Anything else.
It's 83 degrees on April 2nd in Chicago, (and 82 on April 1st), do you know where your global warming denier is?*
*It being warm, really warm, nay recordly warm today does not demonstrate by itself the view that the globe is warming. Nor does, however, an entirely predictable winter snow storm in one part of the world disprove it. I just thought we would be hearing screaming from Sean Hannity, George Will, and the rest of the denier community.
It's Holy Week, so here's a post about religion–Catholicism in particular. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has been busy campaigning against Health Insurance Reform, dishonestly claiming that somehow despite severe restrictions, abortions might be covered. Reason enough to trash the whole thing.
Now comes of course another scandal, brought about no doubt by liberals attempting to destroy the Catholic Church. Not only have liberals been circling like buzzards above the latest priest-abuse (that's now an adjective, like "school shooting") scandal, they also, you see, had a hand in producing it. That's how ingenious this whole thing is.
Here's Ross Douthat, op-ed columnist for the New York Times:
This hasn’t prevented both sides in the Catholic culture war from claiming that the scandal vindicates their respective vision of the church. Liberal Catholics, echoed by the secular press, insist that the whole problem can be traced to clerical celibacy. Conservatives blame the moral relativism that swept the church in the upheavals of the 1970s, when the worst abuses and cover-ups took place.
In the first place, conservatives don't blame "moral relativism," they blame (wrongly) homosexuals (and the phenomenon of homosexuality). One might raise serious questions about the rate of the abuse among Catholic clergy (versus say other faiths), but no one can doubt that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church as an institution sought to deny and cover up its crimes. Denying and covering up your crimes isn't what a moral relativist does. A moral relativist admits they happened, but denies that they are crimes. No one is alleging that.
Here is an interesting item from John Holbo at Crooked Timber:
No, I don’t mean: arguing fair. I think it should be ab homine. A moving (irrationally) away from the man. It’s a fallacy.
Here’s the context. Matthew Yglesias and Jonathan Chait have a diavlog in the course of which Chait takes the scrupulous high-road position that, when it comes to charges of racism, you really have to be slow to accuse. He rolls out the standard fair-play-in-debate considerations: if the person is saying something wrong, but not explicitly racist, you can just point out the wrongness, without speculating, additionally, that they said the wrong thing out of racism. There is, he implies, no real loss in not being able to delve into dark motive.
But here’s the problem with that. In an environment in which creative and speculative accusations of bad motives are, otherwise, flying back and forth in free and easy style, a social norm against accusing people of one sin in particular is actively misleading. It inevitably generates the strong impression that this bad motive – out of the whole colorful range of diseases and infirmities of the mind and spirit – is an especially unlikely motive. Which, in the sorts of cases Chait and Yglesias happened to be discussing, is not true. So, contra Chait, an inconsistent semi-norm against ad hominem arguments encourages an ab homine error that may be less angry (that’s not nothing) but is significantly more confused tha[n] what excessive – but even-handedly excessive! – hermeneutics of suspicion would produce.
I seem to remember talking about something like this before. I'd call this an error of excessive scrupulousity. Philosopher types fall prey to this one out of an overabundance of charity: Sure this argument really blows, but maybe there really is a good one in here somewhere. (Sometimes, I think, philosopher types do not want to trouble their beautiful minds with silly arguments, so they just deny their existence or refuse to discuss them).
Nonetheless, I still think one ought to be especially careful in attributing motives, including racist ones, to other arguers. In the first place, those motives are hard to know (and therefore easily disputed); second, they are hard to define (and therefore easily disputed); third, and most importantly (and tragically) they are come across as illegitimate ad hominems (and are therefore easily disputed). The ease of dispute of imputation of racism places a heavy practical burden on the accuser. Does one really want, in other words, to go through the necessary evidence in order to make a point likely to be only tangentially related to the discussion at hand (even if true)?
So this is mostly a pragmatic objection to Holbo's point. Unfortunately, what makes these sorts of accusations difficult (even if true and relevant) is the deeply entrenched presence of the fallacy fallacy. This is the view that the very criticizing of someone else–especially in accusing them of fallacies–is itself a kind of fallacy. The rules of our dumb discourse prevent legitimate criticism. The only thing that counts, I still maintain this week, is consistency. This is why Pat Buchanan, despite his Hitler apologetics, is constantly on TV. He's consistent.
Too much of our critical political discourse depends on one single virtue: consistency. This is why Pat Buchanan, a man who writes articles (I am not exaggerating) in praise of Hitler–is a kind of pundit saint. Since consistency matters, and consistency depends on memory–or rather, detecting someone's inconsistency depends on remembering what she's said in the past, let's have some fun with our favorite son on an economist, Robert Samuelson. Samuelson, is like the captain bringdown of the Post editorial page. He's got a droopy mustache, a dour expression, and he poo-poos just about everyone who tries to do something about something–environmentalists are dumb and self-indulgent for buying Priuses!.
