Tag Archives: Logic

Just How Much Fallacy is Your To Quoque?

07 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by in Philosophy, Politics

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Judging you!!!

We all learned that two wrongs don’t make a right when we were kids, didn’t we?

And we learned that ‘you too’ arguments are a fallacy back in Freshman logic class, right?

Right?

Okay, maybe not everybody, but this is a lesson a lot of us probably have in common. Most educated people ought to know that there is something wrong with answering a criticism by saying “you do it too!” or some variation thereof. Hell, most decent people ought to know better than that regardless of their education.

So, why do we do it?

Hell, almost everybody does it on at least some occasions. To be fair, some people do it more than others. They will do it every chance they get. Others try not to, most of the time anyway. So, the penchant for answering a serious concern with a quick ‘you-too’ gambit varies from one person to another, but I don’t know that anyone avoids it entirely.

This tactic also comes and goes with the times. It’s been particularly common for the last 4 years, so much so that folks even coined a new term for it; ‘whataboutism.’ The “Your side does it too” gambit has made a regular appearance in public debate for a long time, but it’s been particularly common for the space of about one presidential administration (or an administration plus the campaign before it). So, the internet collectively coined a new term to describe it.

Okay, but why is this kind of argument so common?

One reason? It’s not always a fallacy.

Another? For some people, it really is a way of life.

Variable Relevance: The (ir-)relevance of ‘you too’ games varies in a couple of interesting ways.

If someone corrects my behavior and I respond with “you do it too?” am I really engaging in a fallacy?

Variable Conclusions: If I mean by that you-too response that I am not really wrong, because you do it too, then yes. Hell yes! If that’s what I mean, then I am absolutely engaging in the tu quoque fallacy. If, on the other hand, I mean; “Okay, I need to correct my behavior, but so should you, because you do in fact do this too,” then my response is not entirely unreasonable. I’m not denying my wrong-doing in this instance. I am just asking you to correct your own behavior right along with me.

Alternatively, I could employ a ‘you-too’ argument by of refusing to accept a rule that I have good reason to believe others are not going to follow themselves. Let’s imagine we are playing a game of soccer and you tell me I should stop touching the ball with my hands. I could then say you do it too as a means of insisting either that you stop yourself or that we are just going to continue playing an odd game of soccer in which both of us are allowed to touch the ball with our hands. In this case, I am refusing to play by unfair rules, or unfair application of those rules.

It seems that there are at least some conclusions which could be reasonably drawn from a premise beginning with an assertion that is essentially saying “you do it too.”

Plus Alternatives: There is another context in which “you too” starts to become more relevant than it would otherwise be. In this case, the tu-quoque fallacy has some company, because the False Alternatives fallacy comes in here right along with it. This is the context of constrained choices. If I tell you that apples bother my teeth, so I don’t like eating them, it would normally be quite foolish to respond by telling me that cookies have too much sugar. Whether or not cookies have too much sugar, apples still bother my teeth (always feels like I am biting into styrofoam). That does not change if cookies are bad for me. So, the cookie-themed response seems quite irrelevant.

…unless I want a snack, and I have exactly 2 options!

If my universe of possible choices includes an apple and a cookie, then problems with one might very well be a reasonable answer to my expressed concerns about the other. Someone hears me complaining about the apple, realizes I have offered it as a reason for choosing the cookie instead, and responds by reminding me of a good reason to avoid the cookie

Of course apples and cookies don’t make these arguments themselves, so if this is a concern about false alternatives, how does it relate to the tu-quoque fallacy? Well, it comes into play when the apples and cookies do make these arguments themselves, or at least when we divide ourselves up into an obviously apple camp and a clearly cookie camp.

Or maybe when we try to pick a President.

If I say that Donald Trump has been self-dealing throughout his Presidency as a means of saying he is a terrible President, it wouldn’t normally help matters to say that Hillary does it too (using the Uranium One story about her charity foundation for example). Neither would it help to raise the prospect of similar corruption on the part of the Biden family. These become relevant during elections precisely because the obvious alternative choice is understood, and so the range of viable possibilities is narrowed sufficiently to make these normally irrelevant arguments matter after all.

And here, 3rd party-proponents will have an obvious complaint of their own. What if there are better choices? What if you can point to a candidate that doesn’t have a history of self-dealing (or, more to the point, a history of having the charge of self-dealing leveled at them by political opponents)? That’s a reasonable concern and one that speaks directly to the very kind of problem that logicians are trying to call our attention to when speaking about ‘false alternatives’ and ‘tu-quoque’ fallacies. Of course, part of the concern here lies in just how viable the third parties really are and what you are trying to accomplish with your vote, both of which speak to the question of just how constrained the alternatives here really are. If a 3rd party might really win, then it would be quite illogical to respond to a criticism of one major party candidate as though it were an obvious endorsement of another. Conversely, you may know that the 3rd party is going to lose but choose to vote for them anyway as a means of signaling to the major parties that your support cannot be taken for granted. If enough others vote the same way, this could become leverage in the next election. If a 3rd party candidate is, however, not a serious contender for winning an election, and the election is just too important to risk on a symbolic statement, then we may be back in the realm of 2 real choices and dirt on one viable candidate really will have to be weighed against dirt on the other. In such cases, “your guy does it too” and “the alternative is worse” start to become relevant again.

