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Explanation Arguments

Explanation arguments seek to establish that some conclusion is true because it is necessary to explain some already known fact.

To my mind, the concept of explanation is about the most fundamental concept in logic, and once you understand the difference between a good explanation and a bad explanation you will understand a great deal about how logic actually works. In a sense, all arguments are basically explanation arguments, and the four argument forms we have covered so far are just special cases of the explanation argument.

In an argument from authority the crucial premise is always that some person says that the conclusion is true. This kind of argument only works if it is the case that the only realistic explanation we can come up with for that premise is that this person has used her expertise and has been driven to accept the conclusion by an unbiased review of the available evidence. If it turns out that the facts give credibility to some other explanation (by showing that the authority has reason to be biased in this instance) or that they rule out the "used her expertise" explanation (by showing that the authority lacks training, has a bad track record, is contradicted by evidence, and so on) then the argument from authority will fail. (The fallacy of abusive ad hominem may be seen as a failed attempt to offer an alternative explanation by concocting an imaginary reason for bias.)

In a generalization argument, the crucial inference is always from the characteristics of a sample to the characteristics of a whole population. If we can credibly explain away the characteristics of the sample without also having to assume that the population has the same characteristics, then the generalization argument will fail. If we can show that the characteristics of the sample are plausibly the result of poor mixing in the population, or of a biased sampling method, then the generalization fails. If we can plausibly explain the results by saying that the population used to be that way but isn't necessarily that way now, then the generalization fails. This is why we attack generalizations by pointing to small sample size, age and biased sampling method, and defend them by pointing to good mixing, durability of features, and irrelevance of the purported bias.

As for causal arguments, they work when it is impossible to explain an observed correlation without also assuming that there is some presently unknown thing going on that will make that correlation reliably continue on into the future. When we find that we can comfortably explain a past correlation without having to assume that the correlation will continue into the future, then the causal argument fails. (Notice that the fallacies of reversed cause and effect and ignoring a common cause are fallacies because they both amount to ignoring an alternative explanation for the observed correlation.)

What this all means is that absolutely any argument can be logically evaluated by asking yourself if it is reasonably possible for this set of premises to be explained without necessarily assuming that the conclusion is true. If that set of premises cannot be reasonably explained without assuming that the conclusion is true, then the argument is good. If you can reasonably explain the premises without assuming the truth of the conclusion, then the argument is no good.

Here is a simple explanation argument:

The window is broken and your stereo is gone, so you've been robbed.

Standardized.

1. The window is broken.
2. Your stereo is gone.
3. (We cannot explain these things unless you've been robbed.)
C. You've been robbed.

Notice that the argument starts with a couple of facts (broken window, missing stereo) and concludes by asserting a third fact (a robbery). Unlike a causal argument, it assumes a causal connection between robbery and things like breakages and missing stuff. Just about everybody accepts that robberies cause such things, so nobody needs to argue for this causal connection, (which I have added in as a suppressed third premise).

Here is another explanation argument.

There's gas in the tank, juice in the battery, but the car just rattles when you turn the key? Buddy, your starter is shot!

Standardized.

1. There is gasoline available to the engine.
2. The battery is sufficiently charged.
3. The car does not start when the key is turned.
4. The car makes a rattling noise when the key is turned.
5. (These facts could only be explained if the starter motor was broken.)
C. The starter motor is broken.

Explanation argument.
Facts:                         got gas, got juice, no start, rattling noise.
Explanation:                broken starter motor.

Again, the argument gets its force from the idea that a busted starter motor is the only reasonable explanation for the facts cited.


Types of Explanation

There are presumably several different types of explanation. However, the only three kinds of explanation I can think of right now are the "whodunnit" "what happened" and "natural law" explanations. Evaluating each kind of explanation requires slightly different thinking.

Natural law explanations are the kind found in science, when science is done right. Before Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, a common explanation for why planets move was "angels did it." The answer to the question of "why did they move the planets where they did?" would be "I dunno." The answer to the question of "where will they move the planets to tomorrow?" would also be "I dunno." Starting with Ptolemy, scientists started developing mathematical models of how the planets move, and which could give successively better answers to both of those questions. Eventually, Isaac Newton proved that if you assumed that all masses attracted each other according to a certain mathematical law, you could account for all obseverd past motions and predict all future motions with a very high degree of accuracy. Newton's argument was an explanation argument. He showed that his "law of universal gravitation" explained all the facts far better than any competing theory. (Compared to Newton's theory, for instance, "angels do it" doesn't explain anything at all.)

There is a distressing, and illogical tendency in some people to see gaps in natural law explanations as opportunities to insert supernatural non-explanations for the observed anomalies. These people say things like "natural law cannot explain this particular event" or "see, natural law predicts something slightly different from what we actually see here," and then imagine that it is scientific to then assert that their favorite supernatural being fills the gap or is responsible for the difference. This is false. Science is always full of gaps and anomalies, and the work of science to develop adequate explanations for those gaps and anomalies. Imagine the effect on science if that method had been applied to observed anomaies in the orbit of Saturn. Newton's theory, when it was first tested, wasn't 100% successful in predicting the path of the Planet Saturn. Now suppose a "theory of "Intelligent Piloting," which "explained" the anomalies by saying "here God intervened to pilot Saturn on a slightly different path" was accepted by the scientific community of the time. The anomalies would have been seen as explained, and thus would not have resulted in the discovery of the planets Uranus and later Neptune. If Intelligent Piloting had been universally taken as science, astronomy would have basically stopped at that point. Astronomy didn't stop, because mathematicians and astronomers dared to assume that Newton was still right, and that these anomalies must be the result of presently unknown factors, such as a couple of planets no-one had noticed before.

Whodunnit explanations refer to some being with free will that chooses to accomplish some particular act. The prosecution in a criminal trial attempts to prove that the only way to reasonably explain the available evidence is to assume that the defendant did the crime. The defense tries to show that there is at least one reasonable explanation for the evidence that doesn't require us to assume that the defendant did the crime. This doesn't just apply to crimes, but to any event that might have been caused as a result of a choice made by some free-willed entity. Since whodunnit explanations depend on assuming that somebody chose to do something, they can't be tested in the same way as natural law. (We can't put the defendant into the same situation to see if he'll commit the same crime.) Instead, whodunnit explanation arguments focus on means, motive and opportunity. Did he have the kind of equipment necessary to do the act in question? Did he have what he would have considered a good reason to do the act? And, is it possible for him to have been in the right place at the right time to do the act? (Not surprisingly, no theory of Intelligent Criminality, in which God is considered to have arranged the evidence so that it just happens to be consistent with the defendant having committed the crime, is ever accepted by any court of law.)

