Category Archives: General discussion

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General discussion

Subjunctive tu quoque

19 Comments

I'm looking for examples of this in the media, but I wanted to distinguish a form of tu quoque I've come across in conversations, the subjunctive tu quoque. I haven't checked any literature to see whether this is a well known variant.

In the subjunctive tu quoque, someone argues that a criticism of a policy or practice is unreasonable, because the critic would do the same in similar circumstances. So, for example:

"You say that it is wrong to detain without warrant suspected terrorists, but you would do the same if you had to confront the problem of terrorism that we confront."

"You say that it is wrong to ban minarets on mosques, but if you had the immigration problem we have, you would do the same."

Neither of these are actual arguments, but composites from conversations. They seem interesting to me for a number of reasons:  they're often entangled with a claim of epistemic privilege and an explanatory claim.

First, the epistemic privilege. Unlike a standard tu quoque, they involve an interesting dismissal of the critique that claims that the critic is not really in a position to judge because they haven't dealt with the reality of the difficult situation. This carries the strong whiff of the "ivory tower fallacy" (a version of the circumstantial ad hominem, though in some newspapers its really a abusive ad hominem).

Second, the explanatory claim. The subjunctive tu quoque seems to develop naturally from the reasonable attempt to explain some phenomena to a critic. The line between explanation and justification is often difficult to mark and in trying to explain e.g., how it came to pass that the swiss population would vote to ban minarets on mosques, it is easy to move from a causal explanation or an attempt to show how such a vote would appear rational to the population, to a justification of it, at least from the critique of its rationality.

 

General discussion

On Cheating

1 Comment

While briefly away this weekend I ran across this article on cheating in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal.  The author expresses his justifiable disdain for people who maintain that one cannot said to have cheated unless one gets caught.  He writes:

Europe was in a tizzy this past week. The ruckus involved the finale to last week's World Cup qualifying soccer match between Ireland and France. In the concluding moments of the game, French team captain Thierry Henry rescued a ball that was going out of bounds by grabbing it with his hand. (For some reason known only to the inventors of soccer, this is a no-no.) Shuttling the ball deftly to his foot, Mr. Henry set up the decisive goal. The referee failed to catch the French footballer's cheating, and after the game Mr. Henry proclaimed that the ref's error absolved him of responsibility: "I will be honest, it was a handball. But I'm not the referee. I played it, the referee allowed it. That's a question you should ask him."

Mr. Henry's attitude is shared by athletes in just about every American sport. They believe anything the ref doesn't call is OK. With the burden of maintaining integrity entirely on officials, cheating is encouraged. Players hide behind a petty legalism that liberates them to cozen and counterfeit—or worse.

"I watch a lot of sports today, and I swear it's a dirtier game," says Randy Roberts, a Purdue University professor who has written several sports histories. There is "more clipping" in football, he notes, and "more hitting out of bounds; more dirty shots." Then there are the low maneuvers that don't involve gratuitous violence: How often have we seen a wide-receiver dive for the ball, scoop it up in full knowledge that it has bounced off the turf, and then insist he caught it fair and square? That isn't wily play; that's dishonest play. Like Mr. Henry, a lot of current athletes take the attitude that it's fine to do whatever you can get away with. If you fool the referee, all the better.

Perhaps these people maintain–as do many of my students when discussing the same examples–that cheating is part of a game defined entirely by its end result: the point of playing any kind of game is winning, not losing.  This attitude I think is the more likely cause of cheating than the one the author later suggests:

One wonders if the same dynamics affect life off the field. Has the proliferation of rules, regulations and enforcement-agency umps in the worlds of business and finance had the perverse effect of encouraging bad actors to get away with whatever they can? Will more layers of enforcement simply reinforce the notion that anything the financial referees miss is OK? Or what about legislators who regularly write laws that they know don't pass constitutional muster, leaving it to the Supreme Court to worry about such niceties. Shouldn't lawmakers strive to honor the rule of law instead of seeing what they can slip past the umpires?

I think it's ludicrous to suggest that the existence of rules and regulations is the cause of violations of those same rules and regulations in anything other than a completely trivial sense (you can't break non-existent laws!).  Perhaps the cause of the cheating–in the financial sector, in sports, and every day on the Wall Street Journal opinion page–is that people are dishonest.  They are especially dishonest, however, when no one holds them to any standard.