Where your choices are constrained, criticisms of one choice can provide a meaningful response to criticisms of another, but this is still problematic. Such arguments don’t erase problems, and they don’t disprove initial claims. If you tell me, for example, that Hunter Biden was using his father’s position as Vice President under the Obama administration to make money, reminding you that the Trump family profits from his role as President (e.g. through fees paid by the Secret Service to Trump properties during his visits, use of political leverage to get Ivanka’s patents in China, or simply the profits made when foreign diplomats choose to stay at Trump properties while negotiating with him) will not prove the claims about Hunter Biden are untrue. If I want to do that, then I have to provide an argument directly debunking the claims about Hunter Biden activities. What do I get out of calling attention to similar shenanigans about Trump? I get an argument about the significance of one relative to the other. I get an argument about how each balances against the other when we assume both criticisms are of roughly equal merit. That may not be the best argument I could produce on the topic, but it would not be fallacious. It’s in this context that ‘you too’ (or at least ‘your guy too’) arguments start to make a little more sense.

One fascinating thing about this is the way that the relevance of such arguments comes and goes. I understood claims about Uranium One, debunked as they are, as a concern in the 2016 election. It was fascinating to me, however, seeing Trump fans continue bringing this up in response to criticism of his actions well into the Trump administration. I found myself saying; “well let’s impeach her too” then, by which I hoped to suggest that this was no longer a relevant means of answering concerns about Trump’s own actions. As the 2020 election heated up, concerns about Biden became a more viable means of offsetting those about Trump (at least to those who care nothing about proportion or credibility of the sources). In terms of addressing the choice at hand, it was useful for the Trump camp to have a claim about political corruption in play precisely because they knew many such claims could be held against Donald. The merits of each of these accusations are of course a debatable question, but it is certainly useful to have comparable accusations on the table.

When we were all expected to weigh Donald Trump’s character against that of another person, complaints about that other person could pass a certain test of minimal relevance to complaints about him. So, the relevance comparison to other people to criticisms of Donald Trump came and went over the course of his Presidential administration. When he was operating on his own, and the only viable question was about his own competence and integrity, they should have gone away.

Of course they didn’t.

Constraining Personalities: This brings us to one last point; some people thrive on the sort of constrained choices I am describing here. When they face an open range of possibilities, they work very hard to create the illusion of constrained choices anyway.

Yes, I have Donald Trump in mind here.

I am also writing about his many fans.

There is a reason the Trump camp was such a source of whataboutism claims throughout his Presidency. This is both a feature of the base to which he consciously pitched his politics and to personality of Donald Trump himself.

Audience: There are people who live in a world of artificially constrained choices, and you can see it their responses to a broad range if issues. Did you say Fox news got something wrong? Well then you must be watching too much MSNBC. If there is a problem with capitalism, well then why don’t you just go try China? Don’t like Christianity? You must be an atheist! Is the American healthcare system broken? Well then, let me tell you the horror stories coming out of Canada! Concerned about police brutality? You must support riots in the streets! Don’t like coke? Shut up and drink your Beer!

And so on…

(Okay, I might not be that be that serious about the coke and beer example.)

Perhaps all of us fall into this way of thinking from time to time, but some people really do seem to think in such terms on a regular basis. They live in a world of social Manichaeism, a world in which 2 rival forces contend with one another for control of the world and of our loyalties. Anything said against one can clearly be understood as support for the other, because all questions of value must be measured according to the standard of which force one wishes to align oneself with. Other options are always illusory. You are with the lord of light or you are with the lord of darkness, and if you don’t declare your loyalties openly, then that is a good reason to suspect you are on the wrong side of this conflict. In effect, such people keep making use of the false-alternatives fallacy because they actually do live in a world in which their choices are always constrained. Their assumptions about the world around them and the choices available to all of us consistently reduce all choices to a binary opposition.

Always!

Brief Technicality: I should add that the not all binary opposition are equal. What typically happens here is that people looking at contrary relationships often construe them as contradictory relationships? What is the difference? In a Contradictory relationship between two claims, they two have opposite truth values. If one is true, the other is false. If one is false, the other is true. In a contrary relationship between two claims, on the other hand, one of them must be false, but it is at least possible that both will be false.

In the case of either a contrary relationship or a contradictory relationship, you could infer the falsehood of one claim from the truth of the other, but you could only infer the truth of one claim from the falsehood of the other in the case of a contradictory relationship, not in the case of a contrary relationship.

Case in point: If I know that John is voting for Biden, I can conclude he is clearly not voting for Trump (unless he wants his ballot to be thrown out). If, on the other hand, I know he is not voting for Biden, I could not normally conclude that he is voting for Trump. He might be voting for a third party after all (and whether or not that is a good idea brings up all the points made above). So, political loyalties are not usually well modeled on the basis of a contradictory relationship. Such loyalties are contrary at best even if specific choices made on the basis of those loyalties (e.g. voting) might be framed in terms of contradictory relationships.

Another example? If you like capitalism, it’s probably safe to assume you are not in favor of communism, but could we really infer from a criticism of capitalism that you were a communist? No. You could be in favor of some alternative political economy. Old fashioned trade guilds, perhaps coupled with mercantilism, subsistence economics (as practiced in many indigenous communities), or good old Georgism (which may or may not be a form of socialism, depending on who you ask), all come to mind. (So, does rejecting the terms ‘capitalism’ or ‘communism’ outright as being to vague and sweeping.). Inferring support for one of these highly loaded terms from opposition to the other is hardly reasonable, and yet, people do it all the time.

