Category Archives: Informal Fallacies

Ad hominem circumstantial, Sebastian Mallaby

Menace 2 society

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Sebastian Mallaby takes a stand against all of the Obama-Wright crap up with which the American people have had to put in recent days.  His basic position is that the accusations against Obama are logically incoherent–he's an effete snob who goes to a firebrand's church, for instance.  While we're all for pointing out logical incoherence, such accusations are only incoherent if they're believed by the same person at the same time.  I'd venture to guess that some believe Obama is some kind of Harvard snob, perhaps because some other Harvard types in the media won't shut up about it, while others believe Obama is some kind super left-wing radical.  Nonetheless, for those who repeat all of the conventional wisdom about Obama, Mallaby's piece may be instructive.

We're put off–unfortunately–by his closing analysis.  He writes:

The real character issue, in this campaign as in others, comes down to one thing: Does a candidate have the guts to espouse positions that are not politically expedient? Here there are serious questions about Obama, who pledges to pull out of Iraq no matter what, and who promises both to increase spending and not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year, ensuring the perpetuation of crippling federal deficits. For that matter, there are serious questions about Hillary Clinton, who proposes an irresponsible gas-tax holiday, and about John McCain, who couples gas pandering with a flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts, which he once (correctly) viewed as unaffordable. But these genuine character issues have been shunted aside by the spectacle of Obama's falling-out with his preacher.

After complaining–almost correctly–that we're awash in irrelevant character issues, Mallaby makes policy questions character issues.  Perhaps these candidates really believe the things they're saying about the gas tax, Bush tax cuts, and so on.  If that's the case, then it's not a character issue at all–at least in the sense Mallaby is alleging.  It's a policy question. 

But even if it's a character issue, it's not a very important one.  Politicians take stands they don't entirely endorse all of the time.  It's their job.  The important thing is that they not take stands that they don't believe in and which are folly.  

Op-Eds and other opinions, Red Herring

Life isn’t fair

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Deep thinking on the issue of race, poverty and justice from a former CEO.  Here is the quick and uncharitable summary: life is unfair to people unjustly deprived of opportunities, but they don't have to go around complaining about it–that only makes it worse. 

Life isn't fair for people of any skin color. And sadly, in America today, many blacks face barriers such as economic insecurity, scarce jobs and poor schools, which create even higher hurdles for them to overcome. There is no cure-all for this inequity. But the effect that Jeremiah Wright has on Barack Obama's presidential campaign is far less important than the effect of the terrible message that Wright and others like him send to their congregations.

Positive thinking isn't going to solve America's race problems. But vitriol will only ensure that our nation's racial divide is sustained. We need to listen to the messages being sent in our communities and ask whether they encourage progress. A positive mind-set is at least a start toward success.

This has an almost Daily Show-like quality to it.  The vitriol of Wright (and people like Wright–you know, those people) is so bad that it distracts us from the real problem their vitriol is pointing out–you know, the fact that:

Sadly, in America today, many blacks face barriers such as economic insecurity, scarce jobs and poor schools, which create even higher hurdles for them to overcome.

If only someone could point out that injustice in a rhetorically effective way–then people would notice that attempts to resolve it, such as the following, have failed to address the core problems:

This challenge has not gone unnoticed. Each year the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars — specifically, more than $10,000 per poor person for welfare, Medicaid, the earned-income tax credit, job training and food stamps. Put another way, taxpayers are doing their share. 

Where could we find such a person to draw attention to this injustice?

Michael Gerson, Red Herring

Know your enemy

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Don't know what to call your enemy?  Try al Qaeda.  Note how Michael Gerson twists and turns in order to make all of the fronts in Iraq a "central" front in the war on, yes, al Qaeda.  He writes [our intrusions in brackets and italics–sorry about that, but I couldn't find another way to point out all of the fudging here]:

It is a central argument of the Bush administration that the outcome in Iraq is essential to the broader war on terrorism — which is plainly true. When it comes to Sunni radicalism, the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are a single struggle. Al-Qaeda [is it the case that Sunni radicalism is the same as al Qaeda?] has latched on to local grievances, tribal conflicts and general chaos in all three nations to extend its influence [what does this influence consist in?].

