Category Archives: Fallacies of Relevance

Ad Hominem Abusive, Richard Cohen

Ad Hominize

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Props to Richard Cohen for verbing:

>Kucinich is an odd guy for whom the killer appellation “perennial presidential candidate” is lethally applied. But he is on to something here. It is easy enough to ad hominize him to the margins — ya know, the skinny guy among the “real” presidential candidates — but at a given moment, and this is one, he’s the only one on that stage who articulates a genuine sense of betrayal. He is not out merely to win the nomination but to hold the Bush administration — particularly Cheney — accountable. In this he will fail. What Cheney has done is not impeachable. It is merely unforgivable.

Other than the “skinny guy” comment, however, it’s not really ad hominem. The observation about Kucinich is that he won’t get anywhere with his charges. Why should that be a surprise? Cohen has proclaimed what Cheney has done as unimpeachable.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Begging the Question, False Dichotomy, Politicians

Losing it

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Some argue that the surge is working. Some, like Joe Lieberman, claim that the evidence of its not working is not to be seen as evidence of its failure, but rather as evidence of its necessity. He writes:

>Last week a series of coordinated suicide bombings killed more than 170 people. The victims were not soldiers or government officials but civilians — innocent men, women and children indiscriminately murdered on their way home from work and school.

>If such an atrocity had been perpetrated in the United States, Europe or Israel, our response would surely have been anger at the fanatics responsible and resolve not to surrender to their barbarism.

>Unfortunately, because this slaughter took place in Baghdad, the carnage was seized upon as the latest talking point by advocates of withdrawal here in Washington. Rather than condemning the attacks and the terrorists who committed them, critics trumpeted them as proof that Gen. David Petraeus’s security strategy has failed and that the war is “lost.”

Very slowly now:

>(1) the surge has increased the number of troops in Baghdad and other hot spots in order to quell violence of the type described in the passage above.

>(2) if that strategy were working, we wouldn’t see violence on this order.

>(3) we see violence like that.

>(4) the surge is not working.

From (4) Joe Lieberman concludes that we ought to continue surging. The failure of the surge is evidence of its need. When, one might wonder, would the evidence of its failure be evidence of its failure?

Worse than this, Lieberman accuses those who examine the evidence and ask the obvious questions of somehow siding with the terrorists: so the doctor who tells you that you have cancer is siding with the disease.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Dinesh D'Souza, Ignoratio Elenchi, Straw Man

Argumentum ex malo

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A while ago we wrote about Dinesh D’Souza’s sorry attempt to defend his indefensible book–you know, the one in which he blames the terrorists attacks of 9/11, and terror generally, on our loose morals and overly restrictive divorce laws. Now he uses the shootings at Virginia Tech in order to score points for Jesus. He writes:

>Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.

That’s not really interesting. At least not in the way D’Souza thinks it is. All the talk of Divine Mercy in the face of death and mayhem are precisely the kinds of self-interested motivations for religious observance that people like Dawkins seek to explain. And furthermore, they’re the kinds of things other atheists use in their arguments for the non-existence of God. “What loving creator, they argue, would allow such a warped young mind to destroy so many innocent lives?” they might ask.

And he continues:

>The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul–well, that’s an illusion!

That’s a rather silly version even of Dawkins’ view. But no reason to bother with D’Souza’s lack of philosophical sophistication. Take a look rather at the conclusion:

>To no one’s surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it’s difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho’s shooting of all those people can be understood in this way–molecules acting upon molecules.

>If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.

D’Souza has probably not been invited either. Neither has, to my knowledge, Pope Benedict XVI. That doesn’t demonstrate anything. And it certainly doesn’t provide evidence for the view that atheism suffers from the problem of evil–for, on D’Souza’s on shamelessly ignorant account, for atheists there’s no meaning, so no evil. Just as however the absence of a God does not eliminate evil (but rather explains it), the human need for comfort and the hope for something better does mean there really is something to hope for.

