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False fallacy accusations as fallacies themselves
Relevance is the issue of whether or not the truth
or falsity of a premise has anything to do with the truth or falsity of
a conclusion. If a particular premise is irrelevant to the
truth or falsity of a conclusion, then that premise might as well not
be in the argument. If the other premises, by themselves, are not enough
to make the conclusion true, then the argument is no good. Relevance
fallacies are common mistakes in reasoning in which some fool makes a
big deal about something that doesn't really matter.
Relevance is one of the most basic concepts in logic. The rest of this
course will be taken up with discussing various ways of determining
whether or not some set of premises is relevant to the conclusion being
offered. Often, relevance is very, very hard to determine. Sometimes,
however, it's easy to determine. Sometimes an arguer will attempt to
convince us by saying something which has nothing to do with whether or
not his claim is true. If we aren't even remotely impressed, then it's
just a silly argument. However, if it looks like it makes the
conclusion more plausible, or makes us want to believe the
conclusion, then it's a fallacy of relevance.
Red Herring
"Red herring" is the fallacy of distracting the reader's attention away
from the important facts of an issue by mentioning something that is
true, and which attracts attention, but which actually has no logical
connection to the issue.
Maverick. James Beard provides statistical and documentary
evidence showing that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention
created a constitution that protected the interests of America's
ruling class.
April. But
that's silly, because we know that none of those delegates
personally profited from the new constitution in any significant
way.
If the facts given in this dialog are correct, then the convention did
create a constitution that favored the ruling class. As a general rule,
that's what constitutions do. After all, who makes those things up in
the first place? On the other hand, everyone in America makes a big
hoo-hah about America's constitution being different so, since I don't
want to get beat up, I'm going to say that Maverick has to come up with
some proof here and that, if he can't, then we maybe can assume that
America's constitution doesn't play favorites. If this Beard guy really
did come up with statistical and documentary evidence, then that would
be just the proof Maverick needs. April comes back with the fact that
the delegates, the rich white guys who wrote the constitution, didn't
personally make any kind of profit on the deal. This is what they call a
"red herring," because it's irrelevant to the issue. Securing an
advantage for one's class doesn't imply that one is after any
kind of personal profit. Heck, it doesn't even require an
explicit intention to favor one's class. They could have set
the constitution up to favor the ruling class simply because they didn't
understand that other people's needs are different. (They could even
have all intended to make a profit, but, for various reasons,
simply been unable to capitalize on the new constitution.)
The Role of Emotion in Argument
I have heard it said that any argument that appeals to emotion is
fallacious, but the people who say this are all morons. All human
motivations, and hence all arguments used by humans are fundamentally
based on emotion at their deepest level. So some appeals to emotion are
perfectly legitimate, like the following two arguments.
The Armenian genocide imposed
great suffering on innocent people.
The Armenian genocide was a horrible thing.
The people who comitted the Armenian genocide unjustifiably imposed
great suffering on innocent people.
The Armenian genocide was morally wrong.
Candidate principles
1. Anything that imposes great suffering on innocent people is a
horrible thing.
2. Anything that unjustifiably imposes great suffering on innocent
people is morally wrong.
An emotionally healthy person who studied the Armenian genocide would
respond to the facts of that event with such emotions as pity, horror,
anger and so on. And the verbalization of these emotions would be
logically legitimate expressions of judgments flowing out from the facts
of that event. If you regard judgements of moral wrongness as at least
partly emotional judgements, then the same logic applies. To claim
that those judgments were not logically legitimate merely
because they were based on emotion would be to erroneously discount the
important role emotions play in our lives. Feelings that are appropriate
to events are always legitimate. An emotion could only be logically
illegitimate if it was inappropriate to the facts of the
event. In fact, people who avoid making emotional judgments by offering
specious excuses ("it's a long way away," "times were different then,"
"their holy book said they could do it") or avoiding the facts entirely
("I'm sick of hearing about it," "if I thought about those things I'd go
crazy") are engaging in self-deception, which is certainly not logically
legitimate. This is not to say that all appeals to emotion are
legitimate. Here's an example.