But this argument, used to justify U.S. efforts in Iraq ["used to justify" has a nice passive ring to it–sounds like it doesn't actually justify], cuts another way as well. Is America taking all three related insurgencies with sufficient seriousness?[odd, that wasn't the way I was thinking]

Iraq, while consuming greater sacrifice, is now producing the most encouraging results. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is reeling. U.S. Special Forces in Mosul — a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad — are conducting [conducting–why not "succeeding at"] about eight to 12 missions against al-Qaeda each night [what makes them sure it's "al Qaeda?"  And is "al Qaeda in Iraq" the same as "al Qaeda"?]. In Baghdad, the surge strategy of securing civilians has dramatically reduced sectarian violence [This is really a different issue]. And in Basra — located in the Shiite south — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has finally shown some fight against radical militias [what kind of "radical militias"?].  [What about general anti-American insurgency?]

Hurray for all of those things.  Maybe.  But let's not exaggerate.  These are all different things.  It's obvious from the most superficial news watching that Iraq has numerous sectarian struggles going on plus an anti-American insurgency.  The most obvious one of these sectarian struggles–that between Shiites and Sunnis–has the Sunni radicals on the losing end–as they are the religious minority in Iraq (and Iran–remember them–they're Shiites aren't they?).  That means the sectarian war does not intrinsically benefit Sunni radicalism, i.e., al Qaeda, as Gerson suggests.

But that can't be true, one might say.  The only way, I think, it could be true is if we consider "al Qaeda not to be a specific terrorist group, as it is, but rather a stand-in for all the forces of evil.  Why?  because al Qaeda is a force of evil and disorder.  Any disorder and evil is a victory for the terrorists.  And all terrorists are al Qaeda.  Well at least all terrorists share the evil aims of al Qaeda, which is the same thing. 

Except when it isn't.  

If Gerson's strategy of making al Qaeda the mother of all red herrings has done anything, it's given al Qaeda legitimacy as a global superpower.

George Will, Ignoratio Elenchi, Straw Man

Shopworn Panaceas

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A frequent question among our chattering classes is whether our children is learning.  The answer seems to be no, they isn't.  What would explain that?  George Will has the answer:

Moynihan also knew that schools cannot compensate for the disintegration of families and hence communities — the primary transmitters of social capital. No reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9 percent of all children and 69.9 percent of black children today born out of wedlock, which means, among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males. 

If you think the solution–the only solution, the panacea, as it were–is a rise in teacher salaries then George Will is going to prove you wrong:

Chester Finn, a former Moynihan aide, notes in his splendid new memoir ("Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik") that during the Depression-era job scarcity, high schools were used to keep students out of the job market, shunting many into nonacademic classes. By 1961, those classes had risen to 43 percent of all those taken by students. After 1962, when New York City signed the nation's first collective bargaining contract with teachers, teachers began changing from members of a respected profession into just another muscular faction fighting for more government money. Between 1975 and 1980 there were a thousand strikes involving a million teachers whose salaries rose as students' scores on standardized tests declined.

In 1964, SAT scores among college-bound students peaked. In 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) codified confidence in the correlation between financial inputs and cognitive outputs in education. But in 1966, the Coleman report, the result of the largest social science project in history, reached a conclusion so "seismic" — Moynihan's description — that the government almost refused to publish it.

We've already established that teachers' salaries have nothing to do with output, haven't we?  But lo, continuing from above:

Released quietly on the Fourth of July weekend, the report concluded that the qualities of the families from which children come to school matter much more than money as predictors of schools' effectiveness. The crucial common denominator of problems of race and class — fractured families — would have to be faced.

But it wasn't. Instead, shopworn panaceas — larger teacher salaries, smaller class sizes — were pursued as colleges were reduced to offering remediation to freshmen.