People who should know better.

But people often treat contrary relationships as though they were contradictory, thus enabling a faulty implicature, the inference of a specific loyalty from criticism of an alternative commonly understood to be its opposite. This empowers both false alternatives and tu-quoque arguments. For some people this approach to decision making is just too gratifying to resist.

We sometimes encounter simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions, and hence make choices between contradictory values, but much of our thinking takes place in a world with a broader range of possibilities. Those locked into the mindset of Social manichaeism are constantly pushing us to think in narrower terms to begin with. If all of us are prone to miss the possibilities from time to time, then some people seem to take this as a point of principle.

Personality: Enter a living train-wreck such as Donald Trump! He thrives on constrained choices precisely because his own actions and his own statements cannot stand up to scrutiny on their own merits. Whatever the man may have been like when he was younger, he has long since accumulated a range of of bad deals, unpaid debts, and obvious lies in a personal history of chronically abusive behavior. His own credibility would never stand up to scrutiny, not from anyone making an honest effort.

So, how does he manage?

He always brings with him a broad range of bluffs and diversions, and one of the most important is a constant penchant for attacking someone in virtually any context, and for doing it in the most humiliating way possible. Every claim he might make, every question one might ask, is then subsumed under the effect of this personal attack. For those under attack, this means trying to balance the need to defend yourself against the effort to address any objective issues that may be on the table. For bystanders, it is a question of balancing concerns over Trump’s behavior against those he raises about others. In the ensuing hostilities, trump can raise and drop any issues he wishes, make false claims, and set them aside at his liesure. If he is caught flat footed, the solution is as simple as insulting the person who pointed it out or any source they may rely upon. The end-result is a choice between him or someone else, and any doubts about that other person whatsoever will be enough for Donald. He has spent his lifetime exploiting the benefit of the doubt. It is a benefit does not share with others.

The logic of the whataboutism gambit suits Trump’s style perfectly.

Is Trump University credible? What about Hillary!?!

Did Donald tell a lie? Ask Obama if you can keep your insurance!?!

Is he mistreating immigrants? What are the Dems doing to protect us!?! (…and after 2016, ask Obama, because he did it first?)

Is the Trump family self-dealing through their position in government? Where is Hunter!?!

You get the idea.

This is a man in deep need of enemies. The closest he will ever get to redemption lies in the hope that those around him will think him better than the alternative. Small wonder that he preferred to keep Hillary on the table as a kind of shadow President, a mythic character he could use as a whipping woman even in the 2020 election. At the peak of his Presidency, when she should have been off the table entirely, she was still the answer to concerns about Trump, replaced only when Biden stepped in to become Trump’s new foil, and only partially so at that. Trump has always needed a constrained choice to make a case for himself, because he is of no value on his own.

To know the worth of Donald Trump, one has always to ask what about someone else.

A man like that is made for the sort of strife we have seen this week, and throughout his Presidency. He is at his peak when the whole world has to think in terms of the constrained choices he seeks to bring about in all times and all places. For most of us these moments come and go. For the likes of Donald Trump, such moments are the only ones that count.

***

Is Donald Trump the only person like this? Not by a long shot, but he is my exhibit ‘A’, and as he is still in a position to do us all harm, he seems to be a relevant example. It was the dramatic nature of our recent elections that got me thinking about the way that certain arguments seem more compelling at some times than other.

I could just as easily have written an epitaph for nuance.

Perhaps that would have been more to the point.

Let us hope that subtlety finds room to breathe in all our minds sometime soon! It is one thing to say ‘no’ with conviction when that is what is called for, and it is quite another to live in a world that is polemics all the way down.

In the end, the point here is that there seem to be some folks who really thrive on the ability to reduce the world to a pair of choices under the assumption that to affirm one is to deny the other. Elections may be a special time to such folks, a moment in which certain patterns of thought seem a little less flawed and a moment in which the rest of the world may just be happy to join in that same pattern of thinking.

We probably all engage in similar patterns of thought in many other contexts, sports rivalries and all manner of brand loyalties come to mind. For my own part, I hope soon to set some of this aside and think about other things. I can’t quite say that i am ready yet.

I can’t quite say that the rest of America is either.

Hopefully soon!

Argumentation and its Narrative Payoff

23 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Philosophy

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ARnold ConanIt’s been a long time since I read Lakoff and Johnson’s book Metaphors We Live By, but I was recently thinking the internet has surely added a lot of good material for some of its central themes. The the notion of argumentation as warfare comes to mind. In that book, they advanced the notion that a lot of the metaphors people use for argumentation are those associated with warfare and violence in general. This is certainly born out by a number of things you can see on the net.