Ad Hominem Abusive, General discussion, Politicians, Straw Man, Weak Analogy

What is a war anyway?

Michael Chertoff, Homeland security czar (that’s not what they call him, but they might as well), today writes an op-ed directed against some recent remarks of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor. Brzezinksi has claimed that we’re not involved in a “war” on terrorism; terrorism is a method, not a group or a state or a thing (like drugs). Brzezinski argues that we have failed in the war on terror precisely because we have approached it as an actual (and not a metaphorical) war. Rather than working to prevent terrorism, capture terrorists, and do the other things that will prevent more terrorism (like, and this is just a suggestion, capturing bin Laden), we have incorrectly militarized what is primarily a political issue. Of course war is politics by other means, but Brzezinski’s argument is that we can’t achieve a military victory against a non-military enemy. And, more than that, the enemy in this instance yearns for the authenticity and legitimization that only we can provide (by calling it a military war).

Leave it to Chertoff–the one who lamented the possibility of “clean-skin” (i.e., white) terrorists–to misunderstand Brezezinski’s point. He writes:

>Brzezinski stated the obvious in describing terrorism as a tactic, not an enemy [“Terrorized by ‘War on Terror,’ Outlook, March 25]. But this misses the point. We are at war with a global movement and ideology whose members seek to advance totalitarian aims through terrorism. Brzezinski is deeply mistaken to mock the notion that we are at war and to suggest that we should adopt “more muted reactions” to acts of terrorism.

Right–He doesn’t see the threat. Now bring up Iran:

>The impulse to minimize the threat we face is eerily reminiscent of the way America’s leaders played down the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary fanaticism in the late 1970s. That naive approach ultimately foundered on the kidnapping of our diplomats in Tehran.

We were not and are not at war with Iran. So that wasn’t a war either. Analogies only work if things can be compared. Sure, no serious person doubts that terrorists will do violent and awful things if they get a chance. This doesn’t, however, make it a war. And furthermore, calling what they do a war doesn’t change what they do. It only changes what we do. And what we’ve done so far has been an abysmal failure.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Argument Analysis, Jonah Goldberg

On the attack. . .

It’s perpetually entertaining to me when writers for argumentative partisan publications fail to understand or appreciate the basic idea of an argument. An argument, as any freshman in philosophy 101 knows, is a series of statement meant to establish some other statement. Rational people make them in order either to convince themselves or others of some proposition. Arguments constitute the very basis of rational discourse between people of differing viewpoints. When those fail, the chanting can begin.

Take these two examples from two National Review Online writers. Cliff May complains:

>I enjoy a good debate as much as the next guy but, increasingly, the next guy doesn’t want to argue — he wants to demonize me. He doesn’t want to win the debate; he wants to shut it down.

>Whether the topic is global warming or Saddam Hussein’s links to terrorists, daring to contradict the “consensus” brings hoots and hollers and worse. My most recent experience with such intolerance of diversity of opinion may be instructive.

He then goes on to point out an instance in which Glenn Greenwald argued with him–I mean, “went on the attack”:

>Glenn Greenwald, at the online magazine Salon, went on the attack — but what he had to say was oddly non-responsive to my question. To establish that the voters’ message in November had been “Get out of Iraq!” would require showing that candidates, particularly in competitive races, had pledged to support what Greenwald calls a “Congressionally compelled withdrawal of troops from Iraq by a date certain.”

And it continues. But it’s obvious that the evidence May gathers for people not wanting to argue makes exactly the opposite point. May didn’t argue anything. He asserted some claim that was challenged by someone else. That’s what an argument is. He’s not attacking you, he’s questioning whether what you say is true. The difference ought to be clear.

The second item comes from Jonah Goldberg, writing for National Review Online as well. He writes:

>I try not to let the lefty piling-on of late bug me. But that doesn’t mean it’s not nice to have someone stick up for me every now and then. So many thanks to Steve Burton over at Right Reason for recognizing that, whatever my faults, there is something like a Goldberg Derangement Syndrome out there (as one reader puts it).