You keep talking about this so-called "Armenian Genocide," telling me
stories of people doing horrible, horrible things to these Armenians.
Well those atrocities are just too horrible to contemplate, so obviously
this "Armenian Genocide" thing couldn't have happened.
Candidate principle: "If something is too horrible for me to
contemplate, then it didn't happen."
Fundamentally, anyone who accepts or rejects factual claims
primarily on the basis of how those claims make him feel is
being irrational. Anyone who tries to get you to accept a factual claim
on the basis of your feelings about that claim is committing what I call
a "manipulation" fallacy.
Manipulation
Manipulation fallacies happen when someone tries to get us to
believe something based on whether or not we (or they) want it
to be true. This is a very common and insidious kind of fallacy, since
it relies on the widespread and often very powerful tendency for people
to deceive themselves in order to gain good feelings or to avoid
bad ones. So watch out for this one. (Mob appeal is a version of
this fallacy in which the speaker tries to manipulate a lot of
people all at once. Otherwise known as political speechmaking.)
Look, neither of us likes George. Well, he believes that fallen knights
in armor could get up on their own, so if we believe that their
armor was too heavy that will really annoy him! So knights' armor was
too heavy to get up in!
Thinking of John James Audubon as a preservationist makes me feel all
warm and fuzzy, so he was a preservationist
Don't you think that our leader is basically trying to do the right
thing? (Translated from the German.)
Your cousin would be devastated if you proved to him that birds aren't
really stupid. So birds are all stupid, and that's it
Candidate principles (you match the principle to the argument.)
1. If a fact would hurt someone's feelings, then that fact isn't true.
2. If believing a claim makes you feel good, then that claim is true.
3. If a claim would annoy someone you don't like, then that claim is
true.
4. If disagreeing with someone would hurt his feelings, then what he
says is true.
A common version of this fallacy is the "our boys are over there!"
comment that is often yelled at people who object to some war or other.
For instance, imagine that some Iraqis objected to the 1991 invasion of
Kuwait on the grounds that Kuwait hadn't done anything to Iraq. Further
imagine that these Iraqis gather outside an upscale casbah and wave
crudely lettered signs at passing motorists. Finally, imagine that an
Iraqi woman in a SUC (Sports Utility Camel) screams "our boys are over
there" at the protestors. Her argument could be standardized as.
(Iraqis have an obligation to
support Iraqi soldiers who are willing to risk their lives to preserve
the health and safety of Iraqi civilians.)
Iraqi troops are invading Kuwait.
(Waving anti-war signs amounts to not
supporting the troops as they invade Kuwait.)
(Iraqi people should not object to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.)
Notice that each of the three premises given here was true at the
time of the Kuwait invasion. But that doesn't matter, because the mere
fact that the troops are in a foreign country risking their lives by
fighting that country's soldiers does not, by itself, justify
going to that country and fighting that country's soldiers. This
argument is analogous to.
Mafia hit-men risk their lives trying
to assasinate innocent witnesses protected by the US government.
Hit-men's families have an obligation to support family
members who risk their lives for the good of the family.
Hit-men's families have an obligation to support the
assasination of innocent witnesses protected by the US
government.
And anyone who argues that you should not question some
course of action because that course of action is placing
people in danger is commiting the same fallacy.
Here's a more complicated example
Keshawn. I really don't think that our leaders presented
anything like a compelling case for invading that country. In fact,
all the available evidence contradicts our leader's story in every
respect.
Maritza.
You're deliberately suppressing some very important evidence.
Brave young men and women in our armed forces died in the
invasion, many more died in the occupation that followed. Everyone
of those casualties has left behind parents, or a spouse, or
someone else to mourn them. Those poor bereaved relatives would be
absolutely devastated if they heard you say that those who died,
died for a lie. Just think about how you would feel if your son
lost his life serving his country and I turned around and said,
"oh and by the way, your kid died for nothing."
