The Eager Beaver Fallacy

The college freshman meme has morphed into the exact analogy I use for the eager-beaver fallacy:

It wouldn't be as funny, but something like: Takes Critical Thinking; Every Argument a Fallacy.

This needs tweaking.  Also, my variation on the "eager beaver" differs from Theo Clark's somewhat.  His applies to the mistaken assignment of fallacies in particular instances; my version is slightly more meta: the vice of too many Philosophy 101 students whereby every bad argument is fallacious and every instance of an argument scheme is fallacious. 

This, by the way, is the first fallacy I mention when teaching fallacies.

Stop contradicting yourself

Check out the image:

Yes, this is exactly what diversity means.  This reminds me of a classic George Will argument (with the same equivocation) against "Liberals."

Although liberals give lip service to "diversity," they often treat federalism as an annoying impediment to their drive for uniformity. Feingold, who is proud that Wisconsin is one of only four states that clearly require special elections of replacement senators in all circumstances, wants to impose Wisconsin's preference on the other 46. Yes, he acknowledges, they could each choose to pass laws like Wisconsin's, but doing this "state by state would be a long and difficult process." Pluralism is so tediously time-consuming.

Got them liberals there George!  Maybe, by way of satire, we could construct the following argument to make the same very immature point: If you favor diversity, you favor it all of the time, if you have diversity all of the time, then you have uniform diversity, so you have uniformity, so if you favor diversity, you favor uniformity.  I should add: stop contradicting yourself. 

 

Things that don’t go together, part CXL

Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, caused ire and some headscratching when he expressed concern about the gay rights movement:

You know, you don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism. So I think if that’s what’s happening, and I don't know that it is, but I would respect the local pastor’s, you know, position on that.

The Cardinal's remarks were occasioned by the not unreasonable desire of the pastor of a church on the route of the Chicago Pride Parade.  The pastor worried that the parade of gay people would interfere with his church's staunch anti-gay stance, or that parishoners leaving Sunday mass would be tempted away to gayness.  Ok, in all seriousness, he said it would cause a traffic problem for the churchgoers.  Fair enough, and the two groups (the Pride Parade and Our Lady of Caramel) worked it out.

What has remained are the the Cardina's puzzling remarks about the gay-hating KKK, however.  In fact, the fallacy of the undistributed-middle endorsing Cardinal has reiterated his concerns that two groups that have nothing in common could make common cause of their hatred for the Catholic Church.  He remarked:

Organizers (of the pride parade) invited an obvious comparison to other groups who have historically attempted to stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church,” the cardinal said in a statement issued Tuesday. “One such organization is the Ku Klux Klan which, well into the 1940s, paraded through American cities not only to interfere with Catholic worship but also to demonstrate that Catholics stand outside of the American consensus. It is not a precedent anyone should want to emulate.

Let's put this syllogistically:

  1. The Klan are Catholics-protestors
  2. Teh Gays are Catholics-protestors
  3. Therefore, the Klan are the Gays.

Well, obviously three doesn't follow on account of the fact there is no middle term between the KKK and the Pride Parade organizers in Chicago.  The simple fact of objecting to some aspect of Catholicism is obviously inadequate to draw a line between the two groups.  The KKK objected to Catholicism on ethnic grounds; gay activists (some of whom are actually catholic) object to the Church's using its influence to deny people rights. 

Besides, I should remark that it's a shame that the Cardinal endeavors to influence the state to hold back the recognition of obvious human rights to oppressed minorities, much in same the way the KKK sought to prohibit the lawful practice of Catholicism.  It's alarming that the Cardinal would invite comparisons to virulently anti-Catholic sentiments.

Ei quoque

One of the lamest journalistic tropes is the ei quoque (Scott's idea): well, they do it too!  It's not the tu quoque, because that means "you do it too!."  This captures the gist of Politifact's defense of its sorry fact-checking:

At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news.

"I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox."

My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends.

This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies.

The paradox of the Internet age is that never before have we had access to more ideas and different thoughts. And yet, many of us retreat into comfy parlors where everyone agrees and the other side is always wrong. Each side can manufacture its truths and get the chorus to sing along.

Both sides do it!  Like the tu quoque, the is or ei quoque has conditions of relevance.  In this case, it is not relevant that "both sides do x" because the question concerns whether some fact f is true.  We can take it for granted, in any case, that all facts find homes in someone's advocacy.

