My colleague, Robert Talisse, and I just posted our "Open Letter to the National Punditry" over at 3 Quarks Daily. Just to clarify: we aren't saying that Glenn Beck should be in office. The essay is supposed to be ironic. Some folks are having a hard time understanding that.
Category Archives: General discussion
Anything else.
What’s next?
A few years back, Violet Palmer refereed an NBA playoff game, and there were bubbling discussions of women refereeing in the NCAA men's tournament. Candace Parker won a dunk contest. She also dunked two times on Army. Sports writers felt they needed to say something about these things. Being sports writers, they said stupid things. Here's Stephen Moore, President of the Club for Growth, writing in National Review:
This year they allowed a woman ref a men's NCAA game. Liberals celebrate this breakthrough as a triumph for gender equity. The NCAA has been touting this as example of how progressive they are. I see it as an obscenity. Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women? What's next? Women invited to bachelor parties? Women in combat? (Oh yeah, they've done that already.)
Ah, yes. "What's next?" It is the universal signal for: here comes a blatant slippery slope argument. Oh, and women already come to bachelor parties. I don't know what kind of bachelor parties Moore goes to, but they don't sound any fun. The fact that women are in combat has less to do with progressive agendas and more to do with the fact that war is unpredictable. If you read the whole article, it gets weird. Moore keeps coming back to what a babe Bonnie Bernstein is and how she needs to do interviews in halter tops. Stephen Moore, that's creepy, dude. You need a good editor and a cold shower. So, what's next? Stephen Moore makes proclamations that are sexist, stalker-creepy, and ignorant of the facts? He also brings his prodigous critical skills to bear on financial policy at NRO (bonus points for spotting the line-drawing form of false dilemmas in that one).
In similar fashion, ESPN's Jason Whitlock writes about Candace Parker's dunking, and sees the distinction between the men's and women's games fading. Now, … wait for it … here … it … comes:
What's next? First women's hooper to cover her entire body in prison tattoos? WNBA players investigated for running up huge tabs in the champagne room of the Gold Club? Sue Bird strangles her coach at practice? Lisa Leslie attacks beer-tossing empty seat, sparks nasty melee between players and bored arena ushers?
Ach! What's next? What's next! No, that's not what's next. Now, Whitlock has a point in the article, namely, that celebrating Parker's weak dunking, we're actually patronizing her game and belittling women's basketball. That's a good point, but he doesn't need to make it with this sort of slippery slope argument. In fact, in doing that, he's done the same thing.
Arguments from Fidelity
Previously on the NonSequitur, I'd reconstructed the core arguments of Steve Gimbel's innovative and rhetorically powerful "Open Letter to Students." Overall, there are three arguments not to plagiarize: (1) the moral argument: it's theft, it's lying; (2) the practical argument: it's a bad gamble; and (3) the argument from fidelity: in plagiarizing, the student breaks a bond of trust with the teacher (and one the teacher has upheld).
The trouble is that arguments from fidelity are considered fallacy forms. They may either be a sub-class of arguments from pity or at least they are considered in the same family as arguments from pity and the other emotive-expressive argument forms that generally fail relevance tests. (E.g., arguments from outrage, wishful thinking, arguments from envy, etc.) Additionally, arguments from fidelity also work on a person's self-identification as a member of some group or other, and so they rely on the similar forms of reasoning as ad populum arguments. The rough class of affections these arguments key on are: the desire to belong, the desire to see oneself as loyal and constant, the desire to be proud of one's ties. Some examples:
A1: You're a Titans fan. How could you criticize Jeff Fisher like that?
A2: Your job in this organization is to off the snitches, so you owe it to us to nail anyone who's squealing.
The trouble with both A1 and A2 are that the fidelity the person addressed by them has to these organizations underdetermines what that person's supposed to do. With A1, anyone familiar with the NFL knows that being a fan of a team means that you find yourself having more critical things to say about your own coach than you do about other teams' coaches. A2 works on loyalty a little differently, as here deviating would be breaking the bond with the organization. But that is the right thing to do (the problem, of course is that someone will fill your position and likely come to murder you, but that's a different issue). The point is that A1 and A2 show two different ways that arguments from loyalty can fail. Here's a basic schema for the arguments:
P1: You are a member of X
P2: If you are a member of X, you have an obligation do A (as an expression of your loyal membership in X)
Therefore, you should do A
The problem with A1 is that P2 is false in its case. The problem with A2 is that even though P2 is true, the obligation to A does not trump the moral reasons not to A (in this case, A=murder). So the conclusion does not follow.