Keshawn. Of course I sympathize with the people who
lost family members in the invasion, but that still doesn't mean
that Chancellor Hitler should have ordered the invasion of Poland.
Maitza accuses Keshawn of suppressing evidence, so let's look at that
first. She's saying two things: that those Germans who lost family
members in the invasion of Poland (in 1939) would be emotionally
devastated if they heard that the invasion wasn't justified, and that
the likelihood of this emotional devastation is relevant to the issue of
whether or not that invasion was justified. Lets assume that those
Germans would be devastated if they were told the invasion
wasn't justified. Is that relevant to the basic issue here? Think about
the general rule that would have to be true if it was relevant. This
would mean that everytime it would hurt someone to hear that an action
was unjustified, that action is in fact justified. So a Mafia killer
would only be committing justified homicides if it was the
case that his mother would be hurt to hear that he was a murderer.
Killings by those with no loved ones, or whose loved ones don't care,
wouldn't be justified by this rule. Does this make sense? Of course not.
So Maritza isn't bringing in evidence that Keshawn has ignored. What is
she doing? Well, remember your emotions when you read about how those
poor people would feel to find out their Blitzkriegin' relatives died
for Nazi imperialism. That feeling was what Maritza was going
for. She's trying to get you to agree with her based on how you feel
about the alternative. That's the fallacy of manipulation.
Scare Tactics
A common form of manipulation is to get people scared of something.
1. Isaias. You know, you'd better start believing in
Fnorbert.
Joaquin. Not that again! You still haven't given me any
credible reason to believe in Fnorbert.
Isaias. Here's your reason. Fnorbert punishes
unbelievers very harshly
Joaquin. So if he exists, and I don't believe,
eventually he'll hurt me very badly?
Isaias. Exactly. You've got it now!
Joaquin. But you still haven't given me any reason to
believe he exists, so I don't think he does.
Isaias. You'll change your tune when Fnorbert is
torturing you!
Politicians scare us to win votes, and media moguls scare us to get us
to pay attention to them so we'll be exposed to their advertisers. The
best commentary I ever saw on the ability of media scares to get people
to act irrationally was the South Park episode on child abduction. All
hail South Park!
Here's a more complicated example: Steve Fuller,
who works as a philosophy professor, appeared in the 2008 film
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which he told interviewer Ben
Stein that "Darwinism" leads to abortion and euthanasia. He said "If
you take seriously that evolution has to do with the transition of
life forms, and that life and death are just natural processes, then
one gets to be liberal about abortion and euthanasia. All of those
kinds of ideas seem to me follow very naturally from a Darwinian
perspective-- a deprivileging of human beings, basically. And I think
people who want to endorse Darwinism have to take this kind of
viewpoint very seriously."
If we take this as an argument against Evolution Through Natural
Selection, then it commits scare tactics (among other fallacies.)
The film "Expelled," was explicitly a defense of the claim that
Intelligent Design should be taught in science classes as a scientific
theory competing with Evolution Through Natural Selection. Fuller was
present as a supporter of this claim, and he was speaking in that
context. His argument is basically that if people understand that
Evolution Through Natural Selection is an established scientific
theory (what nonscientists would call a scientific "fact") like the
existance of the solar system or the periodic table, they would later
come to have attitudes that Fuller does not want them to have. This is
analogous to arguing that bad things would happen if people believed
X, so we should make sure people don't believe X, whether or not X is
true. If Fuller is arguing that Intelligent Design should be taught as
science because doing so with have good consequences, that is very
different from arguing that
Ad Baculum
A special case of this is when you try to persuade someone by making
her afraid of you or your friends. This is called "ad baculum" from
the latin for "stick"
Micaela. Studies have shown that lack of decent
paying work is one of the most damaging conditions that people can
find themselves in. Having a decent paying job makes all the
difference in terms of individual self-esteem, family stability and
even crime prevention. Access to living wage jobs is so important that
the government should intervene to make the economy produce as many
living-wage jobs as needed.