To see what people say about argumentation on the internet, it would seem that the world of debate is tremendously violent. Everywhere one looks, one finds destruction in the wake of a rhetorical flourish. Case in point? “Pres Obama Brilliantly Destroys a Loaded FOXNews Question” in this clip. Go Bama! But wait a minute? Is that an accomplishment? How do you destroy a question anyway? Loaded or unloaded, do you bash them? Crush them? Hit them with a mega-devestating incinerator photon torpedawhomper Bomb? Not to worry, cause our man Obama gets some here. He totally destroys Trump in this speech. In this video a “60 Minutes Host Destroys Barack Obama On Syria.” “Dawkins destroys Muslim Morality” in this video. But don’t look now! “Rupert Sheldrake Destroys Dawkins Dillusion in Banned TED-x Talk.” …er (sic). Apparently the author of this book is content to merely “refute” him. (Merciful soul!) Bill Nye destroyed Ken Ham. Ken Ham took the Science guy down with him. …totally destroyed. Sam Harris kicks ass here. Ben Carson “demolishes liberalism entirely in this clip from The View.   Hillary Clinton destroys things too! Oh no, Rand Paul destroyed her! He destroyed Donald Trump too! But wait a minute! Donald Trump destroyed Paul. Mutual destruction, just what I like to see in the GOP.

But wait!

Hold the phone.

In this video Cenk Uygur “destroys, degrades, demolishes, desecrates Antonin Scalia.”

Destruction, degradation, demolition, AND  desecration? That’s it. Uyguyr wins the prize. he can just drop the mic now. He totally wins the violence as war meme for the day. Apparently the man is a veritable engine of rhetorical terror. Behold his verbal prowess and tremble!

***

Okay, so I know how to belabor a point, right? Well, I’m just getting started really, so please bear with me. The point here is NOT that argumentation is really a form of warfare, but rather that many of the ideas we attach to argumentation are derived from the world of violence. The metaphors we use when talking about argumentation are, as Lakoff and Johnson pointed out, borrowed from the world of war. We could use other metaphors, and sometimes we do, but when we approach this subject for some reason or another violence just keeps pushing its way to the front of our tropic tool-kit. And really, what else would we expect Violence to do? He’s a pushy bastard. That’s why we call him Violence.

What has me thinking about this today isn’t really the metaphors, per se; it’s the stories used in this case to convey them. Each of the links above provides a little mini narrative describing some argument as though it were a decisive victory in battle. Reading the links in question, we can practically hear the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan echoing in the background.

To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

Is this what every arguing argutizer really has in mind all along, an effort to achieve a victory so complete he can hear the lamentations of the women mourning his poor vanquished victim?

Perhaps.

But of course we want other things too. We want to show that we are smart. We want others to see our point, perhaps even to accept some truth that we regard as important. Sometimes we may want to learn ourselves, perhaps fleshing out our ideas in the effort to present them to others. We might even hope to learn more from another party by pushing them a little, getting them out of their comfort zone in the hopes that what they then tell us will be a little more worth listening to than what they say when the world feels like a warm moist hug.

Sometimes an argument leaves us with a narrative about conquest and destruction. That’s fair to say. But sometimes it leaves us with narratives about personal transformation, mural respect, learning, realization, …and, oh the fluffy! It burns!!! I’m really uncomfortable pleading the merits of such wholesome and earnest values, but honestly, they too play a large role in the construction of argumentation. Often these values are the more serious reasons for engaging in argumentation. Officially they are the reason we produce arguments in the classroom, for example, though someone might be excused for thinking the real reasons may at times be closer to those of argumentation as warfare. (I’m reminded of references to the ‘silverbacks’ in scholarly halls, people who contribute great thoughts to be sure, but also folks who are prone to pounding their chests and roaring at others whenever they feel the need.) One often feels a certain tension between these motivations, at least I do.

Increasingly I am inclined to think of the tension between different rhetorical styles in terms of the narratives folks hope to tell about the arguments in question. Whether successful or not, at some point an argument passes into discursive history. It then rests in the background of subsequent discourse, taking on the form of the texts, ideas, quotes, and general resources others may use to communicate. They may recount an argument (or perhaps resurrect it in dead horse form just for the purpose of kicketation). As often as not, arguments make their appearance in later discourse in the form of stories like those referenced above. We talk about how Chomsky blew Skinner away on the nature of language (or perhaps he didn’t). We speak of the conflict (‘shedding more heat than light’ as one of my professors put it) between Masrahl Sahlins and Gananath Obeyesekere. Sometimes we simply say that one theory replaced another or that a given approach has become the standard in the field. Whatever else happens in such commentary, it transforms the point of an argument into a moment in a narrative. In many cases, I’ll warrant, this is hoped-for pay-off in producing an argument, that it will pass into the positive themes of a story. Maybe that story will be about how Bob kicked Joey’s ass on a random topic, or maybe it will be a story about how this or that idea came to be the dominant approach to a given subject.

Dominant? I’m back in the language of violence again. er, …perhaps the received wisdom in a given field? Anyway…

My point is that much of what people do in the course of pursuing an argument can be thought of as an effort, not simply to prove the truth of a claim as logicians might tell us, but to lay the groundwork for any number of stories one would hope to see told at some later time. Why do I think this is important? Not so much because it helps us understand the production of any particular argument, and certainly not because it helps us grasp the nature of academic argumentation (or any argumentation conforming to the normative ideals of my logic texts). What strikes me as important about this is that it helps to understand conflict with argumentative styles falling outside those norms. It helps precisely because it denies the centrality of those norms and reminds us that the effort to provide an objective case for the truth of a claim is just one of the many reasons someone might field an argument. He could also do so because he wants to hear the lamentations of your women.