For a while–for those who remember–Samuelson been poo-pooing Obama's "self-indulgence" on health insurance reform. A more competent rhetorical analyst, by the way, might have fun with the way he always goes ad hominem on Obama–treating his own impoverished and uncharitable image of Obama rather than Obama's stated positions (he even admitted once that this was his own problem). But it's worthwhile to poke fun at Samuelson's priorities. Way back before we spent 700 plus billion dollars in Iraq, chasing what turned out to be an easily uncovered deception, here is what Samuelon wrote:
A possible war with Iraq raises many unknowns, but "can we afford it?" is not one of them. People inevitably ask that question, forgetting that the United States has become so wealthy it can wage war almost with pocket change. A war with Iraq would probably cost less than 1 percent of national income (gross domestic product). Americans have grown accustomed to fighting with little economic upset and sacrifice.
Pocket change. In reflecting on this piece (called "A War We Can Afford") Samuelson wrote:
Yes, that column made big mistakes. The war has cost far more than I (or almost anyone) anticipated. Still, I defend the column's central thesis, which remains relevant today: Budget costs should not shape our Iraq policy. Frankly, I don't know what we should do now. But in considering the various proposals — President Bush's "surge," fewer troops or redeployment of those already there — the costs should be a footnote. We ought to focus mostly on what's best for America's security.
When it comes things that are actually real, on the other hand, Samuelson is skeptical:
When historians recount the momentous events of recent weeks, they will note a curious coincidence. On March 15, Moody's Investors Service — the bond rating agency — published a paper warning that the exploding U.S. government debt could cause a downgrade of Treasury bonds. Just six days later, the House of Representatives passed President Obama's health-care legislation costing $900 billion or so over a decade and worsening an already-bleak budget outlook.
900 billion? That figure is almost exactly what we've spent in seven years of war. Weird. But this time cost is all that matters.
Lately I've been in a kind of why-bother mood. Has the world of political discourse been particularly foul lately? It's hard to say. It's certainly true that the imminent (maybe today!) health-care legislation has driven many around the bend. For too many people who ought to know better, this corporate-friendly legislation is basically communism. Pointing out that such people have constructed hollow men seems really ineffective. Not because they don't get it, but rather because they know exactly what they're doing, and they know that our current discourse rules reward them for doing so. Why's that?
We'll all agree it's wrong to break the rules. The rules in this circumstance (tv and print political discourse) include the following:
(1) being accurate and truthful;
(2) being decorous (not being a name calling arse);
(3) managing your facts well–i.e., drawing the appropriate connections, etc. (not blaming things on voodoo for instance);
(4) being consistent in your positions (goose and gandering).
These are the ones I can think of at the moment. Fallaciously reasoning or behaving covers all of these or some of these depending on the infraction. Hollow-manning, for instance, is a failure of all four of these, but particularly the first two. When one hollowmans, one isn't being accurate and one isn't be decorous.
I think we all know that. The problem, however, seems to be in pointing this out. The hollow manner (and by extension the fallacy-employer) has an advantage. He can break the rules, claim not to, and then claim, as they often do, that pointing out violations of the rules is a violation of the rules. So therefore:
(5) accusing someone of a violation of the rules is a violation of the rules.
This makes the whole rule-bound enterprise very odd. If I suggest someone has made sh*t up, I'm going to open myself to the accusation of not being decorous. It's not sporting, in other words, to accuse people of cheating. Or at least one–a devious one–will be allowed to make that accusation–so now you're the d**che for pointing out the dishonesty, and now the discussion regards your violation of the rules, rather than the initial one.
I'd suggest that this is one reason at least we see so little explicit fallacy-identification in our political discourse. Put another way, this is why people–such as those who frequently appear here–get away with arguing the way they do. That's the way the rules of discourse have been allowed to work.
Now if anyone has an explicit example of what I'm talking about here I'd appreciate it. I've seen it a gazillion times, but it's Sunday morning, and though I've been gone for a week so, I'm now on vacation.
For anyone who has had the impression that the major news networks treat the goings on in Washington like items in the gossip column in a high school newspaper, consider the following from Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly:
QUOTE OF THE DAY…. ABC's "This Week" held its usual roundtable discussion this morning, with Elizabeth Vargas hosting a panel of Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, George Will, and Paul Krugman.
The last topic of conversation was introduced by Vargas this way:
"[O]f course, this weekend, we have a brand-new White House social secretary appointed to replace Desiree Rogers, a close friend of the Obamas who is exiting after a bumpy tenure, I would say. Cokie, you spoke with her. She — she was highly criticized after the Obamas' first state dinner in which she arrived, looking absolutely gorgeous, but in what some people later said was far too fancy a dress, but most importantly, that was the state dinner that was crashed by the Salahis, who walked in without an invitation when the social secretary's office didn't have people manning the security sites."