Freddy. What kind of talk is that? You'd better give
up that idea that people have a right to decent paying jobs. That
sounds like socialism, and you know what we do to socialists around
here!
Ad Nauseum
Closely related to manipulation is the fallacy ad nauseum, in which a
claim is repeated so frequently and by so many people that the public
gets used to hearing it and begins to take it as "common knowledge."
Josef Goebbels was a master of this tactic, and in recent times it is
responsible for such myths as the belief that Al Gore said that he
invented the internet, and so on. Of course, the number of times someone
repeats a claim has nothing to do with whether or not a claim is true.
Genetic Fallacy
The genetic fallacy, (another relevance
fallacy), occurs when someone confuses the origin of something
with its nature. It uses the candidate principle "If a present
activity originated from some past activity, all things that were true
of that past activity will be true of this present activity." For
instance.
Astrology came from mythology. All
the original ideas of astrology were originally based on old ideas
about the ancient Gods of Greece and Rome that astrologers associated
with the planets. So obviously astrology must be false.
Why is this a bad argument? It's bad because there's no way to
guarantee that things will continue to go on the same way they started.
If you still think that astrology must be false because it came
from mythology, consider the following.
Astronomy came from astrology.
The original ideas of astronomy were based on ideas about the
ancient Gods that astrologers associated with the planets.
So obviously astronomy must be false.
Since it's a fact that astronomy got it's start from astrology,
and hence from mythology, any claim that astrology's start with
mythogy invalidates it would also imply that astronomy
was invalid.
Here's another example.
The Mafia was founded as an
organization of freedom fighters.
The name "Mafia" is an Italian acronym for something like "Freedom
and Independance for Italy."
The Mafia is not a criminal organization.
Another way to state the candidate principle for the genetic fallacy is
to say "the way something started out is the way it will always be."
Straw Man
An arguer commits the straw man fallacy when she pretends to
refute someone else's argument by holding up a different
argument and refuting that other argument instead of the real
one.
Example. Those anti-war protestors
say American military intervention is bad because our soldiers love to
hurt people. That's ridiculous! Everyone knows we hate doing the
terrible things we have to do.
Here the arguer misrepresents the other side in two distinct ways.
First, he ignores the fact that, while many protestors are
pacifists, the majority of anti-war protestors generally protest
specific wars. They're not necessarily opposed to American
military intervention in principle, just in cases where they
believe it to be unjustified. Second, he invents an imaginary premise,
"American military intervention is bad because our soldiers love to hurt
people," that he falsely represents as the main premise of the
anti-war argument. Thus he represents the main anti-war argument as
American soldiers love to hurt
people.
All American military intervention is bad.
Where it should be something like.
Country X is not threatening it's
neighbors.
Country X is not abusing the people in its power nearly as much
as other countries that the US supports.
Country X is not threatening the US.
American military intervention against country X is wrong.
As you can see, the first version is far easier to refute than the
second.
Example. Those feminists and civil
rights people should just shut up. Why should we give special rights
to women and minorities?
Here the arguer writes as if the feminist/civil rights argument is.
Women, people of color and
homosexuals want rights that other people don't have.
Women, people of color
and homosexuals should have rights that other people don't
have.
When the real argument is more like.
It is immoral to give opportunities
and decent treatment to some groups but not others
There is no morally relevant reason to withhold opportunities and
decent treatment from women, people of color and homosexuals.
Women, people of color and homosexuals aren't given some of the
opportunities and decent treatment that other people get
routinely.
Women, people of color and homosexuals have a right to the
same opportunities and decent treatment that other people
have.
Again, the first argument is easy to refute, but the second is much
harder.
As you might guess, this is a very popular fallacy, particularly with
politicians and political commentators of all kinds. One of the reasons
I don't listen to AM radio is I get tired of hearing this fallacy used
over and over and over again. It's an easy fallacy to commit.