At this point I was going to quote a section from Paul Krugman's column yesterday, but for some reason, every time I paste the passage into the piece, it deletes my entire post.  Can anyone explain this?  New York Times time bomb?  Here's the link.  The passage, despite the Times' paywall, is worth reading in this regard.  Or tl:dr: ei quoque is an empirical question.  In its usual employment, he argues, it's just not the case.  Here is a better example anyway.  Two sit-ins on the Hannity Show do the usual everyone is biased against conservatives segment.  And they come up with the following thought experiment:

BOZELL: How long do you think Sean Hannity's show would last if four times in one sentence, he made a comment about, say, the President of the United States, and said that he looked like a skinny, ghetto crackhead? Which, by the way, you might want to say that Barack Obama does. Everybody on the left would come forward and demand he be fired within five minutes for being so insulting towards a leader of the United States.

And so it goes.  Chris Matthews called Newt Gingrich a car bomber, therefore I'll call the President a skinny, ghetto crackhead.  Ei quoque; ei quoque.  There's always an ei quoque. 

 BTW, anyone a Latinist who prefers ille quoque to is quoque (mutatis mutandis)?

 

In their view, A is A.

No doubt many have now heard of the controversy surrounding Politifact's "Lie of the Year."  So has Politifact, apparently.  They respond to all of the very straightforward criticism with some very general points about how everyone is biased.  Then they remark:

PolitiFact had its latest brush with the Echo Chamber Nation this week. We gave our Lie of the Year to the Democrats' claim that the Republicans "voted to end Medicare." That set off a firestorm in the liberal blogosphere, with many saying that claim was not actually wrong. We've received about 1,500 e-mails about our choice and only a few agreed with us.

Some of the response has been substantive and thoughtful. The critics said we ignored the long-term effects of Rep. Paul Ryan's plan and that we were wrong to consider his privatized approach to be Medicare. In their view, that is an end to Medicare.

We've read the critiques and see nothing that changes our findings. We stand by our story and our conclusion that the claim was the most significant falsehood of 2011. We made no judgments on the merits of the Ryan plan; we just said that the characterization by the Democrats was false.

Our competitors FactCheck.org and the Washington Post's FactChecker had also said the Medicare claim was false — and this week both picked it for their biggest-falsehoods-of-the-year lists.

"In their view," is a pretty hilarious qualifier in front of the key point of factual disagreement.  After all, according to critics of Politifact, changing medicare from a single-payer government run system to a voucher-driven private system, which is absent the guarantees of the government system, is to end medicare.  Medicare is the government system; something else, not medicare, is the private system.  Sure, medicare will not end tomorrow on this plan.  But if you're under 55, it's ended for you.  It seems to me that they ought to respond, then, to those points.  They don't.  They point to their equally under theorized counterparts.  They argue:

First the truth: The budget plan that Republicans pushed through the House in 2011 would have radically changed Medicare in the future — for workers now under age 55. Starting in the year 2022, the GOP plan called for new Medicare beneficiaries to purchase private insurance with the help of federal subsidies.

But the plan would have continued the present Medicare system indefinitely for those now getting benefits, and also for all those who reach age 65 during the next decade.

But the truth didn’t stop Democrats from misrepresenting the proposal shamelessly to scare senior citizens and win election votes. They tested this tactic in a May 26 special House election in New York state, running ads accusing the Republican candidate of endorsing a plan that would “essentially end Medicare” and amount to “cutting benefits for seniors,” claims that were far from the truth.   

This is even worse than the Politifact piece, because they seem to get the basic idea, but deny it in the same sentence.  The rest of the piece is worse, as it then finds some weaker version of the "end medicare" meme, attacks that weak-man style, and concludes the whole thing is a lie. 

Now imagine this counter example.  We have a private insurance system in the United States.  Hurray for us, I know.  What if we replaced this private insurance system with a government single-payer system?  Would that amount to essentially ending private health insurance?  I imagine Politifact and FactCheck.org would answer no, as we would still have this private health insurance, only the government would pay for it, and it wouldn't be private.  This idea I can endorse.   