Back to Gimbel's argument. Here's the reconstruction:
P1: You (student) are a member of this student-teacher relationship.
P2: If you are a (student) member of this relationship, you have an obligation to turn in non-plagiarized work. (or: refrain from plagiarizing…)
C; Therefore, you should not plagiarize. Plagairizing is a failure of loyalty to this relationship.
Two ways arguments from fidelity can fail are, I think, in A1 and A2 fashion. I think Steve's argument passes these tests. It passes the A1 test, because P2 is true in Steve's case. Syllabi, honor codes, and things like that make it so it's clear what a student's role is. It passes the A2 test, because there are no moral reasons that trump the transmission of obligations of group membership to what one ought to do. In fact, because of the moral argument against plagiarizing, the support for the conclusion is strengthened, not weakened (as with A2).
Arguments from loyalty place a prima facie obligation on others, and we can recognize those obligations in the shame we'd feel were we not to live up to those obligations. That's what make these emotional arguments. But their emotionality need not make them fallacious. They are fallacies when they either proceed from false presumptions about what one's obligations are as a loyal X or from the thougth that even if one has prima facie obligations to X to do A, they are always ultima facie oblligations to do A. In Gimbel's case, he's made neither error. His case, then, aggregative. The moral, practical, and fiduciary arguments converge on the same conclusion.
No plagiarism, please. We’re all friends here.
Steve Gimbel of Philosopher's Playground fame, in my opinion one of the most entertaining and canny philosophy blogs around, has posted his semi-annual appeal to students not to plagiarize their final papers. It's a different argument from your usual plagiarism is theft arguments or the plagiarism cheats you out of thinking things through yourself move.
Steve's argument has multiple lines; the opening moves are pretty nice. First, he notes that most students "just aren't that good at it." Basically, the odds are that you'll get caught. Plagiarizing isn't a good gamble. Second, even if you don't get caught, "it won't end up making that much of a difference in the end." Students already have done a lot of work over the semester, and even if the paper is good or bad, it will likely make only a small difference in one grade, in one semester.
[I]n truth your college GPA means very little in the lives of most people. But getting busted for plagiarism could mean a lot. . . There is so little reward that it is absolutely not worth the risk.
These two arguments seem right to me: not only is plagiarism morally wrong and counter to the purposes of going to college in the first place (acknowledged by Steve, but not the focus), but it's actually a risky proposition. But Steve has, I think, a much more rhetorically powerful argument, and one that is an occasion for some thought about arguments from pity and loyalty.
Steve's third argument has two parts. The first is that professors, for the most part, like most students. Bad work on one paper isn't going to hurt that:
We like you (well, most of you anyway). We want you to succeed. We want you to keep in touch by e-mail and come back to campus ten years from now for alumni weekend and tell us funny stories about your time in college and about how you got to be wherever it is you will end up. And you know what, we won't care or remember that paper. To be honest, we will have forgotten about it long before next semester.
Students and teachers have a relationship, and we teachers are not going to renege on that relationship just because you students wrote a bad paper. We understand that bad work happens sometimes, especially when time's tight. And now comes the second part:
But when you plagiarize, you put us in a horrible position. We don't want to turn you in, in part because we want the best for you, but also because we don't want to have to deal with the process. We are tired too. It's been a really long semester and we just want to get our grades in so we can get to the plans we've made for break. And now you make us have to spend our time searching for your sources, documenting evidence, and explaining how we knew this had to be plagiarized. We have so much to do right now that we don't need the headache.
But it's more than just that this is a hassle. Remember: we're in a relationship, and plagiarism breaks the trust that the relationship requires.
But more than that, it feels like betrayal…. I looked forward to giving you a good grade and seeing you around the campus and now you go and do this to me? ME: the one who spent the time preparing for class, answering your e-mails at awkward hours, giving you extensions and offering to look at drafts.
Plagiarism is disloyalty. Not just to yourself, the scholars you steal from, or the discipline, but to your teachers, the people who've loyally worked for your (the student's) benefit all semester.
I'll have a follow-up post later to discuss forms of arguments from pity and loyalty. Steve's argument here seems to be a case where the pity and loyalty that students (should) feel for their teachers is relevant to the conclusion that they shouldn't plagiarize. The problem is that these are classically considered fallacy forms. So the question is: under what conditions are the sentiments of pity and loyalty relevant?