What happened explanations cover unexpected events where willed intervention is ruled out. When a bridge falls, a building collapses, and especially when an airplane crashes, people tend to want to know precisely what chain of events led to the event. Typically, as much physical evidence as possible is gathered in an effort to reconstruct that chain of events. Inconsistencies can be important here. If a piece of metal is bent in a way different from what might be expected from the event as it is presently known, that can tell us something. For instance, the bulged and burst shapes that result from explosions are different from the twisted and compressed shapes that result from impacts. (Of course, air crash investigators have no truck with any kind of Intelligent Breakage theory.)

The boundry between what happened and whodunnit explanations is not always clear. A plane crash may be caused by the pilot suffering a coronary, a stroke or a sudden attack of "happy feet." The crash is thus caused by his behavior, but that behavior was beyond his control. "Pilot error," meaning that the pilot made a mistake, is sometimes blamed for airplane crashes.


Evaluating Explanation Arguments

Judging the strength of an explanation argument is not as simple as judging the strength of the argument types we've looked at before. We have to look at the explanation's plausibility, its explanatory power and at the explanatory strength of any competing explanations. I prefer to do this by asking eight questions about the explanation offered in the argument. (Not all of these questions are equally potent. A wrong answer to questions 1 through 4 will kill an explanation argument stone dead. An argument based on an explanation that fails question 5, 6 or 7 might still be a good argument, if all the other explanations are much, much worse than the one in question.)

Question 1. Is there another possible explanation that is at least as plausible as the one offered in the argument? It's important to recognize that the availability of an equally plausible explanation for the same set of facts kills an explanation argument stone dead without raising any problems with the explanation it contains. The explanation in the argument may be a perfectly good one, but if a different explanation explains the relevant facts equally well without requiring us to believe the argument's conclusion, then it's easily possible that that conclusion isn't true, and so the argument has failed to prove it's point. (Arguments that fail to recognize viable alternative explanations basically commit the false choice fallacy.)

Question 2. Does the explanation contradict itself? Arguments based on self-contradictory explanations are rare, but they do happen. And when they do, they are completely bogus. For instance, if anybody wants you to believe in something that transcends logic, in the sense that it is defined as something to which logic does not apply, then she has given you a very good reason to not believe in that thing since there are plenty of things that transcend logic, (like square circles and married bachelors), but none of them exist. It is in the nature of logic that it applies to everything that can exist. It is true that there are questions that logic might never answer, such as certain mind numbingly complicated mathematical conjectures and some problems in physics, but this is because those questions are complicated and difficult to understand. Logic still applies to them, even though it is maddeningly hard to actually apply it in practice. Arguments based on self-contradictory explanations are never, ever any good. (This is one of the kinds of failures that I group under the term empty explanation fallacy. Nothing is emptier than an explanation that can't possibly be true.)

Question 3. Is the explanation basically just a restatement of the problem? Such an explanation is empty of content, since there is actually nothing there. The basic facts of a situation, and the fact that they need an explanation, can be stated in many ways. And they can be stated in such a way as to describe whatever it is that explains them without adding any information whatsover. The classic example if from the French playwright Molière, who has a character "explain" the fact that opium makes people fall asleep by saying that it has a "dormative virtue." What does "it has a dormative virtue" mean? Why, it just means that it makes people go to sleep. "Explanations" that just restate the problem are not explanations at all, and thus no conclusions can be drawn from them whatsoever. (Since this is also the classic example of an "explanation" that explains nothing, I also categorize it as an empty explanation fallacy.)

Question 4. Does the explanation logically imply a causal story that shows exactly how the known facts came to happen? There's a common style of "explanation" that takes a mere redescription of the problem (rain is caused by some rain causing thing) gives the redescription a name (rain is caused by Soaker, the rain making genie) and calls it an argument ("We can explain the existance of rain by postulating the existance of Soaker, a rain-causing genie. Therefore the existance of rain proves that Soaker exists.") Even worse, some people attach these empty explanations to their favorite imaginary beings and thus concoct "arguments" for the existance of those beings. ("Vuntag is the creator of basketball. Basketball exists, so therefore Vuntag exists.") The trouble with this is that Vuntag is held to "explain" basketball be definition, so assuming Vuntag did it actually adds nothing to our understanding of basketball. Say that we presently don't know precisely what caused a particular bridge to fail, what caused some particular disease to break out, or precisely how some particular species happened to evolve from it's immediate ancestors. We could develop fallacious arguments of the following form

1. We don't know precisely why X happened.
2. We can explain X by assuming that God intervened to make it happen.
C."God did it" is equally as valid an explanation as "an otherwise well-understood natural process did it."

The salient fact here is that saying "God did it" doesn't explain the event in any meaningful sense. It doesn't add anything to our understanding of the event. And it certainly does not allow us to predict what will happen the next time the same conditions occur! The "God did it" explanation has exactly as much explanatory power as "Thor did it," "Mickey Mouse did it" and "my imaginary friend who looks like Donald Trump did it," which is to say, none whatsoever. The "theories" of Intelligent Bridge Failure, Intelligent Infection and Intelligent Design are all functionally equivalent to saying "I don't know," which means that they are not only anti-scientific, but are also a colossal waste of time and, not coincidentally, are all classic examples of the empty explanation fallacy.

Explanation arguments that fail the tests imposed by questions 1-4 fail absolutely. Notice that there are two modes of failure, and that either mode will kill an argument all on it's own. When a conclusion is based on an explanation, the mere existance of an equally plausible alternative explanation that does not require that conclusion kills that argument stone dead, no matter how good it's explanation is otherwise. Similarly, if a conclusion rests on an explanation that is self-contradictory, empty of content, or lacks a causal story, then that argument it no good whatsoever, even if there is no other even remotely plausible explanation in sight.

The following questions are usually not quite so lethal. These might be termed "red flag" questions, relating to things that may or may not knock an argument down.

Question 5. Does the explanation contradict any well-established facts? If an explanation contradicts the known laws of physics, for instance, that gives us good reason to think that the explanation is false, and that in turn gives us good reason to think that the argument is no good. Unfortunately, we can't just say that the explanation is false and leave it at that because the "fact" that the explanation contradicts may actually turn out to be false! This has happened to the laws of physics several times, which is why the known laws of physics of today are different from the "known" laws of physics of 200 years ago. Still, an explanation that violates our best established physical laws is much worse than an explanation that doesn't violate those laws, and our current understanding of physical law is very well established, so any explanation that violates any scientific law is highly unlikely to be true. Remember that arguments do not merely try to establish that their conclusions are possible. They try to establish that their conclusions are true, and an argument that relies on an explanation that seems physically impossible is almost never a good argument. It takes an enormous amount of evidence to overturn a physical law, and so no argument that contradicts physical law without overwhelming evidence is ever going to be a good argument.

