Category Archives: Ignoratio Elenchi

Ignorance of the proof–general cluelessness as to what the evidence shows.

False Cause, Ignoratio Elenchi, Michael Gerson, non causa pro causa, oversimplified cause, Post hoc ergo propter

Diagnosis: Evil

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To most people, elections are complicated.  Not so to some pundits.  Enter Gerson:

By the summer of 2007, the Republican presidential candidate most closely identified with the war, John McCain, was in serious trouble. Moderates and independents no longer seemed impressed by the fierce, lonely advocate of what many called "escalation." Political observers argued that McCain's money troubles and staff resignations and firings — he went from 120 campaign workers to 50 — were "another nail in Mr. McCain's campaign coffin," showing that "the wheels came off," and leading to "a death spiral that is almost never survived."

If cliches could kill, McCain would have been embalmed and buried.

Yet the Republican candidate most closely identified with the war and the surge performs well in head-to-head polls against the Democrats. The revival of McCain's campaign was possible for one reason: the revival of American fortunes in Iraq. Most categories of violence in Iraq are now down by more than 60 percent, and sectarian attacks in Baghdad have fallen by 90 percent. Sunni tribal leaders are conducting the first large-scale revolt of Arabs against al-Qaeda thuggery — which includes, we learned last week, strapping explosives to a mentally disabled woman and setting off a blast in a market.

McCain seems well suited to deal with this kind of evil — precisely because he would diagnose it as evil.

Every Republican save Ron Paul embraced the most energetic and belligerent of Bush's policies.  How McCain alone is helped by this seems a bit of a mystery.  Besides, someone might even say that the surge hasn't worked (because it has exhausted its own ability to continue without achieving any of its stated goals), but I guess that person would, as Gerson earlier says, would "embrace retreat at any cost."  But Gerson's claim about McCain's surging success is just run of the mill causal fallacy stuff–a little post hoc ergo propter hoc or perhaps some oversimplified cause.  The real travesty is the remark after the dash.  

There is another theologian in this race.  If diagnosing something as evil constitutes a qualification, then why isn't Gerson supporting Mike Huckabee?

Ignoratio Elenchi, William Kristol

Obligatory

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Must say something about William Kristol's new column in the crazy liberal New York Times (that's ironing, by the way).  By all rational accounts, Kristol is a joke.  And indeed in his column he goes about demonstrating that fact:

His campaigning in New Hampshire has been impressive. At a Friday night event at New England College in Henniker, he played bass with a local rock band, Mama Kicks. One secular New Hampshire Republican’s reaction: “Gee, he’s not some kind of crazy Christian. He’s an ordinary American.”

One particularly uninformed person saw the otherwise crazily Christian Huckabee play bass and concluded he was normal.  Kristol thinks that is a good thing. 

Equivocation, Ignoratio Elenchi, Kathleen Parker, Straw Man

I fought the law

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Kathleen Parker, a deeply empathetic person, puts herself in the shoes of the typical illegal immigrant:

>As long as we offer jobs, medical treatment, driver’s licenses and in-state tuition to those who come here illegally, why would any right-thinking, would-be immigrant take a number and wait his or her turn? Why not just throw in the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and free tequila while we’re at it?

Indeed, the life of the typical illegal immigrant is full of all sorts of freebies; indeed, the only thing missing is the fulfillment of some kind of alcohol-fueled male adolescent sexual fantasy.

It gets worse:

>Arguments favoring services and privileges for illegal immigrants always point to the broader benefits to society.

God forbid.

>Healthy immigrants mean a healthier America; an educated populace means fewer jobless dependents; legal drivers are more responsible because, allegedly, they’ll also buy insurance and stick around when they have an accident.

>The latter seems unconvincing given that illegal immigrants, by definition, tend not to think legally.

A bachelor, by definition, is an unmarried man. An illegal immigrant, by definition, is someone who does not have legal status; but this actually doesn’t mean that this illegal immigrant has broken the law. The law might have been broken–as it is in numerous cases–when they were children. Besides, it’s not the case that anyone who breaks the law, in any regard, “tends to think illegally.” I’d be interested to find out what the thinking illegally tendency is.

