All posts by Scott Aikin

Scott Aikin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
Appeal to the People, Unqualified Authority

Ad populum seals it

10 Comments

A good deal has been made about Rick Perry's doubts about evolution and global warming.  And so the concern that we have yet another know-nothing Republican on our hands is pretty popular (though Hitchens has an interesting take, too, namely, that he's cynically just putting on).  Rich Lowry, over at National Review, has seen this game before, and he warns his readers that this is an old familiar canard, the "Anti-Science Smear" on Republicans.  Here's how he responds to the evolution line:

According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans think God created man in his present form, and 38 percent think man developed over millions of years with God guiding the process. Is three-quarters of the country potentially anti-science?

Seriously. That's the response about evolution. 

The trouble is that I am unsure that those three quarters polled by Gallup that day could answer many detailed questions about evolution.  They may not be anti-science, but they aren't science literate, at least most of them.  That's probably the case about many, many things. (I'd love to see if Gallup could produce a  percentage of people who think that there's a highest number.) Calling people who answer a poll question in a fashion that does not reflect the scientific consensus 'anti-science' is probably too quick, but calling a Presidential candidate who should know better the same is just about right.   Or else, perhaps, Hitchens is right, and he's just putting on for the cameras and the 75% that really think that way.

Appeal to the People, Jonah Goldberg, Specious allegations of fallacy, Things that are false

Unpatriotic

1 Comment

In what's good for the gander news, NRO's Jonah Goldberg thinks that President Obama's rhetoric has turned ugly.  He's using patriotism against Republicans. 

According to his new stump speech, if you oppose his agenda, then you don’t care about America as much as he does.

Well, let's see the line that Goldberg thinks crosses the line.

What is needed is action on the part of Congress, a willingness to put the partisan games aside and say we’re going to do what’s right for the country, not what we think is going to score some political points for the next election. . . . There is nothing that we’re facing that we can’t solve with some spirit of ‘America first.'

Goldberg objects that the 'America First' spirit is supposed to "separate the patriotic from the petty."  But surely this is mild compared to, say, Michele Bachmann saying liberals are unAmerican or even the rest of Goldberg's article, which makes hay about how the President is going on vacation (and so thereby must not be patriotic, either!).  

The point, however, isn't to make the hypocrisy charge here.  The point is to say that Goldberg doesn't defend those charged with pettiness.  He only cries foul at their being called petty.  But surely if there is a group of legislators that are out only to save their hides for the next election rather than making hard choices or getting on with the work of governing, then they need to be called out.  Moreover, it's not the charge of being unpatriotic that I saw in the Obama speech, but the charge of political cynicism.  And it's easy to be a political cynic and be really patriotic.  In fact, those all too often go hand in hand, don't they?

Ad hominem circumstantial, Ad hominem tu quoque, Argument from Double Standards, Argument from Inconsistency

The symbols of my religion are religiously neutral

2 Comments

Joseph Ianfranco and Byron Babione's recent post at the American Spectator, "Atheists Attack 9/11 Cross," deserves some comment, as it instantiates a troubling bit of doublethink when it comes to defending state-sponsored religious symbolism.  On the one hand, there is the line that these symbols are representative of the religion of the society, and so what's wrong with a democracy that reflects the religious views of the majority?  On the other hand, there is the line that recognizes the necessity of restraint, but also holds that using the specific symbols in question doesn't amount to government endorsement of any particular religion.  The trouble is that you can't have both. 

They run their first line of argument by quoting the majority (with Kennedy as the lead writer) in the SCOTUS Salazar v Bruno case regarding a giant cross erected in the Mojave desert:

The Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society.

That's fine, but the key is that using that symbolism for lots of people's acts displays those people's acts in the light of those religious stories.  There's having holidays on days that people of the dominant religion will likely take off, then there's using their symbols to invoke public virtues.  This puts too much stress on the establishment issue, so defenders of religious symbolism then demur that the symbolism is all that religious to begin with.

Who drives by such a cross and immediately sees an "establishment of Christianity" instead of a memorial? Not most Americans, 72 percent of whom favor inclusion of the 9/11 cross at the New York memorial and see no constitutional violation.

Huh. That's funny, as invoking the opinions of the majority of people won't save the case that is the tyranny of the majority.  As if the issue was settled as follows:  You say this is the majority overreaching its bounds?  Well, 75% of the people we polled say this is just fine with them!

But the deeper issue is the strange cultural blindness that Christian monoculture imbues people with.  The state erecting a giant cross doesn't look in the least like an endorsement of Christianity, because crosses just mean piety and holiness and such.  That's just what crosses mean, right?   It seems reminiscent of the Wittgenstein joke about the Frenchman who said that French is the best language, because the words come out in the order that you think them.

 

Other problems, Things that are false

Unnecessary scarequoting

William Murchison, at the American Spectator, is counting off Rick Perry's virtues as a low-tax, pro-growth Presidential candidate.  One of Murchison's lines is that Perry won't regulate industry, especially with environmental restrictions.

Were Perry to become president, the Environmental Protection Agency could forget about lashing coal producers and automobile manufacturers to lofty standards for "pollution reduction."

I assume he's right about the facts, but what exactly is the point of putting the words 'pollution reduction' in scare quotes?  Is it that he thinks that car exhaust or smoke from coal fires count as pollution in name only?  Is it that he thinks that the EPA's standards don't reduce the pollution?  For the life of me, I can't make out what exactly is being communicated with the quote marks.  I'm assuming they are scarequotes – invoking the terms of the other side of the debate to call attention to the fact that they are wrong about some factual matter.  But what is the matter, here?