Couldn't it be, however, that smaller class sizes and higher teacher salaries are goods to be pursued regardless of their effectiveness at fixing a social problem they're not supposed to be fixing?  Who could dispute that teachers ought to be well compensated for the very important work they do (I'll exclude myself from that work–what I do is not really work)?  What parent would not want her or his child in a smaller rather than a larger class?

More importantly, where is the social scientist who would claim that paying teachers more will remedy the various social problems produced–get this–as a result of income inequality?  Indeed, while we're at the correlation game, why don't we correlate family incomes and stability with the absence of well compensated, union labor?  Since Mr.Will is so interested in quantitative social science, perhaps he might find the results so alarming he'd refuse to read them until the Fourth of July, at night.

So to sum up.  Teachers' salaries may have nothing to do with educational outputs.  But that's not why teachers should have higher salaries in the first place.  Second, the social problems kids bring to school stem in no insignificant way from economic inequalities faced by their parents.  These may come together at school, no one expects the school to solve anything but what the school can solve.   But teachers and schools ought not to be punished just because they can't solve that which they aren't suited to solve.

Ad Hominem, Ad hominem tu quoque, General discussion

Ad hominems

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Unfortunately, many Introduction to Philosophy students leave with several misconceptions about the nature of fallacious reasoning.  They draw the conclusion that fallacies are a kind of negative guide to reasoning.  For instance, never attack the person, as such attacks break the ad hominem rule.  Another misconception is that calling something a fallacy is sufficient for dismissing someone's position.  That's an ad hominem, therefore, etc.  Unfortunately, some–even some professor types–seem to think this characterizes the entire field of inquiry into fallacious reasoning: when fallacies are discussed, they see a kind of juvenile name calling in place of honest and fair analysis.

Sometimes, however, that's the case.  This, for instance, would seem like a reasonable accusation of an ad hominem:

All of which brings us to the distinctly Greenwald parts of the book–Greenwald takes an unseemly relish in engaging in irrelevant personal attacks. Personally attacking Ronald Reagan at least makes sense on some level. But personally attacking private citizens with different ideologies has a certain senselessness attached to it.

But no.  The relevance of "personal attacks" depends on the conclusion drawn–not on the object of the attack.  Personally attacking Ronald Reagan makes sense only when the "attack" draws a conclusion relevant to the attack.  Reagan's personality is no more relevant in the grand scheme of things than that of any private citizen.  While we expect a politician to be subject to such attacks, those attacks aren't more justified on logical grounds.

This is especially the case when the question concerns hypocrisy.  Al Gore is not a hypocrite for driving a car, unless he says "don't drive a car."  He says, "Climate science says x, y, and z."  Whether he drives a car is separate question.  His driving a car has nothing to do with that particular argument.  Now, when someone calls someone else a moral degenerate who should not be trusted, you're going to reasonably wonder about the purity of the accuser–to do so doesn't make you any less of a degenerate, all things considered, but it the credibility of the accuser is certainly relevant–insofar as his accusation rests on his credibility.  Continuing from above,

Even if every reader of Great American Hypocrites walked away from the several pages that attack Norman Podhoretz (to take just one of the many conservative thinkers that Greenwald assails) convinced that Podhoretz is just about the most awful person to ever walk the face of the Earth, Podhoretz's ideas would remain unscathed. Podhoretz has never argued that a reader should agree with his ideas because he is such a wonderful guy. Instead, the ideas have a life of their own.

Greenwald's own success makes his personal attacks particularly ironic. There was nothing in Glenn Greenwald's background that suggested he should have been one of the kings of the progressive blogosphere. And Russ Feingold didn't read passages from Greenwald's first book from the Senate floor because Greenwald is such a fine human being. Greenwald gained prominence because of the power of his ideas and his writing. Whatever prominence he retains will also result exclusively from the quality of his work. It's a mystery why he doesn't realize that it operates the same way at all spots on the ideological spectrum.