How equivocations work

Offhand I can think of two uses for deploying the subtle semantic strategy called "equivocation."  The first is to cover up the fact that you're lying about something; the second is to make it look like someone else is lying because of a verbal sleight of hand.  This latter is exactly what "Politifact" did with their now infamous "lie of the year" award.  First the lie of the year (via WashMo):

Republicans muscled a budget through the House of Representatives in April that they said would take an important step toward reducing the federal deficit. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies.

Democrats pounced. Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care “because Republicans voted to end Medicare.” […]

PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.

Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year. 

It turns out, on the most reasonable account, the lie of the year is literally true.  The whole thing, of course, hinges on the meaning of "medicare."  This single-payer government insurance program covers everyone over the age of 65.  The Ryan plan, about which the lie of the year has allegedly been made, proposed to end the "single payer" part of that equation by eventual phase out, replacing it with a voucher system for private insurance.  All the while, of course, this program retains the name "medicare."  But it's not "medicare". 

How not?  A fun analogy, from WashMo:

I’ve been trying to think of the best analogy for this. How about this one: imagine someone owns a Ferrari. It’s expensive and drives beautifully, and the owner desperately wants to keep his car intact. Now imagine I took the car away, removed the metallic badge off the trunk that says “Ferrari,” I stuck it on a golf cart, and I handed the owner the keys.

“Where’s my Ferrari?” the owner would ask.

“It’s right here,” I’d respond. “This has four wheels, a steering wheel, and pedals, and it says ‘Ferrari’ right there on the back.”

That's about it. 

Smack Down!

The Huffington Post, despite much promise, is a huge disappointment.  One reason is that the editors characterize any kind of discussion as a "battle" and any kind of response to  criticism as a "smack down" or "slap" or somesuchother expression. 

Now some have argued, wrongly I think (irony alert), that Philosophy is to blame for this adversarial culture of argument.  This is what critical thinking and logic courses teach, they allege, so it's no wonder we have this language of argument filled with metaphors of war and sports.  Scott Aikin has a discussion of that topic here

But I don't think that's really the case for Philosophy.  Speaking somewhat anecdotally, philosophers deploy critical analysis (including "the fallacy technique") to uncover the silliness of HuffPo style "debates."  Here's a good example from this morning's HuffPo.  It's an article which the front page calls "Barney Frank Smacks Down George Will."  The actual article, however, is actually appropriately titled "Barney Frank, George Will debate Pot Legalization".  This includes a video here.

I think this is actually a fun exchange.  Frank argues that self-regarding behavior of adults is their own business, Will plays the conservative end of the conservative side (not the libertarian end), arguing that the jury is still out on these things, and that "liberalism" is averse to facts.  Even if Frank had successfully dismantled the dishonest structure of Will's pseudo libertarianism, I wouldn't call this exchange a "smack down."  Come to think of it, I'm not even sure what a "smack down" is. 

Suck.On.This, Gorgias.

I have been reading Plato's Gorgias lately, wondering why I didn't assign this to my argumentation class (well, ok, they had enough to do already).  But in honor of the "end" of the Second Iraq War, I think the following passage is worth thinking about:

Socrates. Come, then, and let us see what we really mean about rhetoric; for I do not know what my own meaning is as yet. When the assembly meets to elect a physician or a shipwright or any other craftsman, will the rhetorician be taken into counsel? Surely not. For at every election he ought to be chosen who is most skilled; and, again, when walls have to be built or harbours or docks to be constructed, not the rhetorician but the master workman will advise; or when generals have to be chosen and an order of battle arranged, or a proposition taken, then the military will advise and not the rhetoricians: what do you say, Gorgias? Since you profess to be a rhetorician and a maker of rhetoricians, I cannot do better than learn the nature of your art from you. And here let me assure you that I have your interest in view as well as my own. For likely enough some one or other of the young men present might desire to become your pupil, and in fact I see some, and a good many too, who have this wish, but they would be too modest to question you. And therefore when you are interrogated by me, I would have you imagine that you are interrogated by them. "What is the use of coming to you, Gorgias? they will say about what will you teach us to advise the state?-about the just and unjust only, or about those other things also which Socrates has just mentioned? How will you answer them?

It's early in the discussion, but let us never forget the rhetoricians who arranged battle for us.  The archives here are full of them.  Here for your horror, is one:

I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.

We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?"

You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna let it grow?

Well Suck. On. This.

Okay.

That Charlie was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth.

And so example #15675432 why rhetoricians shouldn't advise.