Question 6. Do the facts of the case support the explanation? Are there any facts that the explanation fails to account for?
Say we have an event with some associated facts. It might be a crop circle in an English wheatfield containing the words "Carlton Rools!" and "Footy Forever." The circle is inexpertly drawn, it is littered with empty beer cans bearing labels like "Castlemaine XXX" and "Coopers Sparkling," and there is a pair of deep parallel gouges or furrows in the middle of an adjoining field. The event here is the crop circle. The associated facts are the references to "Carlton" and "Footy," the possible misspelling of the word "rules," the incompetence of the drawing, the presence of the beer cans, the fact that they were all Australian brands and the nearby gouges Since these facts are so closely associated with the event, any explanation that does not account for them should be considered wonky. These may also be referred to as the "relevant" facts, even though the following facts may also be relevant.

Suppose it is known that many of the highly-evolved inhabitants of the planet Sirius-17 are avid fans of Australian Rules Football, which some Australians refer to as "footy." It might then be thought that perhaps some Sirians are responsible for this crop circle. However, the Sirians are also excellent artists, excellent spellers and complete teetotallers.

There is also the Didgeridoo Galaxy (known to us as "The Andromeda Galaxy"), where the inhabitants worship Yahoo Serious, and devote their culture to recreating an idealized vision of Australia, complete down to Sheilas and chunder. However, the Didgers use Anti-Tachyon Triple Phase Mocha Cappuchino Drive spaceships, whose Pro-Gravity Descent Motors don't so much defy gravity as reason with it. Indeed, the latest generation of PGDMs might even be said to charm gravity, so it turns out to be somewhat of a problem to get a PGDM equipped ship to actually touch the ground, since gravity is quite happy to let such ships hover an inch or two above the surface of any planet.

Then there are the Rajavictorians, a human society living on the planet Mars. Descended from British Imperialists who were kidnapped from Earth in a misguided attempt to mitigate British colonialism, they hate everything Australian, and would stop at nothing to make Australia look bad.

Finally, there is the fact that a spaceship from Betelgeuse recently landed in Melbourne, Australia, home of Carlton Football Club, and that several of their crew reported that their shuttle disappeared from the street outside The Brandon public house some hours before the circle appeared, and was found back there the next morning with indications of being hastily and inexpertly cleaned, and containing a small pile of Australian currency including a lot of loose change, together with a note reading simply "Welcome to Earth. Sorry about the chunder."

Attributing the circle to the Sirians would explain the references to Carlton and Footy, and the Australianity of the beer cans, but it would not explain the beer cans themselves, nor would it explain the misspelling of "rules," and the erratic shape of the circle. Attributing it to the Didgers would explain everything except the gouges, since one of their PGDM-equipped ships wouldn't need to touch the ground at all, let alone tear it up in big furrows. Attributing it to the Rajavictorians would explain everything, but in a very weak sense, since all the associated facts would have the same explanation, to wit "they did it to make it look Australian," which actually wouldn't account for the gouges, so this explanation would still have a very low plausibility, and could only be accepted if every other explanation was clearly ruled out. As for the Betelgeusian shuttle that went missing from Melbourne, I have absolutely no idea what to make of that.

The bottom line is, the more relevant facts we have supporting the explanation, the stronger the argument is. The fewer the supporting facts, the weaker the argument is. If an explanation has no facts to support it, then the associated argument will be terminally weak.

Question 7. Does the explanation come with a lot of additional unsupported assumptions (called "ad hoc" assumptions) that function as excuses for logical problems with the explanation. Regarding the explanations given above, an ad hoc assumption about the Sirian explanation could be that maybe some teenage Sirians were breaking custom to try beer, and couldn't handle it. An ad hoc for the Didgers might be that some of them borrowed a Betelgeusian shuttle, had trouble driving it, and thus tore up the adjoining field when they landed. The Rajavictorian explanation is actually too vague to benefit from ad hockery, which is really a bad sign. An explanation that included specific reasons for each associated fact would be much, much stronger.

Early in the so-called "War on Terror" certain officials of a certain Balkan state wanted to demonstrate a contribution to the fight against terrorism, so they hired some Pakistani laborers for nonexistant jobs, drove them to the border of that certain Balkan state, massacred them, placed weapons by their bodies, photographed the scene and announced that they had intercepted a group of terrorists. People who observed the photographs noticed many inconsistencies between the scene and what you would expect after a firefight, and the murderous fraud was uncovered. From our point of view, this illustrates that the "murderous fraud" explanation fit the observed facts much better than the "intercepted terrorists" explanation.


An Extended Example

Suppose the abandoned Bruford building near an orphanage in Bisbee Arizona, caught fire early one morning in 2002. Con Flagrant, a shy volunteer fireman, was driving by at 2:15 AM, stopped to fight the fire with his automobile fire extinguisher, put out the fire before it could endanger the next door orphanage, and was therefore considered a hero by the community. Con is a non-smoker, and a regular at the Slime Pit Bar, which is 15 minutes away and closes at 2 AM sharp. His route home takes him past the building. In his truck he has several gallons of gasoline and a bag of old rags. Fire investigators find a large pile of burned-up trash mixed in with numerous cigarette butts and wrappers but no traces of "accelerant" which is their term for highly flammable materials, such as gasoline, which are often used to facilitate arson. Con is intensely embarrassed by the attention and stays out of sight as much as possible after the incident. Neighbors offer the following arguments by explanation based on the facts of the fire.

A.The fire was started by Sprinkler, a superpowerful being that always acts to preserve buildings. Therefore the fire proves that Sprinkler exists.

B. The orphanage must house a secret school for mutant superheroes, since the fire can only be explained by some teenage mutant carelessly practicing his high-energy laser vision on the abandoned building. The intense heat from his laser started the fire.

C. Con Flagrant must have started the fire to make himself look like a hero, because there have been several cases of volunteer fireman setting fires.

D. Con Flagrant has gasoline and old rags in his truck. Therefore he started the fire.

E. The fire was caused by then-president George W. Bush, who sneaked out of the White House incognito with the cooperation of the Secret Service, flew secretly to Phoenix, disguised himself somehow and rented a car to drive to Bisbee where he hid in the abandoned building until 2 AM when he set the fire with a cigarette lighter he had purchased secretly in Phoenix. He then ran to his car and drove back to Phoenix, managing to get away before Con Flagrant came on the scene. He burned down the building because he had somehow formed the idea that the building belonged to Saddam Hussein, and had formed the desire to do something against Saddam all on his own. He collected the trash and cigarette butts by raiding trash cans and ashtrays in Phoenix airport so that he would have materials with which to start the fire.

The Questions

Question 1. Is there another possible explanation that is at least as plausible as the one offered in the argument? Argument A fails this test because all of the other arguments have waaaaay more plausible explanations. Argument B fails because C, D and E are all more plausible that it. Argument E fails likewise fails because C and D (which have the same explanation, and support it with different facts) are much more plausible. But are we left with "Con Flagrant did it" as the only plausible explanation? No, because the explanation that kids, perhaps from the orphanage, were smoking in the building and caused the fire accidentally is at least as plausible. This doesn't mean that we have proved that kids were responsible, or that Con didn't do it, but it does prove that arguments C and D fail to prove that Con did it.