The old hometown looks the same
A few years ago some fellow Kalamazooans created the "Kalamazoo Promise," a privately-funded program that guarantees four years of in-state public university tuition for anyone who graduates from a Kalamazoo public school with at least four years of continuous enrollment. It's a little more complicated than that, but you can read the details here.
Sounds like a grand idea, if you live in The Kalamazoo Public School District. Not so much, perhaps, if you live nearby and need to sell your house in a down housing market. It might also not be such a good idea if you have to go to school in a neighboring school district. The tax drain might put the squeeze to the school funding.
But that's speculation. As luck would have it, Conor Williams, the winner of the Washington Post's "So you think you can pundit" contest (seriously there is one), is from Kalamazoo as well. Luck would also have it that he devotes his first (I think) column to the Kalamazoo Promise. Down several paragraphs he writes:
This is also a perfect way to cut across ideological lines in the education reform wars. Small-government advocates get a chance to prove – as they often claim – that private philanthropy can address social injustices more effectively than public initiatives can. After all, what better way to shrink the size of government by proving its programs unnecessary? Meanwhile, progressives can applaud the emphasis on equal opportunity and the constructive approach to improving student performance without demonizing teachers or administrators.
I think, however, small government advocates cannot make this argument. The Kazoo (that's what we call it) Promise has it that kids who go to public schools (not private ones) get a scholarship to a public university (in Michigan). What they have done, in other words, is tax themselves, and earmark the money for public college education. It grows, or perhaps prevents from shrinking, the schools in the Kalamazoo Public System, and it grows, or again prevents from shrinking, the state university system. Government involvement in education, in other words, remains the same or bigger.
What also remains in place–and perhaps needs some tweaking–is the way we fund public education–property taxes. The people who move or remain in the KPS for this reason still pay those. Only now they're getting an added public benefit, on account of the very laudable supererogatory self-taxation of a few (likely very rich) people.
Trolling
I have always liked this analogy (from an op-ed on trolling in the New York Times):
Trolling, defined as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative messages in public forums, is a problem as old as the Internet itself, although its roots go much farther back. Even in the fourth century B.C., Plato touched upon the subject of anonymity and morality in his parable of the ring of Gyges.
That mythical ring gave its owner the power of invisibility, and Plato observed that even a habitually just man who possessed such a ring would become a thief, knowing that he couldn’t be caught. Morality, Plato argues, comes from full disclosure; without accountability for our actions we would all behave unjustly.
Interesting piece. But the real problem is the troll who doesn't know it. I suppose that's why we're here.
The Thirty
Sometime soon we'll have a post up about the "Hack Thirty" at Salon.com. We were surprised that some made the list (B-list hacks) and that some didn't (Charles Krauthammer? Seriously). For that reason we wondered about the methodology and the meaning, in the end, of the term "hack."
One person who didn't make the list but should have place in the top 15 at least was Michael Gerson, former Bush 43 Speechwriter and promoter of unprovoked defensive war.
Luckily, his most recent column reads as a damning indictment of that exclusion. For the tl;dr crowd (how many of you is that? would you have made it at least to here?) he argues that Obama demonstrates the failure of "liberalism" and that certain liberals–whom he stupidly mentions by name (not even George Will would do that)–refuse to admit that, resorting instead to "conspiracy theories" (example of a "conspiracy theory": all of my enemies are plotting against me, forming a three-point axis–I know–of EVIL).
He begins:
Following two years of poor economic performance and electoral repudiation, liberalism is casting around for narratives to explain its failure – narratives that don't involve the admission of inadequacies in liberalism itself.
In the first place, for serious, how could anyone claim that the Obama administration's (financial, oil, military, etc.) industry-friendly policies constitute "liberalism"?
Second, one cannot maintain that "liberalism" has failed because the Democrats lost one of the two representative bodies–they still hold the Senate, the Presidency (and the liberal media of course).
Enough preliminaries. Our point here is that Gerson attempts to make the Willian hollow man move–"liberalism" is the key word usually, or "progressivism" (hey look it up in today's Post!). It basically goes like this. Mention the word "liberalism," and do not mention the words of any particular liberal–you're not dialoguing with them (that's critical)–and set up a hollow man. Then engage hollow man, showing hollow man argument to be foolish, liberals as a consequence to be lazy, dishonest thinkers, etc.