General discussion

Who Doesn’t Remember Hillary vs. Obama?

1 Comment

The answer is Rush Limbaugh:

My gosh, does nobody on this panel remember that we're running against Obama?…. Fox wants these people to tear each other up. Cause they want approval from the mainstream media, cause that's what the mainstream media would do….. You never see the Democrats pitted against each other, not like this was.

Yeah, dude, that's the nature of the debates and primaries.  The candidates have to disagree with and score points on each other before they go on to the general.  It's agreed that the ultimate opponent is X, but if you can't get past persons Y and Z who generally agree with you in a debate, you're in all sorts of trouble.

Argument from Inconsistency, Specious allegations of fallacy

My leadership trackrecord is irrelevant to my leadership

1 Comment

Newt Gingrich replied to Chris Wallace (Fox's only real news reporter), when Wallace asked about Gingrich's staff resigning, alleging that he lacked seriousness or the will to win, (or really the political judgment relevant to governing) as follows:

Well, let me say first of all, Chris, that I took seriously Bret’s injunction to put aside the talking points. And I wish you would put aside the gotcha questions … I’d love to see the rest of tonight’s debate asking us about what we would do to lead an America whose president has failed to lead, instead of playing Mickey Mouse games. (video here)

But why is this a 'gotcha' question?  The campaign staff thought Gingrich wasn't serious about the campaign.  If Newt cared about the ideas (he is an ideas man), then he'd stick it out for their sake, instead of taking the cruise, wouldn't he?  Wouldn't that be leadership?

The informal logic point: aren't some tu quoque arguments appropriate?  That is, don't they show that if some person S is inconsistent in supporting view p, even in cases where it is clearly in S's interest, then isn't S insincere?

Ad hominem tu quoque, Appeal to Fear/Threat, Argument Analysis, Argument from Double Standards, Argument from Inconsistency, Specious allegations of fallacy

Scare quoque

Mallard Fillmore's recent take on the President's rhetorical strategies:

This is an argument about arguments — namely, that scare tactics are bad, but it's worse to be a hypocrite about using them.  So the score tally goes:  Republicans -1 for using scare tactics, Obama +1 for chastising them for using the tactic.  Obama -1 for using scare tactics, and -1 for being a hypocrite about using them.  (And +1 for Fillmore for pointing out the scare tactic, and +1 for pointing out the hypocrisy.)

Now, a question.  Surely arguing that policy X will have bad consequences (or not following policy X will have the bad consequences) appeals to people's fears, but (a) so long as those things are bad and worth fearing, and (b) X is a crucial element in either avoiding or bringing about those consequences, aren't arguments from fear also good arguments from prudence?  The scare tactic is not composed of simply pointing out that something bad will happen if we don't do something — it's comprised in shutting down discussion about what is the best way to avoid the bad consequences.  Take for example the insurance salesman who says something like: people your age often can get sick and die with no warning — that's why you need St. Bartholomew Insurance to take care of your family if that happens.  The fact of the sudden death may mean that you should get insurance, but it certainly doesn't mean that you should get St. Bartholomew Ins.  We don't get why the Republicans or Obama are using scare tactics here, but it is a real question for us when we're being scared to accept a conclusion that doesn't follow.

Ad hominem circumstantial, Appeal to the People, ignorance of basic matters of logic

Wave the flag, miss the point

2 Comments

Melissa J. Ferguson, at Cornell University, just released findings showing that exposure to the American flag inclines you to vote Republican.  The more you saw the flag before the '08 election, the more likely it is that you voted for McCain.  The more you saw the flag in '10, the more likely you voted Republican — even if you self-identified as a Democrat.  This is troubling for two reasons.  First, it seems that patriotic displays count in favor of Republicans.  And so the causal connection is actually the other way — it's not that Republicans wrap themselves in the Flag because they're Republicans, it's that they're Republicans because they wrap themselves in the Flag.  That occasions the second piece of troubling news — it's imagery that's having the effect on people, not reasons, evidence, or anything like that.  Change a few features of your environment, and next thing you know, you're a conservative.  That should give conservatives pause about what basis they really hold their convictions.

But all that is beside the point when Lisa Fabrizio at the American Spectator responds to the news.  You see, she can't take the good news (that her ideological stripes have an advantage) without being suspicious of who's bringing it:

What is intriguing though, is the motivation behind these studies. Because they expose the tremendous anxiety of liberals when confronted by American patriotism, they reveal more about the observers than the observed. Because, in the main, liberals are ashamed of our country and all that it has represented and all that represents it: mainly our military and our flag.

But it seems she hasn't been paying attention. It's not the imagery that's the problem.  It's the ideology that the imagery serves that's the problem for those liberal folks.  To get hung up on the images is to miss the point.

Even the colors of the flag are cause for concern amongst those who despise what it stands for: purity, vigilance and valor. No, in modern America, liberal hearts do not beat true for the red, white and blue.

Now it's about color schemes.  Surely there's a correlation between you wearing an American Flag jacket or  John Phillip Sousa on your ipod and how you vote.  But the findings show that for many conservatives, it's the imagery that makes the determinations.  How does the motivation behind the researchers (whether or not they are liberals, commies, or whatever) influence the troubles for conservative conception?  Maybe, as noted before, it really is more a game of identity politics than anything else. You already know what to expect when you see someone wearing a tricorn hat.