As May points out in his piece, some people (an emailer in his case–nutpicking again) won’t engage. But many do. And it’s wrong to lump all of your critics in the same group. Learn to tell the difference.

Ad Hominem, Ad hominem circumstantial, George Will, Things that are false, Unqualified Authority

Little things

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Earlier this week Paul Krugman wrote about the rhetorical effectiveness of spreading little falsehoods. These little lies, as he called them, get repeated over and over again first by the irresponsible media (Drudge, talk radio, Hannity, and so on), then they work their way up to Howard Kurtz and various other mainstream outlets, who take them or their authors seriously. It’s not of course only a right wing thing–just ask Bob Somerby or Glenn Greenwald. These little falsehoods take various forms. The most obvious is the malicious fabrication (e.g., recent inventions about Nancy Pelosi). Less obvious is the subtle or not so subtle distortion of views you don’t agree with. Those are the little lies George Will tells. Today, for instance, he returns to the theme of global warming (which he insists on calling climate change, despite the propangandistic origin of this phrase). The article is a Summa of all of Will’s recent climatic confusions, so it might take a while. So for today we’ll just comment on this:

>In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a ” serious problem.” Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness.

What are “opinion-forming institutions”? Are they the kind–like right wing talk radio or the Post editorial page–that endeavor to produce loud and sometimes false opinions about political questions? Or are they the ones (like universities) that produce what sometimes get called, true opinions with a logos–i.e., knowledge–about the world around us? Not all opinion-forming institutions, in other words, are the same; if so, parents can save a lot of money by sending their kids to Rush Limbaugh University. Aside from the sneering stupidity of the remark about the “entertainment-environmental complex” (this from a man, mind you, who takes a science-fiction novel (by a Hollywood producer) about global warming to be scientific evidence on par with the consensus of credentialed climatologists), we’d also wonder what “indoctrinate” (used twice here) means. One usually uses such terms in order to stress the value-laden character of the views being taught. Rarely would one use it to describe the process of informing someone of some other other fact about the world. Some call that “teaching.”

Ignoratio Elenchi, V.D.Hanson

Crazy talk

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If I’m not mistaken, the last time we undid a regime it didn’t turn out so well. Never mind, though, the cheerleaders of that fiasco have a new idea:

>It is undeniable that the U.S., without either invading or suffering many casualties, could use its air power to send the Iranian economy and military back to the mullahs’ cherished 7th Century. But there is no need to do so.

>Instead, if the EU would cease all its trade with Iran, and if the West would divest entirely from the country — that is, boycott all companies that do any business with Tehran — the theocracy would face bankruptcy within months.

>Even if further escalation were warranted, we could at some future date enforce a naval blockade of the Iranian coast that alone would determine what goods would be allowed into this outlaw regime.

>But bomb Iran?

>For now, we should try as hard to avoid it as these desperate clerics seem to want it.

Economic sanctions strengthened Saddam’s grip on power, and, invading his country in order to punish him succeeded in eliminating him, but greatly strengthened Iran. The last conclusion one could draw from these indisputable facts is that we should seek further antagonism.

Ad Hominem Abusive, Equivocation, George Will, Red Herring, Suppressed Evidence, Things that are false

Three part invention

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I can only be bothered to come up with three. There are many many more problems with this abysmal piece by George Will today. While it does make sense to adjust gas prices for inflation, the rest of his conclusions show a manifest ignorance about the nature of the energy problem and a reprehensible tendency to ridicule anyone who takes it seriously.

Here’s the first part:

>The next wave of stories about “soaring” gas prices will predictably trigger some politicians’ indignation about oil companies’ profits. The day after Exxon Mobil’s announcement that it earned $39.5 billion in 2006, Hillary Clinton said: “I want to take those profits, and I want to put them into a strategic energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy, alternatives and technologies that will begin to actually move us toward the direction of independence.”

