Too much fun:
and
Four Chords Makes a very important point about logic, sort of.
Category Archives: General discussion
Anything else.
Did it for the lulz*
For whatever reason, honestly and firmly believing what you argue seems to be a fundamental requirement in a critical discussion. On account of this, a key challenge to an opponent is that not even she really believe what she's saying. It's a kind of (non-fallacious) ad hominem scheme: "you don't believe what you're saying, so I'm not going to waste time with you." Basically, it's an accusation of trolling. Enter O'Reilly and Trump (via the Huffington Post–sorry, boycotting New York Times' pay wall):
O'Reilly said his show had looked into the claims about Obama's birth certificate. Once they found the two Honolulu newspapers which announced his birth, he said he "put [the issue] to bed," since "that is impossible to make happen" if Obama was not born in a Honolulu hospital. O'Reilly labeled Obama's mother a "hippie," and scoffed at the notion that there was a "sophisticated conspiracy" to smuggle Obama into the U.S. and forge his identity.
"What is he, baby Jesus?" he joked. Trump said that he remained convinced that there was something fishy going on. "People have birth certificates," he said. "He doesn't have one." He then repeated the speculation that had so angered Whoopi Goldberg—that something on the birth certificate must be so radioactive that Obama is covering it up. "Maybe it says he's a Muslim, I don't know," Trump said. "…If he wasn't born in this country, it's one of the great scams of this time."
O'Reilly finally said he didn't believe that Trump was serious in his skepticism. "It's provocative, I think it gets a lot of attention, but I don't think you believe it," he said.
This is an obviously legitimate employment of it–good for you Bill O'Reilly–but I wonder what you'd call the illegitimate use–should we just call it "trolling." How might we identify it? What might be the scheme?
UPDATE. Can't believe I forgot the recent revelation from a Fox News personality that he advocated for an idea he found "privately" to be "far-fetched". I guess he did it for the lulz.
Cast across the Rubicon
Juan Cole, a guy who knows a lot about the Arab world, makes a case for military intervention in Libya. This is not particularly surprising, as he also supported the invasion of Iraq. I don't mean to question his authority by mentioning this, I just want to point out that the issue here is not hypocrisy. (Had I more energy, I'd do a post on the inevitable tu quoques of the you-didn't/did-support-Iraq-variety–maybe someone else can do that one.).
I do, however, want to express a little annoyance with the way his case gets made. He writes:
The arguments against international intervention are not trivial, but they all did have the implication that it was all right with the world community if Qaddafi deployed tanks against innocent civilian crowds just exercising their right to peaceful assembly and to petition their government. (It simply is not true that very many of the protesters took up arms early on, though some were later forced into it by Qaddafi’s aggressive military campaign against them. There still are no trained troops to speak of on the rebel side).
To be clear, those might be arguments against international military intervention. Perhaps more effort could have been made at an international intervention of the non-military variety. I don't remember anyone claiming that this route had been thoroughly exhausted. I do remember, in fact, the almost immediate insistence on threats of military force. Once those threats are made–I think–the die is cast across the Rubicon, especially with dictators such as Qaddafi. Now if someone has convincing evidence that all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted, I'll withdraw my claim.
My more serious annoyance with Cole's argument is in the way he handles objections to military intervention. He writes:
Among reasons given by critics for rejecting the intervention are:
1. Absolute pacifism (the use of force is always wrong)
2. Absolute anti-imperialism (all interventions in world affairs by outsiders are wrong).
3. Anti-military pragmatism: a belief that no social problems can ever usefully be resolved by use of military force.
Absolute pacifists are rare, and I will just acknowledge them and move on. I personally favor an option for peace in world policy-making, where it should be the default initial position. But the peace option is trumped in my mind by the opportunity to stop a major war crime.
Leftists are not always isolationists. In the US, progressive people actually went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, forming the Lincoln Brigade. That was a foreign intervention. Leftists were happy about Churchill’s and then Roosevelt’s intervention against the Axis. To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions. I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by the fringe left adulation for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the grounds that he is ‘anti-imperialist,’ and with an assumption that he is somehow on the Left. As the pillar of a repressive Theocratic order that puts down workers, he is a man of the far Right, and that he doesn’t like the US and Western Europe doesn’t ennoble him.