No-one wants to take the time to understand an argument he thinks is
wrong, so people often simply misunderstand the other side's position.
But if you don't understand the other side's position, you can't
possibly refute it. Committing the straw man fallacy is like knocking
down a picture of Arnold Schwartzenegger and then claiming you've
defeated the real Arnold! It doesn't work.
Finally, consider the following exchange.
Elmer. William
Shirer has produced documentary evidence that the German High
Command invaded Poland to get land for people of their own
nationality.
Vivian. But that's silly, because we
know that no members of the German High Command got land in Poland.
Vivian thinks that she has refuted Urg's argument by showing that the
people he mentions did not profit in the way he mentions. But did Urg
say that any members of the German High Command got land in Poland? Did
he say that they were trying to get land for themselves? Vivian speaks
as though Urg's argument is.
Members of the German High Command
got land in Poland.
The German High Command
invaded Poland to get land for people of their own nationality.
or perhaps
Members of the German High Command
got land in Poland.
The German High Command
invaded Poland to get land for themselves.
(which can both be easily refuted by pointing out that the premise isn't
true), when in fact Urg's argument is.
There is documentary evidence that
the German High Command invaded Poland to get land for people of
their own nationality.
The German High Command
invaded Poland to get land for people of their own nationality.
Which cannot be refuted by what Vivian says.
Language Fallacies
Some words have more than one meaning. Sentences that use such words
thus will also have more than one possible meaning. Sentences can also
be phrased in ways that their grammatical structure makes them capable
of having more than one meaning. (Such words and such sentences are
sometimes called "ambiguous.") Ambiguous sentences thus can be taken
more than one way. A sentence that is perfectly true when taken one way
can be ludicrously false when taken another way. An arguer who relies on
the false interpretation of an otherwise true sentence commits
what is called a "language fallacy." (Language fallacies are really
their own little group, but they turn out to be comparatively
unimportant, so I'm covering them, well, two of them, under relevance.)
Equivocation
Equivocation, which is the most common language fallacy, is what happens
when an argument uses a word in two or more different senses, but treats
those different senses as though they were the same. Another way to look
at it is to say equivocation occurs when different premises use
different meanings of the same word, but the arguer treats them as
though they were the same meaning. Here is an example.
God is love.
Love is
blind.
Ray
Charles is blind.
Ray Charles
is god.
What is the candidate principle here? Well, maybe it is something like
"words that sound the same must always mean the same thing," which, of
course, we know is not true.
Equivocal arguments can often be exposed merely by paraphrasining them.
Grinding away any vestige of humor that might cling to this argument, I
will standardize it again.
The Christian god is conceived of as having nothing
but love in its nature.
A person in
love is often unable to notice the faults of his or her beloved.
Ray
Charles lacks the power of vision.
Ray Charles
is the Christian god.
As well as no longer being funny, this argument no longer even has the
appearance of making logical sense. Here's a harder example.
Madyson. In
science, no theory is ever accepted unless it has stood up to
rigorous testing. Whenever a theory is being seriously considered,
dozens of brilliant scientists devote a lot of energy to trying to
find genuine logical or observational problems with it.
Mainly, they figure out all the things that the theory predicts, and
the carry out experiments to see if those predictions don't turn out
wrong. Only when we find ourselves with a theory that the best
efforts of our best minds are unable to prove wrong we start to say
that the theory is probably "true," or that something is a
scientific "fact." The opposite applies in politics and popular
literature. People come up with ideas they like a lot, and simply avoid
testing them. Instead of honestly looking for logical flaws and
counterexamples, non-scientific writers spend their efforts on
finding ways to deride their opponants and making excuses for the
problems with their own views. This stands in stark contrast to
science, where scientists generally tend to revise or abandon
theories in light of contradictory data. This is why, although
science can never give absolute certainty, it gives us what might be
called "reasonable certainty," which is a confidence that our
accepted theories are far, far, far more likely to be right than any
of their competitors. This is why scientifically based claims are
enormously more reliable than claims made on any other basis.