Question 2. Does the explanation contradict itself? In the arguments given above, argument A fails because the concept of a being that always acts to preserve buildings logically contradicts the concept of that same being acting to destroy a building. (And if someone were to try to wriggle out of this by saying that Sprinkler transcends logic, all that would prove would be that Sprinkler could not possibly exist.)

Question 3. Is the explanation basically just a restatement of the problem? Argument A suffers from this problem. Something started the Bruford fire, so a particular Bruford-fire-starting-thing exists. Since there was no independent evidence for the existence of Sprinkler before the fire, saying that Sprinkler did it logically amounts to claiming that whatever caused the fire has the additional property of being a god that protects buildings, which is not supported by the evidence. Saying that Sprinkler is defined as having the ability to start fires doesn't help, because that just makes Sprinkler logically equivalent to any of infinitely many other arbitrarily defined beings that are defined as having the same ability! Even if we had no other remotely plausible explanation, argument A would still fail because it actually fails to be an explanation at all.

Question 4. Does the explanation logically imply a causal story that shows exactly how the known facts came to happen?
Arguments C and D does the best job here because the steps by which a person can start a fire are well known. Argument B is not so good because, although we know how laser beams can cause fires, there is no known way that human eyeballs can generate laser beams. Saying that the perpetrator was a mutant doesn't help, because there's no known way that being a mutant can help you generate laser beams. In fact, saying that the perpetrator was a mutant is no better than saying that the perpetrator was a mime, since a mime has exactly as much ability to generate laser beams as any mutant! Argument A is the absolute worst in this regard. It's only causal story is that Sprinkler caused the fire! There is nothing in the definition of Sprinkler that logically implies the ability to start fires.

Question 5. Does the explanation contradict any well-established facts? Argument B violates physical law. There is no known mutation that can grant any kind of super power, and human eyes would be physically incapable of generating laser beams even if there was. There is no biological mechanism that can even begin to generate a laser. Finally biologically produced energy pulses, such as the shock from an electric eel, don't generate enough energy to generate a laser pulse that could start a fire at a distance. Argument B also contradicts known facts. Con is shy and shuns attention, which contradicts the claim that he started the fire to gain attention.

Question 6. Do the facts of the case support the explanation? Are there any facts that the explanation fails to account for?
Arguments A and B are not supported by any facts at all, which makes them extremely weak. Argument C is supported by one fact: Volunteer firemen have been known to set fires to make themselves look heroic. This makes argument C stronger than both A and B. However, the fact that Con had gasoline and old rags in his truck does not support argument D because neither gasoline nor old rags were involved in the fire. (Argument D actually commits a red herring fallacy for this reason.) Arguments C and D do explain why the fire started at 2:15 AM, since that's the time that Con Flagrant normally drives by that location, so again they are stronger than the other two explanations. But none of the explanations given above explains why there were trash and cigarette butts in the abandoned building, which could be coincidence, but still makes these explanations weaker than they would be if they did account for those things.

Question 7. Does the explanation come with a lot of additional unsupported assumptions? Argument E comes with a raft of assumptions, all of which patch up some logical hole in the idea that George W. Bush did it, and none of which are supported by any independent facts. They are all ad hoc assumptions, and the fact that they are implausible means that they might as well not be there. It's true that they could all be true, and George W. Bush could have started the fire, but the explanation is so elaborate, and it is unlikely in so many ways, that overall it is extremely unlikely to be true.


Counter Arguing

There are three main strategies for arguing against explanation arguments.

The first strategy is to try to show that we have good reason to believe that the "explanation" given simply isn't true.

I'll admit that your explanation accounts for all the facts, and I can't come up with another explanation right now, but I hesitate to accept your explanation right now because, quite frankly, it seriously violates the laws of physics!

A variation on this strategy works very well for abusive ad hominem fallacies by showing that the slanderous allegation is unsupported by any evidence.

You claim that Doctor Foster, the noted expert on Persia, criticizes Shah Shower because Foster is an antipersite, but you have failed to come up with even a shred of evidence that Foster has ever said antipersite things or acted in an antipersite manner.

Notice that abusive ad hominem is about the only form of explanation argument vulnerable to the "unsupported by evidence" strategy. In most explanation arguments the facts to be explained are evidence that supports the conclusion. However, in abusive ad hominem, the fact to be explained (some statement made by the person being attacked, in this case Dr. Foster) cannot count as evidence for the kind of dishonesty imputed by the abusive ad hominem. This is because, in the absence of such evidence, it is always possible that the person being attacked came to his conclusion by honest use of his expertise. Therefore, a lack of evidence for the unworthy motive attributed to the speaker will always knock down an abusive ad hominem.

The second strategy is to try to show that the "explanation" given simply fails to explain anything. Showing that the purported explanation doesn't explain how the purported cause (whose existance is not otherwise established) was able to accomplish the purported effect will handily knock down an explanation argument.

You claim we should believe in Vuntag because you say we can only explain the existance of the universe if we assume that Vuntag exists to have created it. But nothing in your definition of Vuntag explains how a being that wants us to persecute left-handed people and wear honey in our ears could possibly have the power to create anything, let alone a whole universe.

Finally, an explanation argument can be killed by explaining a suppressed alternative explanation, and therefore showing that it is a false choice fallacy.

The fact that there's meaning in the universe doesn't mean that Fnorbert exists because that meaning could come from other sources, such as the quest to understand nature, or the existance of love. .

You say that the fact that your wallet is missing proves that my son is a thief, but I'll point out you have a long history of losing your wallet in strange places and, quite frankly, you were drunk as a skunk last night, so I think it's at least possible that you left your wallet in one of those "exotic dance" bars you're so fond of.


Counter Example

An important form of argument by explanation is the counter example. (Not to be confused with counter argument.) It is can be used to prove generalizations and causal claims false.

Some of A are not-B
Not all A are B

E is an X that does not have P
Not all Xs have P

E is an X that does not have P
X does not always cause P


Here's a less formal example.

What do you mean feminism is just "man bashing?" What about Katha Pollit? She's not a man basher!

1. Katha Pollit is not a man basher
2. (Katha Pollit is a feminist.)
3. (If feminism was just man-bashing, all feminists, including Katha Pollit, would be man-bashers.)
C. Feminism isn't just man-bashing.

Explanation argument.
Facts: Katha Pollit is a feminist but not a man-basher.
Explanation: Feminism is not man bashing.

And another one.

Michael Moore once asked Charleton Heston why he thought American society was so violent. Heston replied, "well, there's a lot of ethnic diversity..." Now suppose I get into Chuck's face and say "Santa Ana fundamental schools have ethnic diversity and no
violence, so nuts to you, gun-boy!"