The proposition that social problems can never be resolved by military force alone may be true. But there are some problems that can’t be solved unless there is a military intervention first, since its absence would allow the destruction of the progressive forces. Those arguing that “Libyans” should settle the issue themselves are willfully ignoring the overwhelming repressive advantage given Qaddafi by his jets, helicopter gunships, and tanks; the ‘Libyans’ were being crushed inexorably. Such crushing can be effective for decades thereafter.
These, I would suggest, border on weak men (though there are dirty f***ing hippies who argue for them). Notice that they're addressed at the very general principle of employing military force. If Cole is serious about considering objections to military force, he might consider something along these lines:
Humanitarian military intervention is sometimes justified, sometimes not. It's justified when (1) there is a clear, achievable objective; (2) this objective cannot be achieved but by military force; (3) the chances of success are great. An argument could be made that none of these conditions have been satisfied.
I don't know if this argument could ultimately prevail, but it's disappointing that Cole doesn't seem to think anyone capable of making it. This is how he closes:
I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya. If we just don’t care if the people of Benghazi are subjected to murder and repression on a vast scale, we aren’t people of the Left. We should avoid making ‘foreign intervention’ an absolute taboo the way the Right makes abortion an absolute taboo if doing so makes us heartless (inflexible a priori positions often lead to heartlessness).
Thus my "weak man" allegation–the "left" is too mentally incompetent, unsophisticated, or ideologically rigid to participate in this discussion. Contra Cole, I think people can do this, they can see the limits of principle, they just might not, in this case, see that the basic just war conditions have been satisfied. Whatever the case may ultimately be, knocking down unserious positions or suggesting that it's either intervene militarily or endorse the slaughter (where have I heard that before) don't make good arguments.
The shoe is on the other foot
Colin, Scott and I are working on a paper for the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation conference on the problem of subjunctive inconsistency, or, as we term it, subjunctive tu quoque arguments. The idea was originally Colin's (see here). In a very basic sense, the argument scheme goes like this:
you hold belief x or perform action y, but under different circumstances, you would reject belief x or condemn action y.
This is basically an accusation of hypocrisy, even though in this case the hypocrisy is completely hypothetical. No one is claiming that the accused is actually a hypocrite; merely that the accused would be a hypocrite were the situation different. This might seem odd at first blush (whoever heard of a subjunctive hypocrite?), but it's fairly common, so much so that we have phrases for this kind of judgment: "don't judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes" or "in my place you'd do exactly the same thing."
I ran across an example of the mishandling of this sort of argument in Stanley Fish's blog column. He writes:
In a recent column in The Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts criticized Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour for failing to denounce the proposal to honor Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest by issuing a vanity license plate bearing his name. When pressed by the NAACP, Barbour said, “I don’t go around denouncing people.”
“Presumably,” Pitts retorted with obvious sarcasm, Barbour “would be equally non-judgmental if his state were to consider similar honors to Osama bin Laden, convicted spy Robert Hanssen or Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.”
Pitts' charge is exactly an ad hominem tu quoque subjunctive variety. But this puzzles Fish:
Just what is Pitts demanding here? He is demanding that Barbour earn his right to be non-judgmental with respect to Forrest by being willing to extend the same generosity to bin Laden, Hanssen, Harris, Klebold and literally thousands of others. You can withhold judgment in this instance, he is saying, only if you would also withhold judgment in all arguably equivalent instances. What Pitts is urging (implicitly) is not the condemnation of Ku Klux Klan founders, but the principle that condemnation or the withdrawal from condemnation must be evenhanded. You get the right to say something critical of what someone of the opposite party said or did only if you would be similarly critical when members of your own party said or did something similar. And you get the right to refrain from criticizing some only if you will also refrain from criticizing others.