I’m still belaboring the point, aren’t I? Thus far, it feels like I am painting too much in broad strokes, but wait! Oh! There’s another good metaphor for argumentation. Painting!!! Wouldn’t rhetoric be that much more colorful and that much less painful if we could construe arguments in terms of visual media? To make it work though, it needs to be generative. We need to be able to spell out the details of argumentation in painterly terms. Perhaps we could a prepare the canvas in reference to issues of context or outline a theory. Hey! We do ‘outline’ theories. We also sketch out the details of a position, make too fine a point of some things, and even speak of prevarication as erasure. Argumentation as art works. …but apparently not as often as warfare.

Artsy asides notwithstanding, what has me up at this undogly hour is the prospect of looking at the transition from an argument to a narrative in more detail. What happens when a genre defined in terms of premises and conclusions passes into the form of a genre defined by characters, plots, and events? What happens when relevance and logical support is transformed into dramatic tension? Are there regular patterns? If so, can they help us understand some of the details happening on either end of that transition?

There is plenty of interesting material out there. Election year political debates are a great example of this. Candidates do not approach these debates as an academic might. They are not trying to prove a point so much as provide an audience with a reason to vote in a certain way. The candidate with the most compelling argument for a given policy may not be the one who impresses voters the most. A large part of what determines this will be the way the arguments play in subsequent speech. A candidate, for example, who handles the details of a legal issue thoroughly may find himself resonating far less effectively than one who fielded a better sound bite in the same debate.

Obvious example is obvious.

Less obvious material? Internet trolls could perhaps provide us with a fair number of examples, but I think pure trolling is just the tip of the ice-berg. That kid who was too busy laughing at your avatar pic to care that your argument was sound will probably be as proud to tell the story of the encounter as you are, perhaps more so. Likewise the old fart who, hey that’s me! (Nevermind that example, we’re moving on…) If I’m ever tempted to use the phrase ‘social justice warrior’ in contempt it’s when I meet someone who seems more intent on claiming moral high ground over certain issues than addressing any number of objective concerns. You could absolutely prove a point to such a person and the only story they will tell about you is that you proved yourself to be a bad person for doing it. But of course one also encounters plenty of people happy to sneer and smirk at the the discomfort of others, especially anyone stupid enough to give a damn about the underprivileged. To let such a person know that you care about any given issue is little other than to tell them how to hurt you. They too will tell a tale about any argument you have with them. Your own tears (real or imagined) will figure prominently in the stories they hope to tell about you.

Such games aren’t limited to the net, of course, but the anonymity of online discussion seems to bring it all out so much more. It’s part of a general pattern of behavior one sees in public disagreements, especially those involving people from very different walks of life. All too often both parties in an argument will come away thinking they have won. In each case, what they actually come away with is a story that relates their victory. It would be easy to think this is because people simply don’t see their own errors, to think that only one of the stories about a given argument would be authentic, but that’s not usually the case. As often as not, the difference occurs because each side had a different sense of the win-loss conditions to begin with.

Yes, the notion of ‘winning’ an argument is already a problem.

The problem isn’t always that other speaking styles compete with those we might think of as more sound argumentative practice. Sometimes the alternative approaches are genuinely interesting in themselves. For example, sometimes an argument is encased in a legendary narrative, which of course makes possible a kind of indirection or an argument by allusion. One may simply refer to the story as a means of suggesting an argument about real world matters. My favorite example of this remains the separation of men and women in Navajo lore, though I suppose one can also see it in conventions of scriptural quotation among Christians (where it almost always takes on the quality of an authority argument). In each of these cases, the significance of an argument appears to be filtered through the significance of a set narrative that defines and shapes its meaning in ways you couldn’t get from a direct analysis of the argument itself. That argument appears as a brief moment in a stream of storytelling, and for some at least its possible significance will always be tied to that very narrative.

When I used to post on Christian Forums, I recall a number of instances in which the arguments of atheists were described in terms of malevolent supernatural power. Realizing I was among the demons described in these narratives, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of anger and irritation. I also found it fascinating. These were people who measured arguments in terms of spiritual warfare. They measured such arguments in terms of powers not premises and faith instead of relevance. This is argumentation as war, to be sure, but in this case, it’s a war between demons and angels. Where I might havedescribed an argument on that forum in terms of proof and evidence, to the practitioners of spiritual warfare those same arguments became stories of a struggle with evil. In the abstract, that isn’t really too surprising, but I must say that it was odd to see just how that general theme played out in the details.

The Storify app would seem to be relevant to my thoughts at the moment? …Still not gonna use it!

Comedy strikes me as a particularly perplexing example of this problem. Stand-up comics produce arguments all the time, but of course their primary job is still to make people laugh. Often we laugh because the argument seems to make a good point in a clever and interesting way. At other times we may laugh because the argument is clearly absurd or irrelevant. The shear audacity of an obvious fallacy can be damned humorous if one isn’t expected to take it seriously. In such performances, our priorities shift and we may approve arguments which might otherwise seem foolish or genuinely asinine.