1. Santa Ana fundamental schools have ethnic diversity
2. Santa Ana fundamental schools do not have violence
3. (If ethnic diversity caused violence, then ethnically diverse schools like Santa Ana fundamental would have violence.
C. Ethnic diversity does not cause violence.

Explanation argument.
Facts: These schools have diversity but not violence.
Explanation: Ethnic diversity doesn't cause violence.


Fallacies

There are two ways an explanation argument can go wrong. First, it could turn out that the "explanation" used in the argument simply isn't a good explanation, either because it contradicts some well established fact (suppressed evidence fallacy), or because it really doesn't explain anything at all (empty explanation fallacy). Second, it could turn out that the explanation used in the argument, even if it is perfectly adequate, simply isn't the only adequate explanation for the set of facts used in the argument (false choice fallacy).

Empty Explanation

This is the fallacy of offering an "explanation" that doesn't actually explain anything, or raises at least as many questions as it answers. This can be done by just restating the observed facts and calling it an "explanation."

The rocket crashed because it's flight path intersected the ground.

The reason the weather cleared up just now is because the local conditions of wind, temperature and so on happened to combine in such a way as to end the local precipitation.

You think?

Another way to commit empty explanation is to simply attribute to some real or imaginary entity without giving us any reason, beyond the arguer's word, to think that the entity is capable of bringing about the event or condition. The main characteristic of these empty explanations is that they can't be checked by experiment or anything else.

The reason the rocket crashed is quite simple. It was gremlins.

You want to know why the weather cleared up right now? My uncle Ted did it.

Notice that the addition of detail doesn't help.

Gremlins are invisible flying creatures that get into electronic devices and make them malfunction.

My Uncle Ted has the power to control the weather. He doesn't always feel like it, but he definitely can do it any time he really wants.

Of course, it's not testable.

No, you can't see, hear or feel the gremlins.

I told you, Uncle Ted doesn't always feel like controlling the weather.

and making it "explain" more doesn't help.

Gremlins don't just affect electronics, they make airline food taste bad too.

Uncle Ted has other powers, you know. Like those good parking spaces you found last week, Uncle Ted was feeling generous, and he likes you, so he fixed them up for you.

The real kicker is, of course, is that there is no causal mechanism.

The gremlins just do it because they're gremlins. That's what gremlins do, dummy!

Uncle Ted doesn't know how he does what he does. It's just a mystery.


Abusive ad Hominem

If you're interested, the Abusive ad Hominem fallacy is actually a variant of Empty Explanation because it attempts to "explain away" criticism or other inconvenient information by inventing an unworthy motive and falsely attributing it to the source of that criticism. Abusive ad hominems always fail because they never come with evidence that supports the idea that the source has an unworthy motive. This distinguishes them from counter arguments based on material interest that always come with some kind of factual evidence to back up the idea that the source might be unduly infulenced by self-interest.


Suppressed Evidence

In general, the fallacy of suppressed evidence happens when an arguer leaves out available facts that might imply that the conclusion he's advancing is false. When you make an argument you don't have the time to include all the facts that might be relevant, so it's understandable if you leave a lot out. However, if you leave out stuff which suggests that your conclusion is wrong, that's dishonest.

Buy your new computer from us and we'll give you a $300 rebate. (Provided you spend an extra $600 on an internet provider you don't need.)

American corporations are never racist. When a manager decides on hiring or promoting he's going to want the best person for the job, period. (This, of course, ignores the fact that racists think that non-white people can't be the best for the job.)

You should learn the psychic technique of remote viewing now. The CIA funded it for many years to spy on Russia! (Suppressing the fact that it never worked.)

Just think of someone who is thinking of eating hamburgers and other fast food to excess. Anyone who is thinking about a hamburger-based diet will realize that it will inevitably lead to obesity and an elevated risk of coronary-artery disease. No-one wants to be fat or risk an early death, so no-one will adopt a hamburger-based diet.

Look at any advertisement that has the word "FREE" of "GIFT" in big letters. The small type might tell you how much you have to pay to get this "free gift." Or the salesman might tell you when you call the number. Either way, you won't get it without paying something.

Finally, psychics who advertize themselves as having "assisted" the police always suppress the fact that their "assistance" has never been the least bit helpful.

A word of caution about suppressed evidence. You don't have to mention stuff that's really irrelevant, so it's no fallacy to suppress stuff that's not evidence of anything relevant to your conclusion. This means we should be wary of arguments that purport to show that the other side suppresses evidence. If the "evidence" they uncover isn't relevant, then the other side doesn't commit any fallacy.

I should mention that it's possible to commit the fallacy of suppressed evidence without advancing an argument at all. People often state beliefs that are sharply contradicted by the available evidence.

Colleen. Don't you find it significant that the Soviet economy was collapsing under it's own weight when Gorbachev took over?
Angelique. You're ignoring the fact that since World War Two the United States was threatening the Soviet Union with hostile rhetoric, nuclear weapons and an ever more powerful series of conventional weapons systems, so that the Russians had to divert a large proportion of their resources to defense just to keep up.
Colleen. Don't fool yourself. The Soviets were pushing the arms race just as hard as America.
Angelique. Actually, the CIA and the Defense Department have frequently acknowledged that the USSR followed a "mirror policy" of only doing enough to keep up with the Americans all through the cold war.

In this conversation, Colleen seems unaware of certain facts that are very relevant to her claims regarding the Soviet Union. She is speaking out of ignorance, and her claims are being shot down by someone who knows a couple of facts that she doesn't. We call Colleen's fallacy "suppressed evidence" even though we can't be sure that Colleen is suppressing the facts mentioned by Angelique. Colleen's ignorance here could be accidental, and therefore innocent, (although not harmless). Even if we were to assume that people have a duty to become informed before making judgements like this, that duty is so frequently violated that it is pointless to mention it in any particular case.


False Choice

An explanation argument commits false choice when it leaves out another explanation that's at least as reasonable as the one it's pushing. (I used to call this one "suppressed competitor" until I realized it was logically the same as false choice.)

He's a good person, and he's a writer, so he's a good writer

I'm adding a suppressed premise to clarify the false choice implied by this argument.

1. He is a good person.
2. He is a writer.
(3. Either he's a good writer or he's a bad person.)
C. He is a good writer.

Explanation argument.
Facts: He's a writer, and he's a good person.
Explanation: He's a good writer.

This argument fails because we can explain the premises as a mere coincidence. There's nothing about either one that makes the conclusion necessary. The third premise is false. Good writer and bad person are not the only two alternatives open to us. You don't have to be a good writer to be a good person, nor do you have to be a good writer to be a writer.

Here is an argument that commits both fallacies.

We know that Fnorbert exists because it cannot be true that the universe is completely bereft of meaning.