This is a familiar move in political argument (it is related to the tu quoque, or “so’s your old man” move). We saw it in spades a while ago when Democrats lamented the incivility of public discourse and blamed right-wingers for proclaiming over and over that President Obama was a foreign Islamic usurper working to undermine American values. The right replied by rehearsing the litany of things said by democrats about George Bush — he was a tool of corporate interests, a warmonger and an enemy of civil liberties. So what gives you the high moral ground, those on the right asked, when you were equally vile in your accusations?
I think Fish's description of the logic is right on the mark. Pitts' charge is a tu quoque. The problem, however, is that not all tu quoque arguments are fallacious. This one, I think, is one of those cases. Fish doesn't get this. Skipping several paragraphs (where Fish wrongly alleges that subjunctive tu quoque arguments are instances of the liberal tendency to favor process over content):
Leonard Pitts thinks that the Klan and its views are beyond the pale – “a man who betrayed this country, founded a terrorist group and committed mass murder is a man unworthy of honor” — but he also thinks – this is his mistake — that it is an argument against the honoring of the Klan’s founder that Haley Barbour would probably not give Osama bin laden the same benefit of the doubt he seems willing to give to Forrest. (Of course, Barbour is just playing the familiar game of political equivocation.) To which I say, what does Osama bin Laden have to do with it? Bringing him and the other symbols of wrongdoing in just takes the pressure off the core moral question — was and is the Klan evil — and turns it into a question of formal equivalencies. (Are you also willing to be fair to . . . ; the list is endless.)
At bottom, Pitts’s case against honoring Forrest is that he was a bad man dedicated to realizing a bad cause. Just say that, and don’t mess it up (and dilute it) by playing the “gotcha” card, by challenging Barbour to display his liberal bona fides and accord equal treatment to everybody. That’s not what the moral life is about.
Fish is wrong about the motivation for Pitts' claim. It's not a matter of alleged liberal fairness or obsession with process over content–Fish is just confused about that. We might put it something like this:
Bedford Forrest was a racist murderer, honoring him would be like honoring Bin Laden, and I'm certain Barbour wouldn't want to honor Bin Laden.
Pitts' subjunctive tu quoque argument highlights, rather than obscures, the relevant moral issue: Forrest was a traitor, racist, and terrorist; honoring him is like honoring Bin Laden, so for this reason, Barbour ought to honor Bin Laden. But Barbour wouldn't honor Bin Laden, therefore, etc. In other words, Pitts isn't avoiding making a moral argument by hiding behind process (whatever that means) or playing "gotcha," he's making a moral argument.
How not to defend yourself (gnu atheist style!)
For those of you who don't know, Rob Talisse and I have been posting about atheism and argumentative civility over at 3QuarksDaily. First, here; the follow up here. Our book, Reasonable Atheism is on the shelves now, too. In the blog posts, we've been trying to untangle the ugliness about the charge of 'accommodationism' among the atheists. Well, that angers the gnus, because they keep thinking that people are wagging their fingers at them about tone. And angry atheists don't like to be told to be nicer. (And, by the way, nothing about what we'd written was about tone, anyway. So…)
We criticized PZ Myers, of pharyngula fame, for making an error we see a lot: holding a person in contempt for believing something you think is false. The point is that there's a difference between being wrong and being stupid, and Myers makes the error all too often. He posted a comment on our first entry (Feb 7, 2011 10:36:49 PM) and said that there are 'irrational reasons'. But only people are irrational. Reasons are irrelevant, insufficient, poorly arranged, and so on. A person may be irrational for holding those reasons, but that's the point. He's making the error in spades there. We made the distinction again in the follow-up and even provided some examples. And then Myers defends himself with this:
Dear sweet goddess of academic loquaciousness, is the whole book written in that style? Is anyone going to be able to read it? Those three paragraphs nearly killed me with their preening opacity! And, near as I can tell, all they're doing is fussing over the conjunction of two words that they found incomprehensible.
Wow. That we were hard to read is a defense? Seriously? I now know why Myers thinks that most sophisticated defenses of religious belief are totally stupid. He doesn't understand them, because he has no interest in reading hard things. A shame, really, that someone who stands for rational discourse and reason helping has no interest in responding to criticism with any.
Oh, and if we needed to make explicit the form of the fallacy, it's ad hominem abusive. Classic, baby, classic.