My tendency in such cases has always been to assume the comic doesn’t really mean it, but as I get older (and as some of my favorite comics do the same) I find at times these jokes are meant more seriously than I might have hoped. Victoria Jackson would be one particularly morbid example of this problem. What might have been a funny act, at least to some, appears less an less to be an act at all. Honestly, I think the same of Ted Nugent. I know he’s not a comic, but in his old television appearances I can’t help thinking his tone was tongue in cheek, that he at least realized he was taking some liberties with reason. I don’t see that when he speaks anymore. I see the same reckless leaps of lack-logic in Nugent’s speech, but he no longer seems to be in on his own joke. Its as if his reasoning has become so committed to the service of a personal narrative that it couldn’t matter anymore when he is wrong, not even enough for a wink.

How did I get onto Nugent?

Nevermind that!

My point is that in comedy argumentation and jokes are bound up together in interesting ways. Which takes priority over which just isn’t always that clear. Sometimes the strength of an argument carries the joke itself, and sometimes it’s the lack of that strength that makes us laugh. So, which is it in any given case? That’s not easy to tell. The guy laughing beside you may be thinking ‘that is so true’ even as you are busting a gut because it’s completely ridiculous. In either event, we are less likely to evaluate the work of a comedian in terms of the cogency of his reasoning or the truth of his assumptions than the cleverness of his words, his timing, projection, etc. With some clear exceptions, we can see this in the stories people tell about the work of comics.

On the other hand, the work of a good comic does bring us back to the argument as war metaphor. If an act is done right, we might well say of the comic that he killed it! I wonder if stand-up comics ever want to crush their audiences, to see those who came to a show driven before them, and to hear the lamentations of their women?

I’ve probably overdone that line, haven’t I?

Yes, I have.

 

 

 

 

The Devil is in the Deductions: Spiritual Warfare and Apologetics Viewed from the Dark Side

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by in atheism, Religion

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image25The first sin was not the eating of an apple (or even a pomegranate). No, it began when mankind (or at least Eve) gave an ear to the Serpent, or so the story goes, at least according to my old Bible-as-Literature prof. I try to keep that in mind whenever I find myself cast in the role of that Serpent, or at least one of his servants.

I am speaking of course of those moments when someone tells me that I worship Satan, or that I serve him. It is common enough to see this charge leveled at atheists, at least on the net. I doubt its occurrence is limited to that context.

I must say that it took me some time to wrap my mind around the concept. You might think it would be a little difficult to worship an entity in which you don’t believe. I certainly did. But it turns out to be remarkably easy to serve him, he does all the work for you, even without letting you know about it. I have been reassured many times that my actions serve the dark lord, regardless of my own conscious intent. I have also been told that deep down I know this to be the case, whether I will admit it or not. It’s always fascinating to find out what I know and what I believe, especially when it has the makings of a good horror story.

Just think of it; you have two competing stories!

– On the one hand, I would like to think of my story as one of a sincere guy tapping away at the keyboard in the hopes that he can present a reasonable case for a position that he thinks is correct. In the end maybe I can teach something to someone, or perhaps learn something from a well-reasoned response. We could call this the intellectual exchange model of the disc… hey you! Wake up, dammit!

– Okay, on the other hand, you have a minion of Lucifer operating under the auspices of the Dark Lord himself to invest ordinary binary code with the force of evil and send it out to work its insidious wonders on unsuspecting believers. The argument itself is hardly important; it serves as a vehicle for some sort of insidious power.

renaissance-the-school-of-athens-classic-art-paitings-raphael-painter-rafael-philosophers-HD-WallpapersHonestly, it doesn’t take much effort to figure out which is the more interesting story. (Sigh!) And if you too count yourself as a vocal non-believer, this whole thing probably rings a bell or three in your own experience.

In truth, there is little one could do to answer such a claim, that one serves Satan, because of course every answer you give would be subject to the same suspicion. This is why I am inclined to think of the story of Adam and Eve here. …and of the Serpent. The trouble really does begin for that narrative in the decision to listen to that serpent as it is an act of disloyalty to God. To speak with His enemy at all is itself unthinkable! Subsequent troubles could hardly be surprising; they are the narrative consequence of willfully opening oneself to an evil message. If that’s the way some believers see the input of atheists, then that doesn’t bode well for anything along the lines of, um, constructive dialogue.

I do think this is the model behind the charge that atheists serve Satan. It not merely some bit of empirical confusion about what we do and don’t believe, so much as it is a warning about the nature of any message we happen to carry. That is precisely the point of casting atheists in the role of Satan’s servants; it is in effect to construe our every word and deed as an evil which one ought not to give reasonable consideration. It isn’t really even the metaphysics of this proposition that matters; it’s the pragmatics. Simply put, the moral of the story is don’t listen to anyone who casts any sort of doubt on God.

I have tried myself and seen others attempt a range of different responses to this kind of charge, but lately I am inclined to accept it.

I’ll be your huckleberry.

250px-GustaveDoreParadiseLostSatanProfileI don’t mean to say that I actually intend harm to others, but I am simply done trying to convince certain parties that I (or other atheists) can be good without God. If these are the terms, then I sometimes want to say ‘so be it’. I will not give those who make such accusations the satisfaction of trying to plead innocence from the bottom of a poisoned well.

The whole accusation smacks of manipulation of course, but it is not merely manipulation, because some people actually do seem to believe it, or at least they say that they do. In its own right, this sort of charge is actually a fascinating example of the limitations of reasoning.