She continues:

>In any case, by the same logic, we might also say that amnesty is good for the country because then everyone would be legal. Rather than fix something, we simply accommodate circumstances. As in: Kids are having sex anyway, so we’ll just give them condoms.

Parker suggests that the response to every problem is the same: stop it. While that might be desirable, as any sociologist could tell you, it’s not going to happen. Denying the reality and complexity of illegal immigration will not achieve much, however much you assert that illegal is as illegal does.

David Broder, Ignoratio Elenchi

Armed with information

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A PBS show about a successful but financially strained state run health care program for the poor in Tennessee featured someone–a state representative dead set against the program–who said: not all problems can be solved with money. Fair enough. But all money problems can be solved with money, and that was a money problem. David Broder isn’t far away from that when he writes:

>What I learned about Leavitt in his years as governor is that he is blessed with vision that sees future policy challenges and developments more clearly than most politicians. In this case, he is visualizing a radically different kind of medical marketplace, in which families armed with specific information about the treatment success and prices of hospitals and doctors can shop at will for the best quality and most affordable care.

There’s no shortage of information about health care success. Here’s one that even I know: seeing a doctor for basic health care needs increases one’s healthness quotient. The primary shortage, as anyone can tell you, is access to affordable health care for millions of employed as well as unemployed people.

David Broder, Ignoratio Elenchi

Party at any cost

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Here is another one of those meta-political paeans to “bipartisanship”:

>The distinguishing characteristic of this Congress was on vivid display the other day when the House debated a bill to expand the federal program that provides health insurance for children of the working poor.

>Even when it is performing a useful service, this Congress manages to look ugly and mean-spirited. So much blood has been spilled, so much bile stockpiled on Capitol Hill, that no good deed goes untarnished.

>The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a 10-year-old proven success. Originally a product of bipartisan consensus, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, it was one of the last domestic achievements before Monica and impeachment fever seized control.

Sounds like you’ll have to blame Bush and the Republicans are to blame for this one. They will not allow a successful program on ideological grounds. And, even though they are the minority in the House (and very unpopular in the Presidency), they refuse to compromise.

Not so. The Democrats took advantage:

>But rather than meet the president’s unwise challenge with a strong bipartisan alternative, the House Democratic leadership decided to raise the partisan stakes even higher by bringing out a $50 billion bill that not only would expand SCHIP but would also curtail the private Medicare benefit delivery system that Bush favors.

>To add insult to injury, House Democratic leaders then took a leaf from the old Republican playbook and brought the swollen bill to the floor with minimal time for debate and denied Republicans any opportunity to offer amendments.

I wonder what the Republican objections to that bill were. I won’t find out, because Broder doesn’t care. If it didn’t involve the Democrats compromising, it’s ugly partisanship. It’s ugly partisanship even if the Democrats want to pursue the politicization of the Justice Department:

>The less-than-vital issue of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys has occupied more time and attention than the threat of a terrorist enclave in Pakistan — or the unchecked growth of long-term debts that could sink Medicare and Social Security.

That the unpopular and unrepentant ideologue in office insists on gutting successful government programs (and that his equally unpopular party follows his lead) seems like the more obvious conclusion from these matters.

Ignoratio Elenchi, Op-Eds and other opinions

Ad republicam

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This has to be one of the funniest responses to the chickenhawk charge:

>The caller, besides his anger, raises a point that’s brought up, out against the supporters of the war a lot and that’s the argument that if you really supported the war, you’d be fighting it. And, unfortunately, that goes against the Constitution, which gives every American the right to speak their mind, regardless of their biography or regardless of what they do, so it’s an unconstitutional argument. It’s a demeaning argument to the troops in the field because it assumes that they’re somehow victims, and that they’re not there of their own free will. We have a voluntary Army and the people serving are there of their own free will.

Whatever the merits of the chickenhawk argument–and as long as tours in Iraq get extended it certainly has some–the way to respond to it is not to hide behind the Constitution. The Constitution, Matthew Continetti ought to know, governs the legal rights of American citizens, not the kinds of arguments that can be made in a public forum.

Ignoratio Elenchi, Kathleen Parker

Hate crime

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One argument against hate crimes legislation involves denying that one can ever know about someone’s intent. Kathleen Parker writes:

>WASHINGTON — The fallacy of hate crime laws — the prosecution of which requires a degree of mind-reading not yet available to most Earthlings — has been cast into stark relief the last few weeks after an interracial rape-murder that has bestirred white supremacists and led to death threats against an African-American columnist.