An appeal to the force
Whilst discussing the concept of the argumentum ad baculum the other day in Critical Thinking class, it occured to me that this scene from Star Wars might be an interesting example, in its fallacious and non fallacious varieties:
TARKIN: The regional governors now have direct control over
territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this
battle station.TAGGE: And what of the Rebellion? If the Rebels have obtained a
complete technical readout of this station, it is possible, however
unlikely, that they might find a weakness and exploit it.VADER: The plans you refer to will soon be back in our hands.
MOTTI: Any attack made by the Rebels against this station would be a
useless gesture, no matter what technical data they've obtained. This
station is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use
it!VADER: Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've
constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to
the power of the Force.MOTTI: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader.
Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure
up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the
Rebel's hidden fort…Suddenly Motti chokes and starts to turn blue under Vader's
spell.VADER: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
TARKIN: Enough of this! Vader, release him!
VADER: As you wish.
There seem to be a number of arguments on the table here.
Tarkin (the guy who looks like Vincent Price) first suggests the Empire ought to rule by fear and force, using the Death Star. This is not a fallacious appeal to force, as he simply advocates violent coercion.
Tagge worries that such force will be inadequate, since it is force, it can be defeated on its own terms, or that machines have inherent limitations which can be exploited by force (a well placed shot, for instance, at a weak point). He doesn't seem to advocate diplomacy and rational persuasion, however, though perhaps one might infer something like this from what he said.
Motti (the guy who gets choked) agrees with Vincent Price and advocates the use of force with the qualification that it is totally awesome and ought to be used now.
But Vader says force is nothing compared to THE Force.
Here is where it gets odd. Motti gets into a scrum with Vader over which force to use–force or The Force. What is hilarious is that neither thinks he shouldn't be using force broadly construed. Funnier still is that the argument over which sense of force to be used is resolved by force (broadly costrued again). Here it is:
Motti criticizes Vader for his "sorcerer's ways" and for his religious devotion to the Force–arguing:
1. The Death Star is the ultimate power in the universe and ought to be used against the rebels;
2. Not even a complete technical readout of the Death Star can defeat it;
But Vader rebuts him, arguing:
3. ad 1 and 2. The planet pulverizing power of the Death Star does not compare to The Force.
Motti replies:
4. A truly useful "force" would also be able to (1) locate the rebels; and (2) recover the stolen tapes.
5. Point 3 is therefore false.
Vader replies:
6. Choking Motti, saying "your lack of faith is disturbing."
Here's the question. Has Vader countered Motti by choking him? Or is his use of the force a fallacious appeal to force? It seems on one reading that Vader doesn't rebut Motti's points by choking him (that could be a sorcerer's trick, after all), so it is an irrelevant and therefore fallacious appeal to force.
On the other hand, perhaps Vader is demonstrating the reality of the force in its use–as if to say, "if the force weren't real, I couldn't choke you from a distance." But if that were true, then why would Vader say this:
"I find your lack of faith disturbing."
At that point, the choking I mean, it's not a question of faith anymore. Unless by "faith" Vader means a trust in his (Vader's) skills at locating lost plans, etc. If that's the case, however, I'm not sure how distance-choking makes Vader's point.
I'm inclined at this point to think that Vader has made a fallacious appeal to force–but I might change my mind if some one of you readers can distance-choke me.
The simple reason there is no simple reason
David Brooks illustrates today that there's a simple, singular reason people employ the oversimplified cause argument scheme:
Over the course of my career, I’ve covered a number of policy failures. When the Soviet Union fell, we sent in teams of economists, oblivious to the lack of social trust that marred that society. While invading Iraq, the nation’s leaders were unprepared for the cultural complexities of the place and the psychological aftershocks of Saddam’s terror.
We had a financial regime based on the notion that bankers are rational creatures who wouldn’t do anything stupid en masse. For the past 30 years we’ve tried many different ways to restructure our educational system — trying big schools and little schools, charters and vouchers — that, for years, skirted the core issue: the relationship between a teacher and a student.
