racing to identify fallacies
be careful of wishes. age 18 was when i first discovered that the aristotle dude i supposedly learned about in elementary school had put together a handbook or two on nailing argument bullshitters (sophists). i was thrilled. the things i’d been bitching about, without recognizing the linking structure, had been categorized thousands of years before. wonderful, but why was this great gift of respected commiseration (sorta) and understanding unknown to me until 18? why had the very word “logic” sunk to mass denigration, translated generally to mean, mr. spock style, “somebody who will offer without blinking a mathematic reason why your grandmother and her poodle should be used for hamburger”? how great would be the improvement, thought i, if only logic became a more regular topic of discussion.
i embraced the study of verbal logic, intent on spreading knowledge of this great find. if peripherally that helped make me look like some latin-spewing argument assault genius from hell, full speed ahead. every 30-second commercial or raving political speech went through my fallacy detector and classifier. my prior complaints had been given labels, and i fancied myself the defender of truth. those liars were goin’ down, jack — me and aristotle, bustin’ a move. all i’d needed were the names.
twenty-five years later, and with the supposed study of logic and fallacies working its way mainstream via the internetz, people are stupider and more prone to fallacy. what has spread is not logic, but a raped imitation heavy on “i will prevail” ‘tude, light on reason. someone researching petitio principii argument emailed me recently because of my pussyemporium page. she wanted to talk about it and work up some examples for educating others. naturally, that immediately led to the topic of just what the hell petitio principii is (besides the one of three fallacies for which i intentionally and regularly use the latin name instead of the english)?
though it had been my intention after she emailed to not get sucked into a 2-day research marathon, curiosity struck and i pulled a 2-day research marathon, the results of which maybe i’ll flip into an article, since most of the world that discusses petitio principii is horrendously confused (and here i’m not talking about the harmless practice, wrongly alleged as blasphemy, of using a variation on its generally applied english name — “begging the question” — to mean something other than the fallacy). one leetle ol’ fallacy, and the internet wildfire fed by countless incompetents has turned it far mushier than it already was — unfortunately not so much an exception, its targeted misapprehension eclipsed by the now nearly obligatory internet forum BS invocation of “ad hominem” (retards, name-calling is irrelevant, 20071005).
have a look at this blog comment someone left at LvMI today:
So people reckon because a CD can copied in a way that the owner hasn’t been deprived of any physical objects then copyrights are bunk. Yet what is then the right of the person who parks their car is known to leave it for hours on end. Could not a person take the car, drive it around, top up the fuel tank and park it in time for when the owner want to use it? After all, the owner was not been deprived of his car. The other person just didn’t have the permission of the owner to use the car.
Similarly, what if you have a wireless internet connection with no real download limit and a neighbour knows when you aren’t using your internet connection and he connects his computer to your internet account with his wireless modem? Likewise you’re not be deprived of anything either nor are you getting charged more because of his usage either. He once again just doesn’t have your permission.
Posted by: TLWP Sam at January 1, 2008 9:38 AM
both examples use fallacy in attempting to refute a proposition. here’s the key though: the direct method for puncturing false refutation is to detect and understand the specific flaws, not label and categorize them. categorization and naming of fallacies is an infinite rabbit trail leading ultimately to each fallacious phrase getting its own name and umpteen imperious dipshits holding forth on the importance of knowing label x. the result of such presumed education is clear if you take a few hours and shake up the web to see what falls out regarding fallacies. people are bewildered. authoritatively so. studying fallacy cats can be fun and enlightening, but often disintegrates into the search for bogus tools of argument intimidation, not elucidation. add in multiplexing — when one snippet carries with it more than one fallacy — and the casual student of logic can be carried away toward confusion easily avoided if he’d stuck with nailing the specific failures and moving on, without the showy and often failed exercise of classifying each transgression against rationality.
as i found and enjoyed, many students of logic are aided in studying fallacy names and classes in isolation, away from refutation. the problem i’m discussing arises when students cling to those lessons and twist them into the first tools they reach for in their refutation toolbox. some self-styled logicians flip it all the way, attempting to bamboozle audiences with only classification. argument is met with a mere list of fallacies allegedly employed by the opponent. oh, touché. how grand! not surprising that when pressed on each allegation, the usual accuser crumbles into exposing involuntarily and rapidly his ignorance of logic and the classification of its more regular breaches. in accusations of sophistry, the accuser commonly brings to the table the worst offense. but who would dare hold the sophist guilty of sophistry after it’s he who with such obvious erudition raised the alarm that a pretender was afoot? this psycho-projection drivel has long been the tactic of the frightened incompetent. real men get down to cases, generally avoiding classification until the core job’s complete.
with that in mind, take a look at the sophistic dreck from the LvMI commenter.