Many crimes involve judgments of intent. Intent is a state of mind. Determining intent therefore involves mind reading. To deny this smacks of some pretty silly lawyering: your honor, how can you really know that my client meant to kill anyone? Can you see inside of his mind? Homework assignment: think of all of the crimes that involve judgments of intent.

Another argument often advanced against the hate crimes legislation is the relative rarity of hate crime:

>In 2005, among about 7,000 hate crimes — mostly characterized by intimidation (48.9 percent) and simple assault (30.2 percent) — just six murders and three forcible rapes were reported as fitting the hate crime definition, according to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics report. Though we may hate “hate crimes,” those numbers hardly seem sufficient to justify extra laws designating a special category for certain crime victims.

The frequency with which an act occurs has nothing to do–I think–with whether it ought to be a crime or not. High treason is a crime, but almost no one does it (I think). Besides, while designating something a crime necessarily implies designating someone a victim, the crime is defined by the act, not the victim. A crime remains a crime, in fact, whether the victim feels himself a victim or not.

Accident, George Will, Hasty Generalization, Ignoratio Elenchi

Demonstration

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Empirical generalizations are a matter of common sense, and, yes, generality. Most people know that one counter example is not enough to render it false. Most people. Most people also know, by way of generalization, that general rules are bound to be interpreted in surprising ways some of the time. That’s no surprise. Since the subject of rules is human behavior, there are (1) bound to be exceptions and, (2) instances where people will test the limits of the law, and, more importantly, (3) people who refuse to understand that general rules regarding human behavior are subject to (1) and (2)–most of the time that is.

A rule about workplace speech in California (I bet you can see what’s coming) concerns speech on the employee bulletin boards and email system. Fair enough. There are rules because people abuse public fora. But things went awry (as could have been expected). Here’s what happened, in George Will’s retelling (I recommend one seek an independent source for this):

>Some African American Christian women working for Oakland’s government organized the Good News Employee Association (GNEA), which they announced with a flier describing their group as “a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family Values.”

>The flier was distributed after other employees’ groups, including those advocating gay rights, had advertised their political views and activities on the city’s e-mail system and bulletin board. When the GNEA asked for equal opportunity to communicate by that system and that board, it was denied. Furthermore, the flier they posted was taken down and destroyed by city officials, who declared it “homophobic” and disruptive.

>The city government said the flier was “determined” to promote harassment based on sexual orientation. The city warned that the flier and communications like it could result in disciplinary action “up to and including termination.”

>Effectively, the city has proscribed any speech that even one person might say questioned the gay rights agenda and therefore created what that person felt was a “hostile” environment. This, even though gay rights advocates used the city’s communication system to advertise “Happy Coming Out Day.” Yet the terms “natural family,” “marriage” and “family values” are considered intolerably inflammatory.

As usual, we make no judgment here on the merits of the case as it stands (it seems poor taste to use language you have chosen on purpose to offend any captive audience–but sometimes that is unavoidable). We would merely like to return to the whole idea of general rules which are bound to confuse some and be abused by others.

Free speech, for instance, means you can assert the false without legal penalty, but you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater. You also can’t use it threaten people with violence of one kind or another. And the limitations continue. It’s a general rule. Rules have exceptions. To think such rules have no exceptions is simply the fallacy of accident (misapplication of a general rule). To suggest, however, that the existence of those exceptions means the rule ought to be abandon is to compound that with the ignoratio elenchi (suggest an extreme conclusion follows from premises the suggest something milder).

Worse than those two things would be to put them together to arrive at a silly conclusion:

>Congress is currently trying to enact yet another “hate crime” law that would authorize enhanced punishments for crimes motivated by, among other things, sexual orientation. A coalition of African American clergy, the High Impact Leadership Coalition, opposes this, fearing it might be used “to muzzle the church.” The clergy argue that in our “litigation-prone society” the legislation would result in lawsuits having “a chilling effect” on speech and religious liberty. As the Oakland case demonstrates, that, too, is predictable.