Here’s the second:

>Clinton’s “take” reveals her confiscatory itch. Her clunky “toward the direction of” suggests that she actually knows that independence is as chimerical a goal as Soviet grain production goals were.

The third:

>America produces about one-quarter of the 20.6 million barrels of oil it uses a day. Unfortunately, just as liberals love employees but not employers, they want energy independence but do not want to drill in the “pristine” (read: desolate) Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ( potential yield: 10.4 billion barrels) and are reluctant to countenance drilling offshore.

Read the rest. There’s more.

Contradictions, Formal Fallacies, George Will, Straw Man

Equal rights

There’s a lot to complain about in this confused George Will op-ed. One could point out the limbaughesque caricature of “liberals”:

>Liberals, dolled up in love beads and bell-bottom trousers, have had another bright idea, one as fresh as other 1970s fads. Sens. Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer and Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, high-octane liberals all, have asked Congress to improve the Constitution by adding the Women’s Equality Amendment, which, like the Equal Rights Amendment before it, says: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

But I’d rather focus my attention on the following blaring confusion. Since Will can never be bothered to examine any of his opponents’ actual reasons for their views, he just makes them up. So he wonders why someone would need an equal rights amendment when the courts–you heard that right–found them to be a consequence of the 14th Amendment:

>March 1972 was a year after the Supreme Court cited the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment when invalidating a law that involved discrimination on the basis of sex. And March 1972 was 10 months before the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade.

I’ve lost count of how many columns Will has written undermining that very principle of constitutional interpretation. And he finds the very principle of such litigation–i.e., the kind of litigation that clarifies the proper interpretation of the laws–odious:

>If Kennedy and like-minded legislators think that the condition of American women needs improvements, they should try to legislate them. Instead, they prefer to hope that liberal judges will regard the ERA’s language as a license to legislate. But, then, support for the amendment testifies to the supporters’ lack of confidence in their ability to persuade people to support such policies.

And someone might point out that a constitutional amendment is a form of legislation.

George Will, Straw Man

De ira

This passage is not without a little irony:

>The politics of disdain — e.g., Howard Dean’s judgment that Republicans are “brain dead” and “a lot of them never made an honest living in their lives” — derails politics by defining opponents as beyond the reach of reason. The anger directed at Bush today, like that directed at Clinton during his presidency, luxuriates in its own vehemence.

In the first place, we expected the man with the argument (and perhaps that could be his nickname) would not confuse what someone is saying with how he or she says it. One sees this too often, in my estimation. People (of all political stripes) use the terms “bash” or “slam” to describe any kind of disagreement, no matter what the foundation. And so Joe Klein, for instance, cannot distinguish Eric Alterman’s criticism from “personal attacks.” O’Reilly and many of his colleagues portray any criticism as “vicious” and “personal.”

George Will ought to know better. But he doesn’t, he writes (from earlier in the piece):

>There are the tantrums — sometimes both theatrical and perfunctory — of talking heads on television or commentators writing in vitriol (Paul Krugman’s incessant contempt, Ann Coulter’s equally constant loathing).

Whatever you say about Krugman, he knows the difference between an argument and name calling, and it’s hardly proper to compare him, or any mainstream liberal talking-head, to the purposely theatrical Ann Coulter. As we have argued elsewhere, Krugman is one of the few liberal writers who argues for positions in the same fashion as Will. That is to say, he advances reasons to accept his position, or as is often the case, reasons to reject the conclusions of others. Krugman offers reasons for his contempt. To call it “incessant contempt” is to confuse the passion with which the conclusion drawn with its cogency.

The irony of Will’s lesson in civil discourse, however, consists in his consistent and well-documented failure to exemplify that in his own writing. How often, and this is a rhetorical question, has Will presented any opposition to his view as moronic?