This led to a surprisingly long chat about Desiree Rogers.
Krugman sat silently while the discussion went on (and on), before eventually interjecting:
"Can I say that 20 million Americans unemployed, the fact that we're worrying about the status of the White House social secretary….
Donaldson responded, "Paul, welcome to Washington."
I asked my house guest, a real philosopher and therefore likely some kind of liberal, which major or even minor scientific view, endorsed by a majority of competent scientists working in their specific field of expertise, he doubted. He said that he couldn't think of one. Nor really can I. For in the first place, I don't think my judgement in those matters so acute that it outweigh the work of all of those people working independently across time and space. Secondly, I wonder why I would be so acute as to notice the faults of one particular view, without at the same time suspecting the every similar scientific activity be subject to the same kinds of failures. But that's just me, and perhaps my house guest.
Now comes George Will, noted global warming denier. His scientific acumen is so sharp–on the subject of global warming–that the Post continually allows readers to consider his judgement to stand alone, often without fact checking and usually without rebuttal. And who says arguments are dialogues.
Today's global-warming-advocates-are-eating-crow provides yet another example of our newly discovered fallacy, argumentum ad imperfectionem–the argument from imperfection. For more on that, see here. Briefly again, the argument from imperfection, operates in the following way. A person finds completely normal relatively minor errors (or inconsistencies, etc.) in a particular view, such as climate change, and alleges that those errors (consistencies, etc.) justify a kind of disproportionate skepticism. So, for instance, the disagreement among scientists (which is what they do!) on the contours of this or that matter do not open the door to global skepticism.
First here's Will in the only section of his op-ed that makes reference to evidence:
Global warming skeptics, too, have erred. They have said there has been no statistically significant warming for 10 years. Phil Jones, former director of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, source of the leaked documents, admits it has been 15 years. Small wonder that support for radical remedial action, sacrificing wealth and freedom to combat warming, is melting faster than the Himalayan glaciers that an IPCC report asserted, without serious scientific support, could disappear by 2035.
Jones also says that if during what is called the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800-1300) global temperatures may have been warmer than today's, that would change the debate. Indeed it would. It would complicate the task of indicting contemporary civilization for today's supposedly unprecedented temperatures.
Last week, Todd Stern, America's special envoy for climate change — yes, there is one; and people wonder where to begin cutting government — warned that those interested in "undermining action on climate change" will seize on "whatever tidbit they can find." Tidbits like specious science, and the absence of warming?
If you follow the links, you'll learn that Phil Jones has been grossly misrepresented (that reference to 2035 was a typo, by the way, and not integral to the case for anthropogenic climate change). Here is Jones (read the entire thing):
G – There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.
We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.
H – If you agree that there were similar periods of warming since 1850 to the current period, and that the MWP is under debate, what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?
The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing – see my answer to your question D.
I – Would it be reasonable looking at the same scientific evidence to take the view that recent warming is not predominantly manmade?
No – see again my answer to D
Now of course if you read only those portions of the discussion that confirm your pseudo-skepticism, you might take Jones to be dismantling his entire case. But it ought to be obvious that the disagreements about the data, to Jones and the rest of actual scientists, are well known and do not constitute grounds for doubting the entire thesis, as non-expert skeptics such as WIll maintain. Perhaps, however, Jones is blinded by his own expertise.
But of course Jones is fully aware of the disagreements around the edges of the science. That's what science is for those who don't know.
Dear all–
There's something messed up with our comment system. Almost everyone gets considered spam. Just comment once. I post every non-spam comment. Just keep trying.
Thanks
jc
I think I might refine the definition of the argumentum ad imperfectionem somewhat today. As I alleged the other day, ad imperfectionem fallacy occurs when one asserts that the minor errors in someone's argument may be justifiably exaggerated by opponents of that argument. So, for instance, minor errors in a legal filing undermine one's entire case, not just those particular claims relevant to those errors. For, after all, if there are a couple of typos, who knows what other kinds of serious errors there could be. This, of course, is the response of a crazy person. But not all crazy is the same, so it's worth it to take a closer look at the crazy.
On this description, the imperfectionem is a variation of the ignoratio elenchi (IE). The ignoratio elenchi, sometimes called "missing the point" or–get this–"non sequitur", is a kind of a catch-all category of fallacy: any other basic failure of informal entailment gets thrown in here. Here, for instance, is the way Patrick Hurley puts it in A Concise Introduction to Logic:
Missing the point illustrates a special form of irrelevance. This fallacy occurs when the premises of an argument support one particular conclusion, but then a different conclusion, often vaguely related to the correct conclusion, is drawn.
