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June 30th, 2007 (Permalink)

New Edition

The third edition of Nigel Warburton's excellent reference book Thinking from A to Z is now available. It has some new entries, including ones for poisoning the well, the sunk cost fallacy, and weasel words.

Source: "New edition of Thinking from A to Z published today!", Virtual Philosopher, 6/29/2007

June 25th, 2007 (Permalink)

Caveat Lector

I recently found a very interesting article by Glenn Hodges about how interest groups exaggerate the extent of the problems they address in order to increase donations and government funding. Though ten years old, nothing has changed except the examples. As Hodges emphasizes, one can't assume that because an interest group addresses a good cause it can be trusted not to exaggerate or even lie.

One interesting issue raised in the article is the fact that some exaggerations may not be challenged because there are no interest groups on the other side of the issue to do so. In the entry on one-sidedness, I claim that the American political system is adversarial and, therefore, one cannot expect fully-rounded arguments from advocates. In such a system, we get only one side of an argument from each advocate, but we end up with all sides of the argument from every advocate.

However, in some cases there are no advocates on one side of the issue. To take an example from the article, there are no groups interested in downplaying the numbers of children kidnapped by strangers. Due to the resulting exaggerations about the prevalence of kidnapping, we become a society with many parents afraid to let their children out of sight.

One might expect journalists to check whether the claims put out by such groups hold up. Unfortunately, as also evidenced in the article, some reporters are motivated to go along with interest group exaggerations because they make for front page stories. Also, it's much easier to report claims than to check them out, which takes a lot of work. Moreover, those reporters who do debunk the exaggerated claims of popular interest groups have to be willing to be attacked for being the bearers of good news. For these reasons, it's rare that journalists will subject the claims of popular groups to scrutiny.

So, what can we do when confronted by claims made by interest groups that have little or no opposition? Here are some rules of thumb:

Source: Glenn Hodges, "When Good Guys Lie", Washington Monthly, January-February/1997

Via: Carl Bialik, "Another Look at the Reading Gap", The Numbers Guy, 6/22/2007

Update (7/11/2007): Here's a current example of an exaggerated claim made by a popular cause, namely, the number of viewers of the "Live Earth" concerts. It's also an example of the failure of the news media to check the claim―except, of course, for the Numbers Guy, who also does a "back of the envelope" check of the claim's plausibility.

Source: Carl Bialik, "Just How Much of the Earth Saw Live Earth?", The Numbers Guy, 7/11/2007

June 22nd, 2007 (Permalink)

Blurb Watch: Rise of the Silver Surfer

An ad in today's New York Times for the "Fantastic Four" sequel "Rise of the Silver Surfer" has the following blurb:

SURFER MANAGED WHAT FEW FILMS THIS SUMMER HAVE: IMPROVE COMMERCIALLY AND CRITICALLY ON THE ORIGINAL.
USA TODAY, SCOTT BOWLES

The problem with this blurb is that it is not from a review of the movie, but from a report on how it's doing at the box office. This is an example of a rare trick in the ad writer's bag, namely, quoting a favorable comment about the movie from a non-review article.

According to the report, the sequel is doing better at the box office and receiving better reviews than the first Fantastic Four movie. Is that any reason to see it? Later, in the same article, one reads: "…Silver Surfer took steps to distance itself from the dreadfully reviewed original." Of course, that comment didn't find it's way into the blurb, since it might lead some moviegoers to take steps to distance themselves from the sequel.

Sources:

Update (6/23/2007): Here are some resources for blurb watchers that I recently discovered, though they've been around for awhile.

Resources:

June 19th, 2007 (Permalink)

Check it Out

The current issue of Scientific American Mind has an article on how to judge whether supposed experts should be trusted. I don't mention it just because the Fallacy Files entry for appeal to authority is listed as "Further Reading" at the end, but because it does give good advice on how to get good advice.

Source: Yvonne Raley, "Getting Good Advice", Scientific American Mind, June/July 2007, pp. 72-77.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Lee Randolph for the heads up.

June 14th, 2007 (Permalink)

What's New?

I've been having email problems, so if you tried to contact me by email within the last few days, and either have received no answer or your email was returned, please try again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

June 12th, 2007 (Permalink)

Lessons in Logic 6: Premiss Indicators

A premiss indicator is an argument indicator that indicates the statement it precedes is a premiss. Here is a list of the most common premiss indicators in English:

Premiss Indicators
since
because
for
as		 as shown by
inasmuch as
seeing that
for the reason that		 which may be inferred from
which may be deduced from
which may be derived from

Warning! This list of indicators is not complete. No exhaustive list of English indicators is possible, since one can always put together new phrases that serve the purpose.