1. (Either Fnorbert exists or the universe lacks meaning.)
2. The universe does not lack meaning                              
3. Fnorbert exists.

Explanation argument.
Facts: there is meaning in the universe.
Explanation: Fnorbert.

This is an empty explanation because it doesn't say how Fnorbert can give meaning at all. And it's false choice fallacy because it ignores all the other potential sources of meaning, such as family, friends, art, culture and public service in human life.

Good explanations tell us more than we knew already, give us a causal mechanism that shows how the process works, and give us a testable way to go forward Bad explanations don't really tell us any more, don't show how anything works, and don't give us anything we can test. A good explanation argument is one that
really does have the only reasonable explanation for some observed set of phenomena.


Equivocation

There is a form of equivocation in which an arguer claims that someone else's argument is bad because that person misuses a word. If Jack says that Jill's argument or claim is wrong because some term she uses should have a different definition than the one Jill gives it, Jack is committing the fallacy of equivocation. If we use Jill's words but define their meanings according to Jack's definition, Jill's words may indeed look false or foolish, but that's only because we're pretending that they mean something different from what Jill means by them. If we take Jill's words the way Jill uses them, and define the key terms the way Jill defines them, then we will know what Jill is really saying. It's important to remember that this is a fallacy even if Jack is right about the correct definitions of Jill's words! Even if we disagree with the way Jill uses certain words, we can't change the meaning of what she actually says. (Although we could rewite her argument so that it uses all the correct terms.)

Jillian. As far as scientists can tell, all space and time began as an infininitely small ball of incredibly dense matter which basically exploded outward instantly, creating space and beginning time as it went.
Aubrey. That's self-contradictory! The "beginning" means before space and time, so the universe must have begun before that ball got there! And nothing can be "infinitely small" because everything has to take up some space. And an explosion is just rapid combustion, so the ball couldn't have exploded. And "as it went" means "as it progressed after the explosion," so time must have existed before the point at which you say it created time.
Jillian. "Beginning" just means the first time we know anything about. "Infinitely small" just means as small as matter can get, like the singularity at the center of a black hole. "Explosion" just means "hurtled outward in all directions" whether from combustion or overpressure or whatever. "As it went" means "from the first moment of it's existance" so time could have started the instant the ball existed.
Aubrey. Don't try to weasel out of it. Those words mean what I say they mean, so you're whole statement is wrong.

Exercises

Okay, here are some exercises to work on. I'll do the first one.

Darien. People who refuse to see a chiropractor regularly, and get regular adjustments, are taking an unacceptable risk with their health.
Abbigail. Actually, the chiropractic theory has never been scientifically validated, so I wouldn't reccomend that anyone see a chiropractor unless that chiropractor had training in some scientifically validated medical treatment. And I'd make sure to advise her not to let the chiropractor do any of those chiropractic "adjustments."
Darien. What! are you saying that all those chiropractors are total fools who wasted the four years they spent in chiropractic school?
Abbigail. Well, I'm not saying that they were all fools, but...
Darien. So you admit that chiropractic works?
Abbigail. No, of course not!
Darien. Well then, you're contradicting yourself, aren't you?

Fist of Death
Assuming that all the facts given in this little conversation are correct, treatment based solely on the theory of chiropractic is no more likely to be effective than treatment based on the theory that washing your socks will cure all your bodily ills. As we know through painful experience, history is littered with "treatments" that either didn't work or actually did more harm than good, so if someone says a treatment works, he's got to come up with some evidence that it works. According to Abbigail, no-one's done that, so we should assume that chiropractic doesn't work. Darien assumes that if chiropractic doesn't work then people who attend chiropractic school are all total fools, so that Abbigail's admission that they're not all fools amounts to an admission that chiropractic works. However, Darien fails to realize that someone can follow a false theory and still not be a total fool. Even the smartest people can make dumb mistakes, or be misguided, so chiropractic can be bogus even if not all chiropractors are total fools. Besides, even if Darien's assumption was right, all it could prove is that Abbigail is wrong when she says that not all chiropractors are fools.

How did I get there? Well, let's do the full scaefod. (Don't whine, it will be good for you.)

Standardization

Abbigail.
1. Chiropractic has never been scientifically proved.
2. (If it worked, it would have been validated)
C. Chiropractic doesn't work.

Darien.
1. Chiropractic works or chiropractors are total fools.
2. Chiropractic are not total fools.
C. Chiropractic works.

Contextualization

Basic issue: Does chiropractic work? The belief in chiropractic is very common in American society, but so what? Belief in fairies used to be much more common but that didn't make it true. Being a common belief doesn't make something knowledge, so we need to think about what our knowledge is here. Frankly, I'm not sure how to figure that out. I personally would go with science here, but that's Abbigail's argument, so I'm going to leave science out at this stage. Hmmmmm..... Okay, a lot of people pay a lot of money to obtain chiropractic treatment, so they must think it works, even after they've tried it. And insurance companies usually pay for chiropractic services, which might indicate that they think it works. Merely believing in something is one thing, plunking down cash on the barrell head is another. I'm not happy with this line of argument - people once sacrificed their children to beings now known to be imaginary - but it's all I've got, so I'll say our background knowledge comes down more in favor of chiropractic than against it. Oh sod it, I'm just going to say "maybe."

Null hypothesis: Maybe, maybe not. Since we start from a position of assuming chiropractic might work, that means that both sides have a burden of proof against that null hypothesis. This is a light burden because failure to prove chiropractic works won't mean that it doesn't, and failure to prove chiropractic doesn't work won't mean that it does.

Abbigail: Light burden of proof.
Darien: Light burden of proof.

Since neither of them talks about the other's premises, both arguments are direct.

Abbigail: Direct Argument.
Darien: Direct Argument.

Analysis

Abbigail's argument relies on her claim that chiropractic hasn't been scientifically validated, so she's relying on a lack of evidence to make her point, which makes hers a burden of proof argument. (But you can treat it as a deductive argument. I'll show you how.) As far as I can tell, Darien isn't using any of the inductive strategies I told you about, so I'm going to say that his is a deductive argument.

We don't know how to analyze a burden of proof argument yet, and deductive arguments don't get analyzed, so it's on to the next section. Yay.

Evaluation

One way to phrase Abbigail's argument is:

1. Chiropractic has been scientifically verified, or it doesn't work.
2. Chiropractic has not been scientifically verified.
C. Chiropractic doesn't work.

How strong is that first premise? Does it cover all the reasonable alternatives? Could we truthfully say of any treatment "It has been scientifically verified, or it doesn't work, or it hasn't been verified and it still works. Well, there's acupuncture to consider. Acupuncture wasn't scientifically verified until a couple of years ago, which means it was working all those years that it wasn't verified, so, yeah, it's possible that chiropractic works even though it's not been verified scientifically. But how reasonable is that possibility? Remember, we go by what's rational here. Before acupuncture was verified, it was reasonable to assume it didn't work. But it was also reasonable to assume that it might work, especially since it hadn't then been tested? Has chiropractic been tested? Abbigail doesn't say. This makes her argument reasonably strong - if chiro did work, somone would have proved it by now - but not absolutely compelling.