Great American Hypocrites will likely be a big hit. Whatever the equivalent of red meat is for the angry left, this book is it. As a confessed Greenwald admirer, I found it largely disappointing. Like the rest of us, Greenwald has both strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Too much of Great American Hypocrites indulges his fondness for pointless ad hominem attacks, the weakest aspect of his work.

Many of Greenwald's fans will probably take delight in his description of Rush Limbaugh as a "draft-avoiding, illegal-pill-addicted and multiple-divorced (man) burdened with one of the most decadent and degraded lives of any public figure anywhere." Whether they take note of the irony that a mere two pages later Greenwald decries our "attack-based personality-obsessed politics" is an open question.

If Greenwald himself sees the irony, he doesn't betray any such awareness in "Great American Hypocrites."

It seems facile to accuse someone of hypocrisy for accusing someone else of hypocrisy.  That succinct and true description of Rush Limbaugh, in other words, is not a fallacious ad hominem unless Greenwald uses that as evidence to dismiss views unrelated to Limbaugh's character–or the moral character of those whose positions he advocates in the course of making those attacks.  But that, I take it, is not Greenwald's point in writing a book about hypocrites.

It always depends, in the end, on the conclusion you're drawing.  If you want to malign John Kerry's manhood (as Limbaugh did) by way of supporting Bush as the alternative, then Bush's comparative manhood is a relevant question.  That, I take it, is Greenwald's point.  But I'll leave that to him.

Argument Analysis, False Dichotomy, General discussion, Ruth Marcus, Straw Man

With or Without Yoo

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Two interesting quotations from Ruth Marcus’s Washington Post column–One pro John Yoo, tortured torture memo writer, one contra.  The first one, from Columbia University law Professor Scott Horton, addresses someone (Elder) who does not find Yoo’s legal work grounds for discipline or revocation of his tenure at Berkeley.  He says that Elder

"is appropriately concerned about freedom of expression for his
faculty. But he should be much more concerned about the message that
all of this sends to his students. Lawyers who act on the public stage
can have an enormous impact on their society and the world around them.
. . . Does Dean Edley really imagine that their work is subject to no
principle of accountability because they are mere drones dispensing
legal analysis?"

There’s a wide gulf between "not punishable in this instance by the University" and "subject to no principle of accountability."  Horton sets up a false dichotomy–accountable or not.

On the pro-Yoo side:

The most useful analogy I’ve read on this subject comes from Princeton
professor Deborah Pearlstein, who asked what Berkeley would do if a
molecular biology professor "had written a medical opinion while in
government employ disclaiming the truth of evolution," and continued to
dispute the theory of evolution once he resumed teaching.

Pearlstein,
a human rights lawyer, found Yoo’s memo "blatantly, embarrassingly
wrong under the law," but she conceded that legal conclusions lack the
hard certainty of scientific truth. Yoo should no more be removed from
a teaching job than a Supreme Court justice who writes a despicable
opinion — upholding slavery, allowing separate but equal facilities,
permitting the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II —
should be impeached.

I’m confused by the analogy in the first paragraph.  If that’s the case, then indeed Yoo ought to be fired for not having competence in his subject matter.  Academic freedom ought not be a cover for incompetence.  But I doubt he would have gotten that far anyway. 

The second paragraph rings odd.  And it hardly makes the point that Yoo ought to be protected from firing.  Any Supreme Court judge who argues for slavery ought to be impeached–now (and probably back then as well).  Even though legal opinions lack the "hard certainty" of scientific truth (whatever that means), it doesn’t mean that some legal opinions are simply beyond the pale.  

By most accounts–even friendly ones–Yoo’s opinions were beyond the pale.  The fact is, however, that was a different job.  This seems to me to be the key difference that’s being overlooked here.  Berkeley was dumb enough to hire him and give him tenure.  They ought to be ashamed.  But it’s too late now. 

Of course, if he broke the law and is found to have committed war crimes, then indeed, he ought to be fired.  But that’s a matter for, er, the law.  