Janae. And of course, this is
where religion has the edge over science. My faith in Vuntag gives
me absolute certainty that he exists, and that his word is the
absolute truth. This is how I know absolutely that left-handed
people are evil, that underwear should be pink, that
pleasant-tasting food is an abomination, that people like you should
be shouted into silence, that everyone should watch all of Steven
Segal's movies, no matter how peurile and wankathonic they are,
drunkenness is holy, that no-one should wear hats, that we should
all fear monkeys, that I do a holy thing by wearing this honey in my
ears, that it is good to whisper during overtures, that cigarette
smoking is a sacrament, that it is evil to have a sense of humor,
and that the smiley-face tattoos all over my body make me a much
better person than you!
The fact that science doesn't give absolute certainty is certainly
relevant to the issue of whether or not science is our most reliable
source of positive information about the world. (Deductive logic can
give certainty, but it can only prove negative claims, such as "no
bachelors are married" and "squircles do not exist.") But Madyson is
using the term "certain" in the sense of "rationally proved," so that
"absolute certainty" in her speech means "rationally proved beyond even
the slightest shadow of doubt," while Janae uses it in the sense of "feels
strongly," so that "absolute certainty" in her speech means "an infinite
unwillingness to entertain any shadow of doubt," which is a very, very,
very different thing. Janae tries to imply that her feelings
about the existance of Vuntag give her a rational reasons to
believe that are superior to those that can be offered by science. In
fact, were we to apply scientific standards to her claim for the
existance of Vuntag, we would find that Vuntag is very, very, very,
very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,
VERY unlikely to exist.
Further reading on fallacies: Love
is A Fallacy, by Max Shulman I don't guarantee that the
terminology is correct, but the story is funny.
Exercises
Here are some exercises with links. You can click on the link. It might
lead to something helpful. Or it might not.
A. Ebony. I don't think the
goverment should divulge information about the security measures that
are being taken to protect American citizens abroad. giving out that
kind of information would make those measures less effective, wouldn't
it?
Dayton. The government is obligated to serve the
public interest. There is a great deal of public interest in the
details of those security measures. So it is obvious that the
government is obligated to make full disclosure of these security
measures to any member of the public who is interested. (Answer)
B. Maverick. James Beard provides statistical and documentary
evidence showing that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention
created a constitution that protected the interests of America's
ruling class.
April. But that's silly, because we know that none of those
delegates personally profited from the new constitution in any
significant way. (Answer)
C. Ezequiel. That Morticia de Ath is a bloody
murderer! You know she picked up a loaded gun at that gun show and
just blasted away at random people, killing seven of them.
Kelli. She's not a murderer. "Murder" is defined in the
dictionary as unjustifiably killing a person with malice aforethought.
Morticia de Ath acted completely without malice, and she certainly
didn't have any forethought of any kind, so what she did couldn't
possibly be murder. (Answer)
D. Drew. The practice of making clothes from animal products
involves unimaginable cruelty towards the animals involved. This is
deeply immoral, and so we should abandon this practice.
Angela. Drew's argument is completely irrelevant to the issue,
because the making of clothes from animal skins is mentioned in the
Bible, it has been practiced since the beginning of time, and was in
fact practiced by God himself. (Answer)
E. Kolby. I don't think there can be life on the
moons of Jupiter. Our biological theories state that life needs free
water and a certain amount of energy. The moons of Jupiter don't
appear to have free water, and they have nowhere near enough energy.
No free water, no energy, no life. It's that simple.
Cyrus. Well, I happen to know that you once cheated on your
wife. And you cheated on your taxes. And you once teased an innocent
puppy! A person like you is no good, and you certainly haven't proved
there's no life on the moons of Jupiter. (Answer)
F. Rene. When I think of my body, I think of
something that has bulk, but which does not think. When I think of my
mind, I think of something that thinks, but which cannot have bulk.