General discussion

The Straw Whizzer

4 Comments

Yet another version of the straw man–this one a discovery–so it appears–of Steven Pinker.  Pinker notices a peculiar rhetorical device of Malcolm Gladwell:

The banalities come from a gimmick that can be called the Straw We. First Gladwell disarmingly includes himself and the reader in a dubious consensus — for example, that “we” believe that jailing an executive will end corporate malfeasance, or that geniuses are invariably self-made prodigies or that eliminating a risk can make a system 100 percent safe. He then knocks it down with an ambiguous observation, such as that “risks are not easily manageable, accidents are not easily preventable.” As a generic statement, this is true but trite: of course many things can go wrong in a complex system, and of course people sometimes trade off safety for cost and convenience (we don’t drive to work wearing crash helmets in Mack trucks at 10 miles per hour). But as a more substantive claim that accident investigations are meaningless “rituals of reassurance” with no effect on safety, or that people have a “fundamental tendency to compensate for lower risks in one area by taking greater risks in another,” it is demonstrably false.

I think the "straw we" is a central tactic of the pseudo-contrarian: the person who sets up a silly version of the conventional wisdom, and then knocks it down.  In knocking it down, however–and this is another move entirely–the straw whizzer exaggerates the importance of the outlier cases.  Underlying the tactic of the straw whizzer is a host of other characteristics of the sloppy, dishonest, or inexpert thinker.  The straw we sets up a kind of failure, which the clever or dishonest or just lazy author will replace with something equally silly and unjustified. 

Where there is one such error, another follows closely behind.

Ad hominem circumstantial, General discussion, weak man

My distortions are your fault

3 Comments

There was a time when a young Robert Samuelson insisted that cost should not count if something like an invasion of Iraq was necessary. He 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.

He regretted writing that. Having spent something like a lot of money now on Iraq, one might reasonably ask whether Samuelson should be listened to on matters of cost. I would say not. In any case, so Samuelson makes his argument against health care reform by the well-known device of attacking someone’s motives:

The campaign to pass Obama’s health-care plan has assumed a false, though understandable, cloak of moral superiority. It’s understandable because almost everyone thinks that people in need of essential medical care should get it; ideally, everyone would have health insurance. The pursuit of these worthy goals can easily be projected as a high-minded exercise for the public good.

It’s false for two reasons. First, the country has other goals — including preventing financial crises and minimizing the crushing effects of high deficits or taxes on the economy and younger Americans — that “health-care reform” would jeopardize. And second, the benefits of “reform” are exaggerated. Sure, many Americans would feel less fearful about losing insurance; but there are cheaper ways to limit insecurity. Meanwhile, improvements in health for today’s uninsured would be modest. They already receive substantial medical care. Insurance would help some individuals enormously, but studies find that, on average, gains are moderate. Despite using more health services, people don’t automatically become healthier.

Let me state first that Samuelson isn’t talking here about the specific plan (he does later, but he relies on the Lewin group, an insurance company funded “research” group–so, really, please), he’s talking about the general concept of reform. For anyone with a minimal knowledge of other industrialized nations, who spend at most about half of what he do and get a lot more, this is just an insult. For more on that, see here.

But more basically, Samuelson is doing a bit of straw man–weak man actually–and a bit of ad hominem circumstantial. It’s a weak man because he picks on the weakest of the pro-health reform moral arguments. There are other good moral reasons to support health care reform, and they involve arguments against the very real threat of medical bankruptcy, recision, denial of coverage of pre-existing conditions, and so forth.

The ad hominem accompanies the weak man–so weak are these arguments (which Samuelson has imputed to pro-reform people), that they must rather be dishonest attempts to score political points. Now that’s just a double-wammy. It’s a bit like saying this: “the weak argument I have dishonestly imputed to you is so bad that I question your honesty in making it.”

On the arguments against the specific plan, I’d say Samuelson needs to look beyond anti-reform sources of analysis and information. It’s a fair question whether the current plans being discussed will help, so we ought to have an honest discussion of that. But that perhaps is just hoping for too much.