Here's a simple example:

Since [Copernicus's model] was much simpler than Ptolemy's model, … one might have expected people to embrace it. (P. 10)

"Since" is the indicator word, and it indicates that the statement immediately following is a premiss: "[Copernicus's model] was much simpler than Ptolemy's model".

All the one-word premiss indicators are ambiguous and serve other purposes than indicating premisses. For this reason, identifying premisses cannot be done in a mechanical way; you must attend to the meaning of the indicator word in context. One way to test whether an indicator word is, indeed, functioning as a premiss indicator is to substitute indicator phrases for it in the sentence; if the resulting sentence makes sense, then the word must be a premiss indicator. For example:

[Ptolemy's model] was adopted by the Christian church as the picture of the universe that was in accordance with scripture, for it had the great advantage that it left lots of room outside the sphere of fixed stars for heaven and hell. (P. 10)

The first occurrence of "for" in this passage is a premiss indicator, and the premiss is: "[Ptolemy's model] had the great advantage that it left lots of room outside the sphere of fixed stars for heaven and hell." The sentence still makes sense when "inasmuch as" is substituted for the first "for":

[Ptolemy's model] was adopted by the Christian church as the picture of the universe that was in accordance with scripture, inasmuch as it had the great advantage that it left lots of room outside the sphere of fixed stars for heaven and hell.

However, the second occurrence of "for" is not a premiss indicator. Substituting any of the indicator phrases for it produces ungrammatical gibberish, for instance:

[Ptolemy's model] was adopted by the Christian church as the picture of the universe that was in accordance with scripture, for it had the great advantage that it left lots of room outside the sphere of fixed stars seeing that heaven and hell.

Similarly, the word "as" does not occur in the passage as a premiss indicator, as can be seen using the phrase substitution test.

Exercises: Identify the premiss of each of the following arguments.

  1. [A Brief History of Time] was a remarkable success for a book that addressed some of the most difficult issues in modern physics. Yet those difficult issues are also the most exciting, for they address big, basic questions…. (P. 1)
  2. …[S]ince the stars did not appear to change their positions apart from a rotation across the sky caused by the earth spinning on its axis, it became natural to suppose that the stars were objects like our sun but very much farther away. (P. 11)
  3. …[W]e still use Newton's theory for most practical purposes because the difference between its predictions and those of general relativity is very small in the situations that we normally deal with. (P. 14)

Source: Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, A Briefer History of Time (2005).

Answers

Previous Lessons:

  1. Introduction
  2. Statements
  3. Arguments
  4. Conclusion Indicators
  5. Arguments and Explanations

Next Lesson: Argument Analysis

June 8th, 2007 (Permalink)

Debate Fallacies, Part 2

During the Republican debate earlier this week, reporters Tom Fahey and Wolf Blitzer questioned candidate Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts:

Mr. Fahey: Governor Romney, I wanted to start by asking you a question on which every American has formed an opinion. We’ve lost 3,400 troops; civilian casualties are even higher, and the Iraqi government does not appear ready to provide for the security of its own country. Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?

Mr. Romney: Well, the question is kind of a non sequitur, if you will, and what I mean by that―or a null set. And that is that if you’re saying let’s turn back the clock, and Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein, therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in. But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in. I supported the president’s decision based on what we knew at that time. …

Mr. Blitzer: Governor, thank you, but the question was, knowing what you know right now―not what you knew then, what you know right now―was it a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq?

Mr. Romney: Well, I answered the question by saying it’s a―it’s a non sequitur, it’s a null set kind of question, because you can go back and say, if we knew then what we know now, by virtue of inspectors having been let in and giving us that information, by virtue of if Saddam Hussein had followed the U.N. resolutions, we wouldn’t be having this―this discussion. So it’s a hypothetical that I think is an unreasonable hypothetical. And the answer is, we did what we did; we did the right thing based on what we knew at that time.

This is not, strictly speaking, an example of a fallacy, but one of logical illiteracy, or "illogicality" as I call it. A "non sequitur" is an uncogent argument in which the premisses are obviously irrelevant to the conclusion. The Latin phrase is often used in the wider sense of any irrelevance. The null set is the empty set, that is, the set with no members. There's only one because sets are defined extensionally, that is, by their membership. So, if there were two null sets they would actually be one, since they would have the same members, namely none. So, it's illogical to talk about "a" null set.

Romney uses logical terms that he doesn't really understand, but it becomes clear near the end of his answer what his complaint is: his problem with the question is not that it is irrelevant or somehow empty, but that it is a hypothetical question with a false antecedent. In other words, if he had to use logical terminology, he should have said that the question was based on a "counterfactual" or "contrary-to-fact" conditional.