I’ve come to believe that these failures spring from a single failure: reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature. We have a prevailing view in our society — not only in the policy world, but in many spheres — that we are divided creatures. Reason, which is trustworthy, is separate from the emotions, which are suspect. Society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions.
That simple reason is that we believe some kind of Brooksian dichotomy: people are either x or y, etc. My question: so we've been making dichotomies (I don't think we have–Brooks has), and this is too simple, and this is the simple reason why there is no simple reason. This refutes itself.
Berkeley’s Master Fallacy?
I'm currently teaching Modern Philosophy, and we are reading Berkeley's Three Dialogues. Philonous's presentation of what Gallois (1974 Phil Review) calls Berkeley's "Master Argument" (MA) was always particularly striking to me. The majority of my concern about the argument was along Bertrand Russell's line of resistance: there is a confusion between imagining, say, a tree independent of mind and holding that the tree, in imagination, is dependent on the mind. So I'm not sure the argument is sound. I still have that concern, but yesterday morning I found myself having another problem with the argument. Maybe NonSequitur readers can help me out here, because I, now, don't even think the argument is valid. But it can be revised. Here goes.
Here's Philonous's presentation of the MA (edited for space):
I am content to put the whole upon this issue. If you can conceive it possible for … any sensible object whatsover to exist without the mind, then I will grant it actually to be so….
Is it not as great a contradiction to talk of conceiveing a thing which is unconceived?…
Now, I've always understood the MA to be one that establishes the falsity of materialism (or non-mentalism) and the truth of idealism (as the two being mutually exclusive and exhastive options). That is, if you show the falsity of one, you've established the other. The MA is a demonstration that materialism is false. But as stated, it doesn't do so validly. Here's a formalized version:
P1) If it is possible to conceive of a sensible object w/o a mind, then it is possible that those things exist without minds.
P2) It is not possible to concieve of a sensible object w/o a mind.
C) It is not possible that there are sensible objects without minds.
Again, most folks object to P2. That still seems right to me. But even if you grant P2, the argument doesn't go through, because it's a fallacious form of inference: Denying the antecedent. That is, the form of the argument is:
P1) If P, then M
P2) not-P
C) not-M
This is craziness. Now, I think that there are two options for Berkeley-defenders to go here. The first is to say that C, because it's not explicitly stated, isn't the conclusion. But Philonous certainly seems to be convinced that he's shown not-M in the follow-up with Hylas. And in the Principles, Berkeley takes it that MP on P1 with P2 establishes the falsity of idealism:
[I]f you can but conceive it possible for … any thing like an idea, to exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it, I shall readily give up the cause. (PHK 22)
Now, this seems clear that he does think that P2 establishes certain truths, specifically, the truth of materialism and the falsity of idealism. So I'm unsure that this first option is really a good interpretive one for Berkeley-defenders. But it seems plausible philosophically.
The second option is to read all those IF-clauses as ONLY IF-clauses. And so P1 should be, rather:
P1*) I will agree that Materialism is true ONLY IF it is possible to concieve of a thing existing independently of a mind.
P2, then, works just fine to show that Materialism is false, by Modus Tollens, now. So the other interpretive strategy is to read Berkeley's argument as needing a switch of antecedents and consequents.
This, by the way, seems even more philosophically plausible than the first option, as I think that P1* is much more plausible than P1. Just because materialism is concievable, it doesn't mean that materialism is true (as P1 runs); but if materialism isn't even consistently conceivable, then that counts as very good evidence that it's false (as P1* runs).
So this strategy saves the MA from the fallacy of denying the antecedent and has it with a more philosophically plausible first premise. The only problem: you have to take it that Berkeley mixed up necessary and sufficient conditions. When he's doing metaphysics. That's uncharitable, to say the least. Oh, and it also doesn't save it from the old Russell objection that P2 is just false.
Give me more absurdum on that reductio!
The philosophical lexicon is an old and funny web resource, and one of the most famous entries on it is the rhetorical strategy of "outsmarting" a dialectical opponent:
outsmart, v. To embrace the conclusion of one's opponent's reductio ad absurdum argument. "They thought they had me, but I outsmarted them. I agreed that it was sometimes just to hang an innocent man."
