work. Recently, in my survey of informal class, I’ve started calling this tactic the little view that could.