Darien's argument can be phrased as:

1. Chiropractic works, or Chiropractors are all total fools.
2. Chiropractors are not all fools.
C. Chiropractic doesn't work.

How strong is that first premise? Not strong at all. Even intelligent people can make mistakes, and there have been times when complete societies believed absolutely false things. So being wrong about something doesn't, by itself, make anyone a total fool.

If you're not already sick of hearing about explanation arguments, here's more story: explanationstory.htm

Scaefod the following arguments for practice. The answers don't have full scaefods, but they should tell you which argument is stronger.

A. Cecelia. Once again, no homework from Christiana. I think this proves that you are not putting the proper effort into this class.
Christiana. No it doesn't, because I can explain why I have no homework today. I did it, as well as I could, but it got ruined before I could bring it into class. How did my homework get ruined? Well, it was raining outside this afternoon, and all the doors and windows were closed, so obviously rainwater flowed up the back steps, under the back door, across the kitchen floor to the hall, and then up the stairs to my bedroom where it must have flowed over the top of the carpet (because the carpet is perfectly dry) and up the legs of my desk and on to my homework, causing it to burst into flames.   (Answer)
 
B. Ellis. Belief in ghosts is something that will never be fully explained. People have believed in ghosts since before people started writing down history. The only thing I can think of is that some people did not want to believe that their loved ones were gone for good, and so comforted themselves with the belief that their loved ones could come back.
Houston. I've got a much more precise explanation than that. How did people first get the idea that ghosts exist? Well, it must be because back in the neolithic period some hunter or gatherer decided to comfort a friend who'd just lost a parent. This hunter hid in the shadows one night and pretended to be the friend's deceased parent. He disguised his voice and covered himself with a white sheet so as to not give the game away. Well, things didn't go as expected! His friend wasn't comforted, he was terrified! So to cover his embarassment, our hunter told his friend it must have been his parent's left over spirit, which we now call a ghost. That must have been it.   (Answer)
 
C.  Kelley. I've started to develop arthritis, which is a recurring inflammation of my joints. I can't figure out what's causing it. I'm only 35 years old, and the inflammation doesn't come and go with any exposure to any of the things that I normally touch. Sometimes it happens when I'm weaving wool but other times I can weave wool without any inflammation whatsoever. The same is true for my other crafts, my job, and all the household chemicals I handle regularly.
Jordan. I think it's pretty clear what's causing your arthritis. Obviously it is some inflammatory agent or agents that attacks the the joints. (Answer)
 
D. Donna. I finally found out why I can't sleep at night.
Abner. You can't sleep?
Donna. Yeah. I'm nervous and irritable all day, I have to make a major effort just to stay awake until bedtime, but I never seem to sleep at night. Anyway, my chiropractor says it's because my spine is out of whack.
Abner. Your chiropractor?
Donna. Yeah, he's a fully trained Doctor of Chiropractic, so I can take his word for it.
Abner. Listen, I don't know much about your lifestyle or diet, but I'd be willing to bet that you drink coffee, or Mountain Dew or something else with caffeine in it. I mean, if you were taking a lot of caffeine, your nervousness, irritability and sleeplessness would make a lot of sense.  (Answer)
 
E. Cornelius. You know, it's not really so strange that Oscar would become a Catholic. It's true that he has absolutely no interest in religion, but he has always been fascinated by elaborate rituals, beautiful singing, and fine art. The Catholic Church has all of these in abundance, so naturally he would be drawn to it.
Jazlyn. Rubbish. I know you might think it was because he likes all that ritual and fine art and other fol-de-rol, but I can tell you the real reason must have been that he got tired of the moral constipation of the Anglican church.  (Answer)
 
F. Christa. The universe exists because Ethel The Frog needed a laugh, so she created a universe that would eventually bring forth intelligent beings who would amuse her. This explains why so many absurd things happen in the world. Come to think of it, Ethel must have a sick sense of humor, because much of what happens in the world would only be amusing to someone who enjoyed cruelty and humiliation.
German. No, you've got it all wrong. Ethel must be universally benevolent, because only a benevolent creator would have created so many nice things.   (Answer)
 
G. Remington. Science cannot fully explain the build-up of electric charge that leads to lightning, so we are going to have to say that it is unexplained until someone comes up with a reasonable explanation.
Marianna. The explanation is that clouds have legs, and the hills are fully carpeted. The clouds build up static electricity by shuffling their feet on the carpeting. That's what builds up all that electricity. You don't have a better explanation, so my explanation must be the truth.   (Answer)
 
H. Karina. Sometimes, psychological problems defy explanation. People who have endured no trauma, no abuse, and have no organic problems sometimes out of the blue turn up with psychological problems. They may be caused by factors we can't see yet, or they may strike at random. We just don't know.
Rachelle. Your problem is that you focus too much on present-life events. Most, if not all, present-life psychological problems can be traced back to the effects of traumatic events that took place in a former life. This is a reasonable explanation because it only requires us to assume that people who die are reincarnated in new bodies, that people can exist without physical bodies, that people can carry information from one life to the next, that they forget everthing from their former lives, that the effects of trauma are preserved through the reincanation process, that most psychological problems are caused by traumatic events and that present psychological problems aren't explainable by events in this life. If we just assume all these things, then we can see that past-life trauma is a perfectly good explanation of present psychological problems.   (Answer)

I. Davin. I don't know why you keep telling me I need Fnorbert in my life. I've lived without Fnorbert for 20 years and I'm doing just fine.
Alexandrea. I will prove that you need Fnorbert in your life. To think a man can live without Fnorbert (creator of the universe) is like thinking a man's left hand can live and thrive away from the rest of his body. (Answer)

J. Sully. I once lived in an apartment next to a long-term gay couple. They'd lived together so long that everyone in the building referred to them as "the old married couple." I got to know them pretty well, and let me tell you, they acted just like a married couple in every way possible. Among other things, they were mutally supportive, shared household chores, did everything together and spent long hours complaining about each other's families. As far as I'm concerned, they were married in every sense but the legal one.
Ivana. Well, maybe they seemed to act like married people, but they weren't married in any real sense because, if you look in any dictionary, the definition of "marriage" always includes the stipulation that it's a union between a man and a woman, so two men can't be married. (Answer)

K.Massacre. One of the things that intrigues people about Mormonism is that it gives a very different picture of Jesus from the other Christian churches. Many people have said to me after a long discussion something like "wow, you folks have a whole different Jesus than I'm used to."
Woococ. If anyone needs further evidence that Mormonism is not a Christian religion, they only have to listen to Massacre's admission that their "Jesus" is wholly different from the Jesus of Christianity. (Answer)