Romney is using what Nigel Warburton calls the "no hypotheticals move":

…[S]ome people in positions of authority have devised a way of avoiding commitment to particular courses of action. Whenever they are asked a question about what they would do in some hypothetical situation they respond that that is irrelevant and that they needn't answer questions about what might happen: they have to do with the real world, not an imaginary one. In other words, they refuse to answer the question solely on the grounds that it is about a hypothetical situation. This is simply a rhetorical trick: the no hypotheticals move.

Politicians love this dodge because they want to avoid offending anyone. In a situation such as Iraq, no matter how Romney answered the question, some voters would be unhappy with his answer. So, he dodged the question by suggesting it was somehow logically illegitimate. Fahey and Blitzer did about as much as questioners could do to get Romney to answer, but they couldn't force him to do so. No doubt politicians will continue dodging questions unless voters start to demand answers.

Note: This is not an exhaustive logical analysis of the debate. Rather, it is just an example that I happened to notice. If there is another example from the debate that you think should be mentioned, please send it to the Fallacist.

Sources:

June 6th, 2007 (Permalink)

Headline

Program to allow water after dehydration death

Isn't that a little too late?

Source: "Program to allow water after dehydration death", Associated Press, 6/6/2007

Update (6/7/2007): John Congdon submits more news from the AP:

A man tried to jump into Pope Benedict XVI's uncovered popemobile as the pontiff began his general audience Wednesday in St. Peter's Square and was wrestled to the ground by security officers.

John adds: "Why the security officers wanted to wrestle the pope I'll never know."

Source: Daniela Petroff, "Man Tries to Jump Into Popemobile", Associated Press, 6/6/2007.

Fallacy: Amphiboly

June 4th, 2007 (Permalink)

Debate Fallacies, Part 1

Since we're now entering election season, this is the first in what I expect will be a series of posts on fallacies in political debates. This first example comes from yesterday's debate in New Hampshire between the Democratic presidential candidates. Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, was asked a question about illegal immigration, and answered:

I'm a border governor. Two years ago, I declared a border emergency because of the tremendous flow of drugs and illegal workers coming into my state. I deal with this issue every day. Here's my position: I would not support legislation that divided families. I would not support legislation that builds a wall, a Berlin-type wall between two countries, the way the bill in the Congress exists today.

Richardson uses the negatively-loaded phrase "Berlin-type wall" to describe the proposed wall between the United States and Mexico, which he opposes. The Berlin Wall prompts a negative reaction in people, which Richardson is trying to attach to the proposed wall as a way of justifying his opposition to it. However, there is an enormous difference between the Berlin Wall and the proposed one.

The Berlin Wall was built by East Germany to keep its citizens from leaving East Germany for the west, whereas the proposed wall is intended to prevent Mexicans from entering the United States illegally. The Berlin Wall kept people in; the proposed wall will keep people out. The Berlin Wall evokes a negative response because it was in effect a prison wall which turned East Germany into a giant prison camp. Whether the proposed wall is in the end a good idea or not, the analogy with the Berlin Wall is poor and, thus, logically irrelevant.

A supporter of the wall could easily answer Richardson: "We don't intend to build a 'Berlin-type' wall. A wall, yes, but it will not keep American citizens in the U.S. against their will; instead, it will only keep foreigners from entering the U.S. against our laws. That is not a 'Berlin-type' wall, Governor!"

I wonder what this analogy says about historical literacy: Is Richardson so ignorant of history that he doesn't realize that the Berlin Wall was built to prevent people from emigrating, not immigrating? Or, does he think that Americans are so historically ignorant that they won't notice how poor an analogy this is?

Note: This is not an exhaustive logical analysis of the debate. Rather, it is just an example that I happened to notice. If there is another example from the debate that you think should be mentioned, please send it to the Fallacist.

Source: "Transcript: The Democrats’ Second 2008 Presidential Debate", The New York Times, 6/3/2007

Fallacy: Weak Analogy

Answers to the Exercises:

  1. The second occurrence of "for" is a premiss indicator, and the premiss is: "The most difficult issues in modern physics address big, basic questions."
  2. Premiss indicator: "since". Premiss: "The stars did not appear to change their positions apart from a rotation across the sky caused by the earth spinning on its axis."
  3. Premiss indicator: "because". Premiss: "The difference between [Newton's theory's] predictions and those of general relativity is very small in the situations that we normally deal with." "For" is not a premiss indicator in this context.

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