Another of my old professors, Maurice Finnochiaro, used to talk about the study of argumentation as an historical phenomenon. He was interested in meta-argumentation, arguments about arguments. And in its own way this little gift of frustration for an unbeliever is in fact an argument about an argument. It is a clear and concise statement about the prospects for constructive discussion, albeit a rather pessimistic one.

The viewpoint in question is very much informed by the outlook of Spiritual Warfare. It reflects a range of suppositions about the spiritual powers at play in the world. It is the same sort of thinking that finds Satanic messages in so many rock&roll lyrics, Devil Worshipers in Day-care centers everywhere, and demons in Hentai images. It is the same thinking that leads to talk of protecting baby-Christians (those new in the faith) from exposure to other views, and it is the same sort of thinking that plays havoc with the lives of homosexuals in Uganda and other places where some Charismatic Christians go to press for policies they could never manage in the west. But seriously, my list of horribles aside, the point is that there is a body of religious tenets behind the sort of charge that atheists serve Satan. If we are inconvenienced by the whole thing, chances are we should count our blessings.

…though we won’t actually want to call them ‘blessings’ of course.

But the charge of Satanic worship, absurd though it may be to the mind of an unbeliever is a good reminder of the reflexive nature of reasoning. It would be a swell world for rationalists if we could divide all the ideas of humanity up into those about which we reason and then a separate list of ideas about how to reason about the items on the first list. It would be swell if that second set rested safely outside the scope of disagreement, a sort of neutral arbiter in our disputes. But it just doesn’t work like that. And in this as in any other debate, one must remember that among our disagreements we often also differ on the significance of the disagreements themselves. In other words, part of the argument is also always about the nature of argumentation itself.

Sometimes we are fortunate enough to discuss (or even debate) people with whom we share enough assumptions about the nature of reasoning to proceed with a constructive discussion, even in the face of vast disagreements over issues like belief in God. Folks may not flip their whole belief orientation on the basis of a single conversation (or even thirty of them), but sometimes we shift a little, modify an assumption, or even simply come to appreciate the aesthetics of a well argued point from the other side. Such discussions can be rewarding and pleasant exchanges, …if that is, one starts with a range of assumptions that makes it possible.

Some people just don’t make those same assumptions. When someone says that atheists serve Satan, they are sending a very clear signal that they are not down for the discussion, at least on any terms which would give an unbeliever a chance. To do so would already be a betrayal of their faith, and a mistake exposing them to tremendous evil (evil carried by you and I, my unbelieving friends). It is also a signal that the clear significance of your words (to that person) lies not in the quality of your reasoning so much as an impersonal force over which you may not have conscious control. That force will be the focus of the accuser, not the cogency of any argument you make.

So, what’s a devil to do?

Honestly, I don’t know.

Damn me anyhow!

Uncharitable Thoughts About the Principle of Charity

02 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Education, Philosophy

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This may seem ironic, but among the topics generally falling under the purview of logic and/or critical thinking is a little gem called the “principle of charity.” Simply put, this entails an obligation to interpret any given argument in the strongest sense possible, consistent with its actual wording. In other words, when you come to one of those moments where you could think of more than one way to take what someone else is saying, pick the one that gives them the strongest case possible. You don’t have to rewrite an argument for someone, or pretend you don’t see obvious flaws, but when there are genuine questions about the intent of an author, opt for the interpretation that gives him a fighting chance.

Then give him a hug.

This isn’t really about being nice. One of the most important reasons for applying the principle of charity is that it helps to ensure your own analysis will not be wasted. If you take advantage of some ambiguity in the text of an argument and spin it into something utterly foolish, then your own evaluation of that argument becomes all that much more trivial. If you are in actual dialogue with someone, then it’s easy enough for the other guy to simply restate his argument, filling in the gaps so as to avoid whatever silliness you have read into his claims. By sticking with the strongest version of an argument, you an help to ensue that you really are evaluating a case worth considering.

And then it’s open season!

I’ve often had occasion to reconsider this approach to critical thinking, not the least of reasons being that there seem to exist a rather large number of occasions when folks don’t want to use it. And by ‘folks’ in this instance, I mean “me too!” Whether reading or listening to an argument, sometimes I just don’t feel all that charitable. More to the point, sometimes, I think there are substantial reasons to set the principle aside.

I first noticed this, sitting in an anthropology class, listening to a critical theorist shred some text I have long since forgotten. Simply put, the principle of charity was quite lacking in that analysis, as it was with many similar texts I had been reading in that program. This was no accident. Where my critical thinking teachers had been preparing me for open dialogue with people with whom I might disagree, the critical theorists I had begun to read were far more interested in exploring the role of a given text in promoting power relations within a larger social context. Where the one approach talked about what a text might mean, the other talked about what it did in fact mean, at least under the prevailing circumstances.

And it occurs to me that I did this sort of thing myself in my post on the California law for the protection of the Indian, …i.e. the Law that enslaved Indians in California even as that very state entered the union as a “Free state.” The text is not an argument, but it raises many of the questions I am talking about here.  The text sets up a range of legal mechanisms which include indentured servitude as a possible alternative to incarceration. Bearing, in mind the principle of charity, one could ask if it is really fair to think of this law as a means of establishing slavery? You have to read between the lines, or you have to know some facts about the politics which produced it and guided its implementation. Once, you do know these things, the answer very quickly becomes ‘yes’.