Not really. It doesn’t demonstrate anything. The Oakland case illustrates that rules (or laws) regarding human behavior will have exceptions and that people will exploit them (sometimes illegitimately). It doesn’t show that there shouldn’t be rules. Besides, if you want to demonstrate any proposition regarding human behavior, you’ll need many many more instances. One won’t inflammatory anecdote won’t do. That’s a hasty generalization.

Ignoratio Elenchi, Kathleen Parker

Blame the victims

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Thanks to all the crooks and liars for visiting yesterday.

In other matters, in a rare moment of accountability, the prosecutor of the Duke rape case, Mike Nifong, both lost his job and was disbarred for exaggerating evidence in a rape case. Kathleen Parker, however, is not satisfied–and she has found the real culprit:

>It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow, but the case doesn’t end here. Nifong’s legacy, which ultimately may hurt women more than it does the falsely accused men, will be long-lived. And the politically correct culture that allowed his charade to persist remains securely in place, while those who enabled Nifong walk scot-free.

>Which is to say, before we applaud the tragedy’s finale, we might ask Lady Macbeth if she can recommend a good soap.

>It is tempting to convince oneself that Nifong’s banishment means that all is right in Dukedom. Doubtless, many among Duke’s faculty and administration, as well as random race-baiters, campus feminists, various reporters, commentators and assorted armchair prosecutors would prefer that no one remember their roles in advancing the Nifong farce. (KC Johnson, Brooklyn College history professor, has it all on his Durham-in-Wonderland blog, durhamwonderland.blogspot.com.)

>But they shouldn’t get off so easily. All were participants in the scurrilous witch hunt that unfolded during the last year. All were congregants in the PC Church that sanctifies certain groups as unassailable victims (all minorities and females) and others as condemnable perps (all males, but especially descendants of history’s white oppressors).

>From the beginning, when an African-American stripper — alternately known as a “working mother” and “college student” — claimed that three lacrosse players had raped her, few questioned whether she might be lying or that the men might be telling the truth. A spirit of retributive justice prevailed while feminist law professor Wendy Murphy summarized the zeitgeist on CNN’s “The Situation”: “I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth.”

Someone is justly punished for perpetrating a fraud (topic of disucssion: can anyone think of some other recent frauds, perhaps broader in scope and with more victims?), by playing on their plainly legitimate racial and class sensitivities, and Parker concludes that their racial sensitivities are to blame. The real upshot of the case is this:

>Thanks to these activists and Nifong — and the dancer who cried wolf — real rape victims may be reluctant to come forward. Others may not get their day in court as intimidated prosecutors anticipate defeat with jurors jaded by the Duke spectacle.

In other words, because of the skepticism Parker advocates about the honesty and motivations of rape victims, their supporters, and legal advocates, real rape victims might not come forward–because Parker might not believe them. And Parker thinks that’s the real crime.

Appeal to the People, Begging the Question, Equivocation, Ignoratio Elenchi, Plain Bad Arguments, Red Herring, Straw Man

Friday afternoon fun

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Slashdot linked to this article by the President of the Czech Republic (corrected 6-16). It’s a treat for the connoisseur of bad argument. First a nice straw man argument.

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

Not sure what to make of this paragraph. The last sentence seems to hang on a sort of ambiguity–in one sense environmentalists want a sort of “central planning.” But not, it seems, to me in the same sense as communism. Whatever it is, it’s a pretty cheap trick, I think.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

This paragraph is interesting.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

Not sure I see the relevance of the “proven fact,” which, nonetheless, seems plausible to me as a simple generalization, for the problem of global warming. Does this imply that we can simply assume that global warming is not a threat, if it is caused by higher standard of living?

How about this? Perhaps an ignoratio elenchi?

The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Should scientists qua scientists really take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions (qua scientific opinions)? Even if that’s so, the last sentence is just nutty. But since it has no obvious logical connection to the first sentence (does it follow from the previous one? explain? is it a case of “loosely connected statements?”), we have either, if we take it as an argument, a sort of ignoratio elenchi or red herring, perhaps.

He closes with a series of suggestions that. . .well, my description can’t do them justice. (My favorites are 4 and 5).

  • Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
  • Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoidedc
  • Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
  • Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
  • Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
  • Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
  • Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions
    in human lives.