But let me close by going back to something Samuelson said in defense of his poorly thought-out defense of the Iraq invasion:

But I am certain — now as then — that budget consequences should occupy a minor spot in our debates. It’s not that the costs are unimportant; it’s simply that they’re overshadowed by other considerations that are so much more important. We can pay for whatever’s necessary. If we decide to do less because that’s the most sensible policy, we shouldn’t delude ourselves that any “savings” will rescue us from our long-term budget predicament, which involves the huge costs of federal retirement programs. Just because the war is unpopular doesn’t mean it’s the source of all our problems.

Other considerations that are much more important. Indeed.

General discussion

Speaking of hacks

1 Comment

We have written something like 155 posts on George Will, most of them criticisms of his arguments. “Why him?” people ask (they really do). If you follow the links to blogs discussing his articles and read the rarely published letters to the editor regarding them, you’ll find three basic types: (1) people who copy the whole op-ed to their web page, as if in some kind of sign of cyber approval; (2) people who talk about how they sometimes just have to disagree with him, despite their finding him a very intelligent and compelling writer; (3) people like me, who find his air of scholarship hollow, his premises too frequently dishonest or just wrong, and his conclusions weakly drawn when not just plain fallacious. That’s why we write about him.

But there is another reason. It’s still the reason we write about newspaper op-eds, and comparatively rarely about blogs. Detection of logical fallacies involves context. What is a straw man in one context, for instance, may not be a straw man in another context. In order to make a pedagogical point, for instance, a coach or a teacher may exaggerate the weakness of a particular course of action or point of view (Thanks to Scott for this example). In a similar fashion, poorly informed individuals may entertain lots of straw men concerning alternative views without knowing it. What’s wrong in their case is their ignorance of better arguments, not their malicious attempt to deceive. Whether that global ignorance is purposeful or not is another matter for another time.

The context of a high-caliber newspaper op-ed page, we maintain, ought to be another. We’d presume, I think fairly, that a newspaper such as the Washington Post aims to inform its readers. It has an interest therefore in the truth of the claims being alleged as true on its pages. Most of the newspaper aims to inform in a straightforward way. It does this so people can avoid the global ignorance about points of view, places, people, positions and postulations. This simple feature of the newspaper implies another one: the informative function of a newspaper ought to carry over on to its op-ed page. The op-ed page is worthless if it merely becomes a forum for the over-eager polemicist. It ought to be founded on the well-established facts of the world of honest reporting (not, for instance, the “scholars” of the American Enterprise Institute).

But we ask too much. In the context of an article gloating about how fewer Americans believe in anthropogenic climate change, he writes:

In their new book, “SuperFreakonomics,” Steven D. Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and Stephen J. Dubner, a journalist, worry about global warming but revive some inconvenient memories of 30 years ago. Then intelligent people agreed (see above) that global cooling threatened human survival. It had, Newsweek reported, “taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.” Some scientists proposed radical measures to cause global warming — for example, covering the arctic ice cap with black soot that would absorb heat and cause melting.

Levitt and Dubner also spoil some of the fun of the sort of the “think globally, act locally” gestures that are liturgically important in the church of climate change. For example, they say the “locavore” movement — people eating locally grown foods from small farms — actually increases greenhouse gas emissions. They cite research showing that only 11 percent of such emissions associated with food are in the transportation of it; 80 percent are in the production phase and, regarding emissions, big farms are much more efficient.

Newsweek is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Levitt and Dubner have been roundly criticized for their hacking it up (today’s theme!) on global warming (links later, still dealing with format issues). And that point, by the way, of locavoring it misses it widely–it’s not the transportation only, it’s the method of monoculture and petroleum-intensive production that people are trying to avoid.

Such countervailing facts should be obvious to anyone who has read the Post (I should hope). Alas.

General discussion

Hacked

2 Comments

As you can see, we’ve suffered a dramatic loss of style. Our WordPress install was hacked sometime this weekend, but thanks to our backups we didn’t lose anything and were able to do a quick reinstallation. We’re taking our time getting things back to the way they were, however. Hopefully we’ll have things fully restored in the next couple of days and be back in the trenches.