L. Antoinette. I think that tribal ties were very important to the people of 19th-century India. For instance, the 2nd Bengal Light Cavalry refused to charge a party of Afghan horseman in the first Afghan war. The 2nd Bengal Light Cavalry was raised from people of Afghan descent living near Lucknow, and it seems reasonable to think that they refused because they didn't want to charge fellow Afghans.
Mandy. But we have a better explanation! We can explain their behavior perfectly well if we just assume that they were all cowards.  (Answer)
 
M. Luciano. I don't know how you can seriously claim that the Soviet Union was not actively pursuing territorial expansion during the Cold War. Have you forgotten their unprovoked invasion of Afghanistan, a country that was outside the Iron Curtain at that time? The only thing that distinguished Afghanistan from other countries on their border was that Afghanistan was vulnerable. They saw that vulnerability, and they pounced.
Kaela. But aren't you forgetting that the government of Afghanistan was about to fall to a bunch of religious terrorists that had only gotten to be a serious threat because the Jimmy Carter administration had been arming them for the last six months? Given that Zbigniew Brzezinski had armed these people with the specific intention of sucking in the Soviet Union, you can hardly claim that the invasion was unprovoked. (Hint)
 
N. Tricia. It looks like the disappearance of that activist, Tessa Veracity, is a mystery that will never be solved. The people who snatched her off the street might have been fellow anti-government activists, or they might have been petty criminals. We will never know.
Hayden. Well, there is the fact that witnesses to the abduction got a license plate number from the white Ford SUV that was used. And that a white Ford SUV with that number was seen in a police parking lot 3 days later. If you add in the fact that neither activists nor petty criminals had any reason to abduct her, then I think it's pretty clear who actually kidnapped her.  (Answer)
 
O. Jacqueline. You're just fooling yourself if you think that the homosexual agenda does not include creating a society where heterosexuality is considered abnormal! Look at this questionnaire circulated by homosexuals. It includes questions like "do you think you could learn not to be heterosexual?" And "do you think you are justified in following a heterosexual lifestyle when that lifestyle is offensive to other members of society?" Obviously, the agenda here is to make heterosexuality abnormal and homosexuality the normal and desirable.
Dwight. Or perhaps the agenda here could be to have a laugh at the expense of people like you.  (Answer)
 
P. Bernardo. I think it is obvious that elementary schools are not conducting enough math drills. Elementary school teachers should devote more time to taking authority in the classroom, publicly exposing students who fail at math, and making students take tests with strict deadlines. It has to be the case that teachers aren't doing enough of this, otherwise students would be doing much better at math in middle and high school.
Darin. Well, in my school district students do do much better at math in middle and high school, and my elementary school teachers don't do any of what you said. Instead, they keep lecture to a minimum, conduct student-directed classes, and emphasize discussion instead of testing. (Answer)
 
Q. Fidel. I think that it is obvious that expanding human population is the cause of desertification. It stands to reason that whenever an increased human population puts more stress on a piece of land it will likely turn into a desert, and whenever people leave a piece of land, that will take the pressure off, and the land will bloom again.
Hazel. But then how do you explain the desertification of hillside terraces in Yemen, which happened after the population radically decreased in that area? And how do you explain the fact that the Kano area in Nigeria supports enormous numbers of people without turning the area into a desert?  (Answer)
 
R. Nikita. It is staggering to contemplate the degree to which an idea can dominate the thinking of any individual. King Charles of England could have ruled England peacefully if he had just accepted that he had to share power with Parliament. But because he believed in the divine right of kings, he could not accept power sharing. For instance, he only allowed Parliament to meet when he needed money, and in 1642 he took 300 soldiers to Parliament to arrest his five biggest critics. Since almost no one in England believed in the divine right of kings, this action was the final spark that started the English Civil War, which was a disaster for Charles.
Skylar. It's more likely that Charles was merely an opportunist who pretended to believe in the divine right of kings to fool people into unquestioning obedience. If he could get the common people, including those who had votes, to believe that he had god's mandate to rule England, then they would support him without question. So he pretended to believe in the divine right of kings because it was in his interest to do so.  (Answer)

S. Inuit: Here we see a concrete relic of the Russian fur-trader's oppression of the Native People of Alaska. This kayak was made with three seats. Stories handed down by the survivors tell how the Russians enslaved the Aleuts and then brutally conquered the Eskimos. They also tell how Kayaks were built like this so that the middle seat could be occupied by a Russian who would carry a rifle to force the two Eskimos in the other seats to keep hunting for many, many hours.
Tourist: That can't be right, because the Russian culture values freedom, and so Russian fur traders wouldn't do something like that. (Answer)

Homework 7. Identify the weaker argument in each dialog and describe the problem with that argument. Make sure you include all necessary details. You can do this exercise on your own lined paper, (if it doesn't have curly edges from ripping it out of a spiral notebook), or you can use Homework 7 Answer Sheet 1. Annabelle. I really don't see any reason to assume that Saddam Hussein and Al Queda were not allies before the Iraq invasion. In fact, I think that they were working closely together! Octavio. But what about the fact that Al Qaeda is a group of religious extremists sworn to destroy secular governments like Hussein's and the fact that Hussein vigorously persecuted Islamicists like Al Qaeda whenever he could reach them? 2. Lamont. Scientists are still baffled by the precise cause of lightning. They've been observing thunderstorms and lightning discharges for decades, and they still can't come up with a plausible physical process that fully accounts for all the features of lightning. Graciela. They can't be very good scientists, because obviously lightning happens because electricity in the thunderclouds suddenly jumps down to the ground. 3. Robyn. It's simply not true that there is no evidence connecting Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. Yes, the story of the meeting in Vienna has been decisively discredited, but the fact remains that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a common enemy in the United States! Cedric. Um, isn't it possible that Saddam and Al became enemies of the United States for independent and totally unrelated reasons? 4. Frankie. I can't believe that people think that chimps can learn sign language. It's obvious that all this "language use" is just chimps imitating the dumb humans who keep trying to teach them sign language. Jalyn. Hey, those chimps have conversations with those humans, and they use sign language to give information, answer questions, and ask for things!

Possible Quiz Questions (This ain't homework! Memorize the answers for next class, cuz there will be a quiz.)
i  What are the questions we should ask when evaluating an explanation argument?
ii Explain how explanation arguments are supposed to work.
iii  Explain "empty explanation."
iv Explain "suppressed evidence."
v  Explain "false choice."
vi How do counter examples function as explanation arguments?
vii Why is abusive ad hominem a form of explanation argument?
viii What kind of argument is mounted by offering an alternative explanation?
ix How do alternative explanations defeat explanation arguments?

Copyright © 2006 by Martin C. Young

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