It's in reference to J.J.C. Smart's famous concession that Utilitarianism does entail that consequence, and so it should be just to do so. In my department, we regularly make reference to the move. Your view about perceptual justification entails external world skepticism? Embrace skepticism – you never really know anything! This view about justice requires that some people can be made slaves? Embrace slavery as just – of course there are natural slaves! Congratulations, you just outsmarted your critics.
A new case of outsmarting was just sent along to me by a colleague. It goes like this. Suppose that an asteroid is heading toward earth, surely to destroy it. Does libertarianism make room for the use of tax money to be used to destroy the asteroid and save the world? Or would that be excessively paternalistic about how we want to meet our end? Or would it be theft, nevertheless? The Onion did a spoof on how Republicans would reject the plan on the basis of how the government's actions would get in the way of a free enterprise solution. That was parody, but Sasha Volokh, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, has a different sort of reason, but of the same spirit and leading to the same conclusion:
I don’t speak for all libertarians, but I think there’s a good case to be made that taxing people to protect the Earth from an asteroid, while within Congress’s powers, is an illegitimate function of government from a moral perspective. I think it’s O.K. to violate people’s rights (e.g. through taxation) if the result is that you protect people’s rights to some greater extent (e.g. through police, courts, the military). But it’s not obvious to me that the Earth being hit by an asteroid (or, say, someone being hit by lightning or a falling tree) violates anyone’s rights; if that’s so, then I’m not sure I can justify preventing it through taxation.
Crooked Timber's already made the Poe's Law observation about this (too bad, because Poe's my thing these days), but this does seem the sort of reduction to absurdity that should make the full-bore libertarian hesitate. Even J.J. Smart has a moment "which makes [him] wonder whether after all [he] really is a utilitarian." Volokh, too, notes that "this does make me uncomfortable." Yeah, me too.
Nanny State Bingo
I've always been a bit put off by the Nanny-metaphor used by libertarian-leaning conservatives to evoke outrage over some policy of governmental overreaching. Regulations for salt in fast food? The "nanny-state" dictates what we eat and our salt-intake. Rise up, salt patriots! Raise taxes on unhealthy food? The "nanny-state" has instituted a fat tax, that nudges us away from the unhealthy foods we want and love. Fast food diners unite! I get it.
The point of the metaphor is that it invokes the paternalism of a caretaker who micromanages a youngster's day in a way that interferes with the child's growing autonomy. The child ends up healthy, but browbeaten. An overbearing Mary Poppins — "Smile Children. Eat your brussels sprouts and then we'll all sing a round of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat!'" Sometimes, as George Lakoff said, it's all in the metaphors you use.
But now the "Nanny State" metaphor has come unhinged from that original usage. See, as a particularly weird example, Michele Bachmann's use of the metaphor in saying that tax deductions for breast pumps as medical supplies are evidence of nanny state:
I’ve given birth to five babies, and I’ve breastfed every single one of these babies. To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies, I mean, you wanna talk about the nanny state — I think you just got the new definition of the nanny state.
First, why is the fact that she breastfed her children relevant? Is it that she's making a contrast between her breastfeeding and pumping? If that's her game, I"ll let working mothers the world over at her.
Second, tthe government isn't going out and buying the pumps. The people who use them are. The government then gives them a tax break — just as the government would give you a tax break for buying any medical technology. I thought Bachmann would be for tax breaks. Huh. But I don't see how a tax break ammounts to the same intrusion as a tax hike, like with the former. In those cases, the government nudges with taxation (a negative reinforcement) citizens away from harmful choices (salt and fat). In this case, the government incentivizes positively good choices. It doesn't mandate them and it doesn't punish those who don't take part. It just seems very different. On this model, isn't every government program nanny state? Meat inspection? Nannies who won't let us eat a little poo in our sausage! Law enforcement? Nanny police. Military protection? Nanny state with guns!
The point, of course, is that once you start doing your political thinking just with catchwords, you lose sight of the core metaphors they got their power from. Did 'nanny state' just jump the shark?