That's how you do a hollow man. But Gerson foolishly names his opponents He writes:
So Matt Yglesias warns the White House to be prepared for "deliberate economic sabotage" from the GOP – as though Chamber of Commerce SWAT teams, no doubt funded by foreigners, are preparing attacks on the electrical grid. Paul Krugman contends that "Republicans want the economy to stay weak as long as there's a Democrat in the White House." Steve Benen explains, "We're talking about a major political party . . . possibly undermining the strength of the country – on purpose, in public, without apology or shame – for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012." Benen's posting was titled "None Dare Call it Sabotage."
So what is the proof of this charge? It seems to have something to do with Republicans criticizing quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve. And opposing federal spending. And, according to Benen, creating "massive economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system."
These guys (Benen and Yglesias) have very popular blogs, appear on TV, etc., and can respond to Gerson's hollow man–which is now, on account of its first instance distortion, has become representational version of the straw man. Benen has responded at length. Here is a brief snippet:
What's more, I'm fascinated by the notion that I'm describing a "conspiracy" — a word Gerson uses four times in his column. I made no such argument. There's no need for secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms; there's no reason to imagine a powerful cabal pulling strings behind the scenes. The proposition need not be fanciful at all — a stronger economy would improve President Obama's re-election chances, so Republicans are resisting policies and ideas that would lead to this result.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wasn't especially cagey about his intentions: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president…. Our single biggest political goal is to give [the Republican] nominee for president the maximum opportunity to be successful."
Given this, is it really that extraordinary to wonder if this might include rejecting proposals that would make President Obama look more successful on economic policy — especially given the fact that McConnell's approach to the economy appears to be carefully crafted to do the opposite of what's needed? After Gerson's West Wing colleagues effectively accused Democrats of treason in 2005, is it beyond the pale to have a conversation about Republicans' inexplicable motivations?
Read the whole thing here. In addition to his dishonest representation of the facts, short memory, and general hackishness, Gerson's mistake is naming opponents who can respond (or whose words can be checked). George Will almost never does that. It tends to backfire.
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Two quick things:
First, in honor of the holiday, please enjoy Scott and Bob's article over at 3 Quarks Daily: "Waging War on Christmas to Save Thanksgiving." It's well worth the read.
Second, Salon's "Hack Thirty" is finished: the winner, Richard Cohen! Shocker: no Charles Krauthammer. I'd have a different list (adjusted for exposure and importance), but notic how many of our favorites made it on the list (and why).
Happy Thanksgiving again. I will watch the Lions win a glorious victory. I'm certain.
Hack 30
We're busy here indoctrinating young minds into the mysteries of obversion, contraposition, and conversion, so please enjoy Salon.com's Hack Thirty. The thirty worst columnists, journalists, and pundits in America.
Some old friends there.
Something else to worry about
Let's call this a follow up on the Rush Limbaugh post from a few days ago:
In Britain, experts estimated that fixing the country's bad eating habits might prevent nearly 70,000 people from prematurely dying of diet-related health problems like heart disease and cancer. It would also theoretically save the health system 20 billion pounds ($32 billion) every year.
In Brazil, however, the rates of illnesses linked to a poor diet are not as high as in the U.K. So Brazilians would get relatively few health benefits while their economy might lose millions.
The study was paid for by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and was published online Thursday in the medical journal, Lancet.
"We are not suggesting people not eat a healthy diet," said Richard Smith, a professor of health system economics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "We're just trying to point out that healthier eating can have unintended consequences."
Smith and colleagues said decisions in Brazil and in Western countries to adopt more vegetarian diets could cost the meat-dependent Brazilian economy 1,388 million reais ($815 million).
All is not lost, however.
"In an ideal world, we would all have a perfect diet," Smith said. "But it's also desirable that everybody has a job."
Smith said officials should consider nutritional guidelines more carefully. For countries like Brazil, which rely heavily on meat imports to the West and to Japan, global nutritional advice could potentially be devastating.
Others weren't so sure."There are things happening in the rest of the world that this model didn't account for," said Julian Morris, executive director of International Policy Network, a London-based think tank. "The increasing demand for meat in Asia is substantial, ongoing, and might counteract any reduced demand in developed countries." Morris also disputed the assumption that healthy eating recommendations would change what people actually do have for dinner.
Asia. There to bail us out.