 

Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem Abusive, Ad hominem circumstantial, Straw Man

Elitism

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Judging by the number of op-eds by (ironically) elite (i.e., very rich, very educated, very isolated from the unwashed masses) writers, there’s a consensus forming around the notion of elitism: it’s bad.  Some argue that elitism is insulting; some argue that it could seem insulting; some use it to explain the Gore having "lost" the 2000 election.  By contrast, folksyism–the "wanna have a beer with" seems to be the true test of a presidential candidate.  The only people, oddly, who think this kind of nonsense are the members of the "elite" media.  

Today George Will, who makes untold thousands to give lectures to prominent law firms (Dear law firms: I’ll do it for one eighth of the price and I promise most of what I say will be true, coherent, and well established by argument) finds this elitism–I mean, liberal elitism, a bad thing.

Barack Obama may be exactly what his supporters suppose him to be. Not, however, for reasons most Americans will celebrate.

Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many
working-class voters are "bitter," he said they "cling" to guns,
religion and "antipathy to people who aren’t like them" because of
"frustrations." His implication was that their primitivism,
superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of
America’s grinding injustice.

By so speaking, Obama does fulfill liberalism’s transformation since Franklin Roosevelt.
What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its
working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those
people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.

"His implication" is a bit of a stretch, but let’s grant that some may reasonably be taken aback by those words.  That kind of stuff happens–and after nearly eight years of President Bush (and VP Cheney) Americans ought to be used to being offended.  But hey, we’re not going to draw any large, unjustified inferences from Bush’s malapropisms or Cheney’s meanness.  But George Will won’t can’t help himself:

The iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension was Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970 but whose spirit still permeated that school when Obama matriculated there
in 1981. Hofstadter pioneered the rhetorical tactic that Obama has
revived with his diagnosis of working-class Democrats as victims — the
indispensable category in liberal theory. The tactic is to dismiss
rather than refute those with whom you disagree.

You’ve got to be kidding me.  That’s exactly what Will is up to hear. 

Obama’s dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class
conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to
deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today
that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last
proud of America.

Hofstadter dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and
psychological disorders — a "paranoid style" of politics rooted in
"status anxiety," etc. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by
people irritated by the liberalism of condescension.

Obama voiced such liberalism with his "bitterness" remarks to an audience of affluent San Franciscans. Perfect.

Here is what Will is trying to say: Liberals (spit spit) dismiss people as crazy rather than as merely being in the wrong.  Here’s what Will ends up saying: I dismiss liberals because they’re effete snobs (San Francicso, San Francisco) who look down on other people.

False Dichotomy, Red Herring, Straw Man, William Kristol

Crystal balls

Like his colleague David Brooks at the New York Times, William Kristol has been pretty much wrong about everything in the past several years (and probably before).  But wrongness, when it happens, just doesn’t happen.  There’s always a reason for it.  So I believe now, at least.

I’m not going to explain the wrongness of William Kristol–he’s wedded to an incoherent ideology, for instance.  I don’t know if that’s true, and besides I don’t have access to Kristol’s mental states.  So if  you read this and you’re a conservative, notice that I haven’t said "conservatives are wrong in their core beliefs."  Wrongness always happens in the particulars. 

I’m interested in the wrongness of his reasons.  To that end, let’s take a look at one or two.  In today’s column, he opposes the following claims:

But it’s one thing for a German thinker to assert that “religion is
the sigh of the oppressed creature.” It’s another thing for an American
presidential candidate to claim that we “cling to … religion” out of
economic frustration.

And it’s a particularly odd claim for
Barack Obama to make. After all, in his speech at the 2004 Democratic
convention, he emphasized with pride that blue-state Americans, too,
“worship an awesome God.”

That’s obviously not a contradiction or some kind of less rigorous "tension" or "inconsistency."  As explanations go, Obama’s seems fairly innocuous.  He’s clearly talking about a certain motivation for religion as distinct from say, God, the object of those religions.  Attacking this weak version of Obama’s remarks is what you might call a "straw man."
A little charity on Kristol’s part would help him see this.  But I ask perhaps too much.

