Fallacies - 1

Fallacies are one of those critical thinking topics that could easily be discussed on this blog from now until Election Day.

Partly this is because there are so many different kinds of fallacies and, as mentioned previously, fallacies are one of the most fun topics to discuss in any class on logic, rhetoric or general critical thinking since they let you create all kinds of entertaining examples, from Groucho Marx wondering how an Elephant got into his pajamas, to Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Junior’s complicated doublespeak that led to my very favorite “If-by-Whiskey” fallacy.

There are a number of sites that exhaustively document these and other fallacies, and if you’re an audio-learner, I recommend the short audio lessons available here and here (which are a bit robotic in their delivery, but get the job done). 

But for purposes of preparing ourselves for the political argumentation that will be coming at us shortly from all directions, I’d like to focus on just a few specific fallacies that are commonplace during campaign season.

Before listing them, keep in mind that fallacies can be broken into two general categories, the first being Formal Fallacies that represent an error in the form of an argument (usually some sort of faulty logic) which can be flagged as fallacious regardless of content.  For example, the argument “All mermaids are female.  Gwen is a female.  Therefore Gwen is a mermaid.” is fallacious, regardless of whether mermaids exist.

A second category of informal fallacies actually cares about the content of the argument, not just its structure.  For example, the argument “Atoms are extremely small.  The universe is made of atoms.  Therefore the universe is extremely small.” is an informal Fallacy of Composition, assuming as it does that the qualities of a part of the whole (atoms) can be applied to the whole (the universe).

Typical fallacies you hear in political speech are Appeals to Authority, Appeals to Emotion, and Argument to Moderation.

Starting from the top, not all appeals to authority are fallacious.  For example, we prefer a surgeon take out our inflamed appendix and an auto mechanic fix our faulty brakes and would have a problem if those two specialists decided to trade jobs for the day.  And given the complexity of issues we have to deal with in an election cycle in areas such as the economy or war and peace, it’s appropriate that we look to professional economists, political scientists and historians to provide us information that would be hard to discover on our own.

But as we have seen in the past, every political candidate has their team of able economists (for example) ready to explain why their economic theories are correct (despite the fact that their opponent has an equally able economics team ready to support an opposite set of ideas).  Clearly, all of these experts cannot be right, which means we cannot rely solely on their authority to inform our choices over which economic vision to support.

So far, we have not identified the fallacious use of authority but simply pointed out that even the wisest and most talented group of experts cannot and should not be taken as the final word on any subject.

Appeals to authority reach the level of an informal fallacy when we are required to take the word of such authorities on faith (with politicians asking us to substitute their expertise for our own judgment or empirical evidence).   And they reach the level of a formal fallacy when the expert providing his or her opinion is speaking outside of his or her area of expertise, or in extreme opposition to a consensus in their field.

For example, a leader claiming that his or her team of PhDs in history and diplomacy provides them with enough expertise to make key decision on war and peace without further input would be committing an informal fallacy since there is every chance that this team, no matter how well informed, could be wrong.

But if a mathematics professor or linguist (no matter how brilliant in their field) starts making statements regarding international affairs, those opinions should be given no more (and certainly no less) weight than any other non-expert in the field, unless you want to be found guilty of committing a formal fallacious Appeal to Authority.  For people brilliant enough to see the world in ways we cannot are also brilliant enough to see the world in ways that are not true (an erect powerful defenses around why we should accept a picture of reality that we instinctively know isn’t right).

In our complicated world, we need experts and specialists to help us understand complex situations and inform and even make decisions we as individuals are not equipped to make on our own.  But that does not mean that levels of expertise alone should be used to sway our opinions on important matters. 

Next Up – Appeals to Emotion and Appeals to Moderation