General discussion

It’s not so hard

5 Comments

We've seen I think no shortage of really bad arguments against health care reform.  Arguments against, in my humble opinion, ought to take one of two forms: attack the facts (honestly), or criticize (honestly) the inferences drawn thereupon.  Looking around the op-ed pages one finds precious little of that.  This is either because the authors don't know how to do this (likely) or they're too lazy or dishonest to try (more likely).  Maybe, however, they don't think they'd be successful (maybe likely).  

Having said that, I was pleased to read this on a left-leaning blog (Political Animal):

When it comes to reform opponents pushing back against polls showing support for a public option, they have some credible options to choose from.

Conservatives could, for example, argue that there's still some confusion about the policy details, so the poll results should be taken with a grain of salt. That's not unreasonable. They could also argue that the public has simply embraced a bad idea, and that what it popular is not always right. That, too, is a plausible approach.

Simply pretending that the polls don't exist, however, is far more annoying.

See, it's really not very hard to have a meaningful discussion.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem tu quoque, False Dichotomy, General discussion, Inexplicable, Straw Man

He who denied it supplied it

9 Comments

I have a kind of a general rule here I stick by most of the time: the people worthy of criticism are people who can plausibly be said to have some effect on the opinions of a non-ideological set of people.  However right wing George Will is, many people (except Kramer) find him "intelligent"; so his arguments and factual assertions to them are well grounded and worth considering.  In a similar fashion, many conservative or moderate readers, will think Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen represent decisive liberal voices.  So, when those two jokers come out in favor of the latest Mid-East policy disaster, then people who oppose it must be really crazy.  

I generally avoid (not always however!) ridiculously ideological venues such as the Wall Street Journal or the National Revue, I mean "Review."  I'm sure they have some role in the debate, but they get picked apart by other more competent people than me, and their arguments are mostly directed at inflaming the passions of the converted.

Just for fun, however, let's examine the following bit of ridiculousness from Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal.  A propos of Obama's "socialism" he writes:

Don't expect "Capitalism" to make the White House theater.

The movie is largely a paean to plaintiffs lawyers and unions, who alas depend on evil capitalism for their incomes. Still, it's been noted that "Capitalism" slams Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd for being one of the unseemliest friends of Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide Financial, the famous subprime toxic waste site.

In fact, Mr. Moore holds up to ridicule a Who's Who of notable Democrats for selling out to the bankers: Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin. At this point in Mr. Moore's narrative, all hope is lost, sinking beneath satanic capitalism.

But something happened, the movie says, that no one saw coming. "Change is what's happening." We are introduced to the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama (whose post-election supervisory link to the unseemly Geithner and Summers goes unremarked).

Of all the issues raised in the two-year campaign, Mr. Moore picks one, the famous charge that will not die: "Obama is a socialist."

Unlike the president, Mr. Moore doesn't duck. "The more they called Obama a socialist," he says, "the more he rose in the polls."

Michael Moore is a progressive saint. If he believes Barack Obama is a socialist camouflaged inside a Brioni suit, so must many of his fellow progressives.

This matters because the president's confused ideological identity has become an impediment to passing his agenda.

He says his health-care bill is not a Trojan horse for a Canadian-style single-payer system, but then feels forced to appear on five Sunday talk shows to prove otherwise; or he plants white-coated docs like plastic flamingos on the White House lawn.

On the first September anniversary of the end of Wall Street as we know it, Mr. Obama stood in the Federal Hall on Wall Street to say, "I've always been a strong believer in the power of the free market." Only a therapist could explain why some people say, "I've always been . . ."

You get a little of the ad hominem tu quoque in their at the opening (with a bit of false dichotomy–either capitalism or socialism are the only apparent choices), and some strange Michael Moore says "socialist" so ergo ipso fatso it must be true that many Obama supporters think he is (therefore Obama must be. . .).  The real silliness of this argument, however, consists in the claim that answering straw men attacks on your position means they are true.

That's a kind of double sophistry: you call someone a name, and then claim you're justified if the person bothers to tell you that you're calling her a name.  Why would she respond if it weren't true?

General discussion

Straw man factory

2 Comments

Quote of the day:

In a heated and sometimes vitriolic debate Monday night, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) repeatedly called out former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey for lying about health care reform. He said debating her was like "debating a pyromaniac in a straw man factory," prompting intense and immediate reaction from the audience.

I'm not sure what that means, but you can watch the video here.