Here’s another:

Then there’s what Obama calls “anti-immigrant sentiment.” Has Obama
done anything to address it? It was John McCain, not Obama, who took
political risks to try to resolve the issue of illegal immigration by
putting his weight behind an attempt at immigration reform.

Furthermore, some concerns about unchecked and unmonitored illegal
immigration are surely legitimate. Obama voted in 2006 (to take just
one example) for the Secure Fence Act, which was intended to control
the Mexican border through various means, including hundreds of miles
of border fence. Was Obama then just accommodating bigotry?

Anyone ought to be able to see the difference between criticizing "anti-immigrant sentiment" (which applies to both legal and  immigrants) fomented by Kristol’s partners on the right and supporting "unchecked and unmonitored illegal immigration."   Being against the latter, of course, doesn’t make you for the former.  This amounts to, I think, a kind of red herring.  Concern about "Illegal immigration" bears only a slight resemblance to "anti-immigrant sentiment" of the "bigotry" variety.

Michael Medved, Religion, Things that are false, Weak Analogy

State religion

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It's Sunday, but instead of complaining about George Will's complaining–we'll do that tomorrow maybe–let's just read Michael Medved and marvel:

Actually, there’s little chance that atheists will succeed in placing one of their own in the White House at any time in the foreseeable future, and it continues to make powerful sense for voters to shun potential presidents who deny the existence of God. An atheist may be a good person, a good politician, a good family man (or woman), and even a good patriot, but a publicly proclaimed non-believer as president would, for three reasons, be bad for the country.

Hollowness and Hypocrisy at State Occasions. As Constitutional scholars all point out, the Presidency uniquely combines the two functions of head of government (like the British Prime Minister) and head of state (like the Queen of England). POTUS not only appoints cabinet members and shapes foreign policy and delivers addresses to Congress, but also presides over solemn and ceremonial occasions. Just as the Queen plays a formal role as head of the Church of England, the President functions as head of the “Church of America” – that informal, tolerant but profoundly important civic religion that dominates all our national holidays and historic milestones. For instance, try to imagine an atheist president issuing the annual Thanksgiving proclamation. To whom would he extend thanks in the name of his grateful nation –-the Indians in Massachusetts?

Well, he probably ought to thank the Indians in Massachusetts, but that's another matter.  The more basic point is this: last time I checked, there is no "Church of America," so that analogy does even rise to the level of weakness.  Solemn occasions are somewhat like church–you can't get up and go to the bathroom, you sit or stand watching a podium where someone talks–but that's about it.  Besides, if those things make something "church," if only analogously, then as one who talks somewhat ceremoniously to a group of people who may or may not have to go to the bathroom, I'm a priest. 

Charles Krauthammer, False Dichotomy

Or against us

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The following strikes me as a fairly clear instance of a false dichotomy:

For those who see no moral principle underlying American foreign
policy, the Holocaust Declaration is no business of ours. But for those
who believe that America stands for something in the world — that the
nation that has liberated more peoples than any other has even the most
minimal moral vocation — there can be no more pressing cause than
preventing the nuclear annihilation of an allied democracy, the last
refuge and hope of an ancient people openly threatened with the final
Final Solution.

So, to recap: you either (1) have no moral principles; or (2) agree with Charles’ Krauthammer’s "Holocaust Declaration": here’s the Holocaust Declaration:

"It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack
upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on
the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran."

There are many reasons to regard such a policy is foolish and immoral.  That simple fact alone means Krauthammer cannot claim that even the most "minimal moral vocation" means we must adopt it.  Even granting (which we shouldn’t, by the way) that some form of deterrence (of Iran’s as of yet non-existent nuclear capability) is the only available option, there many different ways to achieve that goal than by apocalyptic threats.  Adopting those approaches does not mean that one abandons the (dubious to some) claim that America stands for something in the world.