And herein lies the crux of the problem. Application of the principle of charity means setting aside important questions about the actual impact of an argument in order to engage in dialogue with its proponents. This begs the question of whether or not you want such a dialogue in the first place (or whether or not it is even possible). And sometimes, the answer to that question is just ‘no’.

Case in point? Let’s look at this moment of Mitt Romney fame.

Now I know you think I’m going to attack him, and the truth is that I probably am, but not until after I am done defending him.

…I know; it confuses me too.

The common take on this topic is that Romney was echoing the sentiments of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), namely the principle that corporations possess many if not all of the same rights as people. The notion that corporations are fictional people is hardly new to the political landscape. My Constitutional History Teacher was quite clear about that matter back in 1992, long before the current outrage, but for various reasons which needn’t concern us here, Citizens United brought about a frightful new firestorm of controversy over the notion, and that was fresh in a lot of people’s minds when Romney made this speech. Add to this a general sense that the Republican party is responsible for the relevant composition of the Supreme Court and for backing its rationale, and you have a ready-made battle just waiting for someone to drop in with the perfect phrasing

But is that what Romney was actually trying to tell his audience? If you look at the video, he was in the midst of making a very different point at the time, namely the fact that someone will have to bear the cost of raising taxes. Urged to levy the tax on corporations, Romney adds quickly that corporations are people. So, the question is this; was he affirming the legal rights of corporations, as per Citizens United, or was Romney trying to suggest that any costs applied to corporations will be paid by people somewhere in the marketplace (investors, employees, or even customers)? Although the categorical language suggests the former, Romney’s subsequent comments suggest the latter. The video itself doesn’t really yield a clear answer, and it is entirely possible that both lines of thought came together in one big mutant two-headed reason with no clear notion of the relationship between its sources.

At some point you have to make a choice as to the meaning of his comment.

If it’s the former choice, then well, go get him Lizzy Warren! And I must admit to a certain soft-spot for this inquiry as to the kind of person that a modern corporation would be, if indeed it were a person. But if Romney really was trying to tell us that costs accrued to corporations are ultimately borne out by people, then he is right.

Broken clocks, and all that!

Hell, there really isn’t much to gainsay that proposition that people will ultimately pay for costs imposed on corporations. There is a lot room for debate about how that works (or doesn’t) and whether or not it adds up to the kind of policies Romney wants to advocate. But that is a debate in which those of us on the left have as much responsibility to chase the devil through the details as Romney and the conservatives.

It’s a lot easier to tell Romney that corporations aren’t really people.

And here is where questions about the willingness to grant someone the Principle of Charity shade into larger questions about whether or not one wishes meaningful dialogue with them to begin with. If you really are exploring an issue with someone, and if they are approaching it in the same spirit, then the effort to assess their views in the strongest light possible facilitates that discussion. If no such goodwill exists, then extending the benefit of the doubt can cost more than its worth.

If the target audience for a debate is more responsive to cheap shots and sound bites, then failure to respond on that level begins to look a lot less like the responsible (grown-up) approach to a discussion and a lot more like failure on the horizon, all the more so if the point of the debate is really is to win something (a legal case or an election for example). If the other guy is just being a jerk, then you can always walk away. But if that jerk is trying to take something of value, then it may well be time to roll up your sleeves and pull out that roll of dimes hidden in your pocket.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

So, do you really want to have a thoughtful discussion, or do you just want to kick the other guy’s ass? I know the Dudley Dialogue-Right in me wants to say “let’s have that thoughtful discussion,” but years of figurative blunt head trauma combine with political realism to say that sometimes the answer is just ‘no’.

Sometimes the answer is ‘no’, because the larger social context removes all doubt as to intent (the California example); sometimes it’s ‘no’ because the expectations of dialogue are essentially “no quarter given” (Romney?); and sometimes the answer is ‘no’, because you just don’t want to grant any legitimacy to the other side. This is why responsible scholars rarely debate holocaust revisionists, flat-earthers, or creation science hacks. It’s why feminists often give Men’s Rights Activists the face-palm instead of an argument, and its one of the reasons that both sides of the recent debate over Atheism-Plus have done a wonderful job of talking right past one another (just to name a couple netroversies currently bubbling over in sundry parts of the blogosphere). It’s also why you should never read the comments on any article posted anywhere (except here). And of course it’s why only a fool would debate anyone with a 160 character limit on each tweet.

…okay guilty as charged on that last one, but the point stands.

There are of course many ways in which one can shut off meaningful dialogue with others, but at least one of them occurs when you are no longer willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt. One takes their statements at face value and fills in the ambiguities according to a standard script; the possibility that the other guy may have something more interesting in mind is simply not worth the effort to give him a chance. This isn’t the kind of approach folks normally recommend, but it is the kind many of us engage in at one time or another. Combine this with the increasing role of discursive minimalism in public discourse and we have an ever increasing premium on short snide answers to arguments that never really came into their own to begin with.

There is no clear formula here; no objective test to distinguish those who have earned the benefit of the doubt from those who haven’t. While it can be particularly satisfying to see someone you think unworthy of debate forced to talk to the hand, it is equally frustrating when you are looking at that palm yourself. When neither side of a given debate seems capable of engaging the other in meaningful discussion, the results range from entertaining to downright tragic, often within the space of a single paragraph.

I certainly don’t have any great notions about how to make the call, but I do find it a interesting feature of public debate.