From this we can plainly see that the mind and body are completely
seperate and have absolutely no properties in common!
Thalia. Well, when I think of the body, I think of it
containing an organ that thinks, thereby making the mind. When the
body dies, the mind stops and ceases to exist, so the mind and body
are not seperate at all. (Answer)
G. Trevor. The animals who are slaughtered for their skins
endure horrible conditions in their factory farms. They are
overcrowded, deprived of air and sunlight, branded, de-horned,
de-tailed and castrated, all without anesthesia. And at the end of
their suffering, they are stunned, skinned alive and hung upside down
to bleed to death. Help stop this horror by refusing to purchase
clothing made from animal products.
Chris. Trevor 's argument depends on nothing else than an
attempt to evoke feelings of horror, pity and disgust, and so it is
nothing but a naked appeal to emotion. Emotions are irrelevant to
logic, and so Trevor's argument is irrelevant to this issue. (Answer)
H. Kirstin. I think that we should rethink our blanket
opposition to the presence of artificial pesticides in foods. There's
no functional difference between an artificial pesticide produced by
man and a natural pesticide produced by a plant. And the amount of
natural pesticides in any given piece of plant matter is usually much
much greater than the amount of artificial pesticide. So if we
eliminate all artificial pesticides from our food we will only do away
with a small fraction of the pesticides we eat. Therefore, worrying
about artificial pesticides is a waste of time, and complaining about
them will only make natural foods more expensive.
Leanne. What are you, crazy? Pesticides are dangerous! They
kill insects and small animals because they are basically poisons. It
doesn't make sense to keep eating a poison with every meal, so we have
to eliminate pesticides as soon as possible. (Hint)
I. Sheridan: The Republican Party supports numerous policies
that negatively impact black people. They promote welfare rules that
make it virtually impossible for people of any color to get off
welfare, and a disproportionate number of black people are stuck in
depressed areas and so have to go on welfare. They support drug laws
that have higher penalties for the drugs favored by black drug
users. Most importantly, they have consistently supported the
inequities in the legal system that allow those police and court
officials who are racist to pursue racist policies without let or
hinderance. All-in-all, I can only conclude that the Republican Party,
despite it's protestations to the contrary, is basically an anti-black
party.
Heath: But don't you remember that the Republican Party was
founded in part as an anti-slavery party? Since all the slaves were
black, and opposing slavery carried enormous dangers back then, it
follows that the Republican party cannot be an anti-black party. (Answer)
1. Jumbo.
You strike me as a sensible person. And I know that you do not think
that your life is meaningless. So surely it would be easy for you to
realize that the meaningfulness of your life proves that Fnorbert
exists. Your life could only have meaning if it was part of Fnorbert's
great eternal plan, so the fact that your life does have meaning
proves that Fnorbert exists.
Fanta. But my life has meaning only because I, and
the people I care about, have plans and desires for what we do with
our lives. As you describe it, Fnorbert's great eternal plan is for me
to do totally different things with my life, and to totally change the
way I treat the people I care about. This would absolutely destroy all
the actual meaning in my life, as well as being a great waste of time
and effort. So, if anything, the fact that I have meaning in my life
proves that either Fnorbert doesn't exist, or he is totally
irrelevant.
2. Jeffrey: I just heard some disturbing news about
psychoanalysis. It seems that Freud based all his conclusions on
anecdotal evidence that he interpreted himself. He did not entertain a
null hypothesis, and he did not check his theories with experiments.
In fact, we have no evidence to support Freud's theories, there's no
scientific evidence that psychoanalysis works, and all the evidence we
do have implies that he's wrong. Clara: There are
thousands of Freudian therapists working today, and they have seen
millions of clients. Those clients went to those psychoanalysts in the
full expectation that they would receive effective treatment. Over a
typical course of treatment, a patient has dozens of sessions at about
a hundred dollars per session. That adds up to thousands of dollars
spent per patient on the assumption that the treatment will be
effective. But if Freud's wrong, all that money, and all the time
spent in treatment, are completely wasted! Just think about what a
terrible thing it would be if all those people were wasting all that
time and money, and you'll see that Freud had to be right!