….
but in some ways it serves as a catchall for arguments that are not clear instances of one or more of the other fallacies.
Textbooks will often use examples of IEs with outrageous conclusions where more moderate ones are available. So, for instance, given the inevitable shortcomings in weather forecasts, one ought not to listen to them at all. That's dumb, as weather forecasts are predictions, and predictions can be wrong. Again, the conclusion of a crazy person. This conclusion, in that particular example, is driven by the idea that any imperfection, however minor, in the assertions of one party are sufficient to create doubt about that party's entire case.
I think the argumentum ad imperfectionem is focused on the inference from the relatively minor shortcomings of one side to either (a) the truth of the opposite side (in which case it looks like a false dichotomy) or (b) to the conclusion that no one can really claim to know one's conclusion is true (in which case it looks like an appeal to ignorance) or finally (c) to the conclusion that the opposite side is relatively more justified.
I can think of examples of all three of these. But for today, here's an example of (a):
(a) in the minds of many, the various quibbles and revisions involved in the science of global warming justify skepticism of the entire thesis. Here's an example of that from the Washington Post:
"What's happened here is that there's an industry of climate-change denialists who are trying to make it seem as though you can't trust anything that is between the covers" of the panel's report, said Jeffrey Kargel, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies glaciers. "It's really heartbreaking to see this happen, and to see that the IPCC left themselves open" to being attacked.
That's not an example of an actual argument, as it is a report of someone else's argument. But people really do make that allegation, unfortunately.
Maybe if I'm motivated I'll find examples of the others later.
The other day the Washington Post published a piece by a professor of politics at the University of Virginia (Gerard Alexander) called "Why are liberals so condescending?" (we discussed it here). It remains today a few days later one of the most emailed articles on the Post's website, so it's worth looking at it in more detail. To be fair to this juvenile piece, however, would be a labor of many days, so I'd just like to point out a few quick items.
First off, the title has the ring of a complex question: that is two questions, one unfairly assumed to get to the other. What the author ought to establish is whether liberals are more condescending than conservatives (in similar circumstances), or whether liberals are particularly condescending. Once he established this, then he can ask the follow up question: why are they this way to such a degree (as we have established)? His failure to understand this elementary logical notion makes me look down on him.
Second, the author is silly. Not to be an even-hander here, but I think liberals are no less "condescending" than conservatives. I'd suggest, in fact, that such labels and broad generalizations are really meaningless. Turns out, in fact, that such equivocal terms were used to great effect by this author. You see, liberals are one solid group, each one guilty of the sins of the other, while conservatives were always able to avoid group guilt. Here's an example:
This liberal vision emphasizes the dissemination of ideologically driven views from sympathetic media such as the Fox News Channel. For example, Chris Mooney's book "The Republican War on Science" argues that policy debates in the scientific arena are distorted by conservatives who disregard evidence and reflect the biases of industry-backed Republican politicians or of evangelicals aimlessly shielding the world from modernity. In this interpretation, conservative arguments are invariably false and deployed only cynically. Evidence of the costs of cap-and-trade carbon rationing is waved away as corporate propaganda; arguments against health-care reform are written off as hype orchestrated by insurance companies.
Before I comment on what I wanted to comment on, here and throughout the piece the author doesn't bother to counter the claims against "conservatives." Perhaps he takes it as self-evident that what Mooney said (in his well-documented–I didn't say "true"–book) is false. I can think of a couple of Republicans, for instance, whose ignorance of science is concerning. Here's Republican Senator Jim DeMint on the snowstorm this past week in Washington:
It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries "uncle"
I find myself looking down on Jim DeMint, an extremely wealthy, powerful, and capable man for the idiotic thing he said. It's obvious that he doesn't know jack about the science behind global warming. This same claim of many other prominent "conservative" and "Republican" leaders and intellectuals.
Back to what I think I was going to comment on (it's now several hours from when I wrote that line above, so I don't really remember what I was going to say)–Alexander's characterization of Mooney's book disregards its content in order to criticize its form. This, I think, is a hopelessly dumb and unproductive way of interacting with people with whom you disagree. Not only does Mooney have an argument, but, judging by the numbskull policies of the last eight years, he might even have a good one. But you can't really tell that, of course, until you actually look at the argument. Alexander maintains, of course, that you don't need to look at the argument, because he knows what it says. That, I think, is just what Mooney was complaining about.
No doubt, as I've said many times before, many liberals condescend to conservatives. Many conservatives condescend to liberals. The narrative, however, is that liberals are intellectual snobs, when conservatives are not. I think that's hardly the case as a matter of fact. It's also almost a matter of logic (I said "almost") that when you say someone's view is wrong, you're bound to appear snobby to them. Especially when that person, such as is the case with Alexander here, doesn't seem to know what makes a view right or what makes it wrong.