After all, the owner was not been deprived of his car.
right there — all you need to slam the drooling punk into oblivion, and without classifying a fallacy. first, the interloper is depriving the owner of his car by wearing it away. operating a vehicle wears components owned, shocker, by the same guy who owns the composite. the sophist mentions topping up the fuel tank, neglecting that fuel is only one of many things consumed or otherwise compromised when a vehicle’s used. even if one covers all the easy ones such as windshield washer fluid, there’s no such replacement (commensurate with fuel) of the surface layer from parts such as brake bads, piston rods, and crankshaft bearings.
carrying the single fallacious sentence further, into the necessary issue of possibility, the interloper — not being omniscient — deprives the owner of something else he owns: the availability of his resource in times of emergency. along those lines, the interloper also risks destroying the property, removing it from even normal use. that risk is another property held by the owner as part of his physical property; it is he who must be in control of it, even if he wrecks when the interloper wouldn’t have — even if the interloper’s action prevents him from wrecking his car one day. as these are unknowns, they are for the owner alone.
none of these issues apply to the case of copying intellectual “property”. you want to use the information i “own” and which you saw on the internet? my information is still fully intact, even if i come back from a nap and decide to use it just when you’re embroiled in a 5-hour argument with it. it’s there for me.
Similarly, what if you have a wireless internet connection with no real download limit and a neighbour knows when you aren’t using your internet connection and he connects his computer to your internet account with his wireless modem? Likewise you’re not be deprived of anything either nor are you getting charged more because of his usage either. He once again just doesn’t have your permission.
this is an interesting one, somewhat removed from the first example in that one may reasonably assume no wear and tear of the neighbor’s gear. however, aside from the huge caveat of knowing when an internet connection’s not in use (not necessarily coincident with the presence of the owner or his agent), there’s the subtle but material point of the ISP’s property and its permission/contracting of your use of and demand on its scarce property. the sophist will consider the matter sidestepped with the caveat of “unlimited” downloading, yet such businesses are correctly built and priced for normal use, and a piggybacker may very well lead, on the margin, to disabling a different customer of the ISP, not the one mentioned. this infringes the physical property of the ISP, and service to the infringed customer (and potentially the original neighbor, whose rate may increase or his service be cut off if abnormal demand’s detected).
i’m tempted to cloud the waters with a tediously parsed example of a hotel offering complimentary continental breakfast to its guests, some of which decline, but i’ll leave that to you without my interference if you’re interested. oh what the fuck; just to whet your appetite it begins a little something like each morning i wait at the parking lot exit and ask of departing guests, “did you partake of the hotel’s continental breakfast this morning?”
in each of the two examples the sophist was attempting to bamboozle the listener by equating something many consider instinctively to be wrong with something many consider instinctively benign. he implies that the core problem of his opponent (i.e., anti-IP types) is one of glossing over by mass inconsideration of new technology what should be an obvious wrong, and endeavors to “expose” this by showing that there’s no material difference between what in one case is shunned and the other embraced. the key to success for that approach, of course, is essential similarity among examples. show that the similarity is merely assumed rather than actual, and the argument is refuted.
such refutation limits its fallacy classification to mere allusion. what are the relevant fallacy labels above? i will not answer. however, if you want to answer, consider first three related and often neglected properties — context, audience, and multiplexing (my perhaps unnecessary term of convenience for short propositions bearing multiple fallacies often identified as only one).
context and audience are normally intertwined. arguments are often misidentified as fallacious simply because essential parts were either not included or not founded. in many cases those aspects supposed erroneous were intentional and not illogical, tailored to an audience that knows or agrees to supply the valid and sound missing bits. in such cases the arguments can be tempting objects for simulated refutation by sophists who brazenly ignore the pitfalls of assumption obvious to an intelligent, honest man. it also works in reverse, with the diligent logician positing that an argument may be worse than noted, if missing context is one way or another or the intended audience biased with codes the speaker need only mention, not incorporate explicitly.
the intertwined topic of context and audience also intertwines with multiplexing. most sophistry is at heart an appeal to emotion/laziness over reason. all sophistry is at heart irrelevant, except as its study leads to better understanding of the truth. but that’s only the start. consider the following example, sent by my email correspondent for my take on classification:
Even the liberal media hasn’t attacked this conservative’s voting record.
a mere 10-word sentence, and in it potentially lie 3 or 4 traditionally-classified fallacies, depending on what one chooses to assume about the speaker’s context and his intended audience. just getting straight the hierarchy of the fallacy mixtures boggles the mind.
as the speaker’s proposition is targeted for audience, so must often be its refutation. however, any audience that would favor lists of fallacy names over direct attack of the most glaring specific fallacies… well, ya shouldn’t be hanging out with such assholes.