3. Mohamed. I've decided to go into a career in
chemistry. I enjoy working in a lab, and I hear that chemists can make
a lot of money.
Jordon. Modern chemistry is a discipline that is in
serious trouble. It has been conclusively proved that chemistry
historically developed out of alchemy, the futile search for the
"philosopher's stone" that would turn lead to gold and confer
immortality. So chemistry is futile, since it developed from something
futile.
4.Brennen. There's been a lot of talk about the
Hollywood Blacklist. "Blacklisting was when someone was accused of
being a communist or "fellow traveller," which meant that no-one would
hire them, and so they couldn't work. Very many very credible people
reported that they or others were blacklisted in Hollywood, and any
time a person's name was published in Red Channels, that person's
career came to an abrupt halt. A lot of people have reported that they
or people they knew were blacklisted in Hollywood, so I think there
really was a Hollywood Blacklist.
Aimee. Has anyone ever come up with a copy of this
list? No, no-one has ever come up with even a single copy of this
“Hollywood Blacklist .“ There was never a complete, written-out list
of banned people, so there was never a blacklist.
5. 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 say to me after a long
discussion something like "wow, you folks have a whole different Jesus
than I'm used to." This shows that Mormonism might have something
valuable to say to the other Christian churches.
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.
6. Sasha. I think that that so-called "Saint"
Augustine was a rotten son-of-a-bitch. Did you know that he once sent
soldiers into a bunch of Christian churches to force people out of
their own chosen faith and into his church. That's religious
persecution, plain and simple, and I don't think people should be
taught to venerate a person like that.
Jarred. What you have to understand is that, like any
priest, he had an obligation to spread the word of his faith, and
that's what he was doing when he sent troops in to force people out of
their chosen faith at spearpoint. You can't fault a preacher for
trying to spread his faith, can you? Of course not, because that would
be denying him his freedom of speech. So you can surely see that we
can't condemn Augustine for this, because that would be condemning him
for exercising his freedom of speech.
Practice for Quiz
Do these questions closed book, and then test yourself by looking up the
answers in this chapter. Repeat until you can answer every question
correctly off the top of your head.
1. Is the fact that something would be a tragedy if it was
true relevant to the issue of whether or not it is true?
2. Is the fact that a rule doesn't work for every case where
it applies relevant to the issue of whether or not it works in the case
where I want it to work?
3. Is the fact that you can't imagine how something could have
happened naturally relevant to the issue of whether or not it could
have happened naturally?
4. Is the fact that you can make an action sound like it was
okay relevant to the issue of whether or not it really was
okay?
5. Is the fact that people naturally tend to feel a certain way about a
particular event relevant to the issue of whether or not that event
really happened?
6. Is the fact that people naturally tend to feel a certain
way about a particular event relevant to the issue of whether that event
was a good or bad thing?
7. Is the fact that a certain word has two or more different meanings
relevant to figuring out if that word has been used correctly in an
argument?
8. Is the fact that you think that what you're doing will
achieve a particular effect relevant to figuring out whether or not it will
have that particular effect?
9. Is the fact that you can describe the situation as
containing only two choices relevant to figuring out whether or not it
really does have only two choices?
10. Is the fact that you can't imagine how something could
have been done by people relevant to figuring out whether or not it
really could be done by people?
11. Is the fact that you can hurt people who believe a certain thing
relevant to figuring out whether or not we have a rational reason not to
believe that thing?
12. Can a logically compelling argument be based on an inappropriate
description of a person, action, or event?
If you're still not confident, you can also use critical10pretest.rtf.
Copyright © 2013 by Martin C. Young