How to win an argument (fallacies and false arguments)

I am indebted to the podcast “Philosophize This” for helping me form this and probably the next one or two newsletters.

Fallacies, or what has become “research” these days. People will swallow fallacies whole and not know what they’ve eaten. This is a massive gap in our education system. Consider this; those kids with a privately purchased education typically get to run things and they are usually taught philosophy, the classics, logic, debate, rhetoric, etc. The basis of the development of the human ability to think clearly, and to put forward a good case with impact. They get taught all the tricks that have got our thinking to where it is today, and they use ‘em, mercilessly in many cases. Of course, they also form class, wealth, and status-delineated relationships which don’t hurt their cause in adult life… they have imbued in them the idea that their rightful place in the world is to lead and if possible, to rule. Think Boris and his chums.

So, what can the rest of us plebs in the proletariat do about this, if we don’t want to eat the full-fat, existential threat-laden fallacies that get fed to us as quasi-intellectual and pop-psychological fast food?

The first thing we must do is realise what this diet of nonsense is doing to us. Look at us! The last World War is within the living memory of my mother and here we are lolling about, bloated on this diet of nonsense, giving up on our ability to think, and just going for the best guy (person) at tweeting. LOOK AT US, it’s pathetic. OK, can we agree (you and we, ‘we’ won’t, they’re off looking for another fallacy burger) that we’ve got lazy? Do we want to learn what “they” are up to and how they fool us? Yeah, sure we do ??

We’re going to consider a few of the most common fallacies.

The argument from consequences is also known as the appeal to consequences fallacy.

Someone will argue for something based on how much they like its consequences. Imagine the knowing smile of a person that says “I don’t wanna live in a world where God doesn’t exist… right ??”. ‘Therefore’ God exists. That has nothing to do with whether it’s true. It might be something which helps them (it does me), but that still doesn’t make it true. Truth is something which must exist independent of human perception, so if we became extinct, it’s still true. In this case, it might be true but not because someone likes it that way. Not wanting to live in a world where there is no starving children does not make the food exist.

This can be tricky to spot, for example, a political lobbyist may come up for an X% reduction in crime if their ideas are made policy. Reduction in crime we do want, that’s a good consequence. That doesn’t mean the lobbyist’s ideas will make it happen.

The affirming the consequent fallacy.

This is when someone infers the truth of an antecedent of a conditional statement from the truth of that condition and its consequent.

In un-tangled technical English; If someone that worked in a particular shop won the lottery, they would be happy. However, if you went into the shop and saw that the person was happy, you couldn’t assume they had won the lottery. It might be true that the shop worker had won the lottery, but there are many other reasons. We use this in psychology, to help stop people from spiralling down after making assumptions. ?

Another example, to show how insidious this is. If someone was going to be a great leader, they would obviously be able to see the big problems coming and overcome them, right? So, someone we think is a good leader must have been able to see all these problems ahead of time and have figured out a way around them. That makes sense, right? They might be someone we like as a leader, but that doesn’t mean they have the powers of prediction we’ve given them! We cannot say that our like for them is due to them having these powers that we’ve decided they must have, because ‘surely’, someone we like as a leaders ‘must’ have them. Maybe they got lucky, maybe they stole their ideas, or maybe they read the horoscopes… They might have the ability of foresight, but not because we gave it to them. It is not to be relied upon. Further, if this person does have this ability, it does not necessarily mean they are going to be a great leader. They may see things coming and everything they do about it might in fact turn out to be awful.

In another example of this fallacy, God does not exist because surely we would not be able to see great art and beauty without the design of the human eyeball… These things are not the only possible combination of things, the existence of an eyeball does not equal God exists.

The appeal to ignorance or the argument from ignorance fallacy.

Or, something is true simply because no evidence is forthcoming at that point, that shows it’s wrong. There’s no positive evidence that Bigfoot doesn’t exist therefore it does. A claim is stated as fact and a challenge is issued to prove it’s wrong. The trick here is not to feel obligated to prove it wrong, just to see the claim as a fallacy. Unless evidence is presented showing that a conclusion has been reached logically, anything else is a claim or belief being falsely stated as fact. It is on the person making the claim to bring the proof, not on everyone else to prove it is wrong.

This one is how so many complaints get credence they do not deserve, watch out for this one!

A variant of this is the personal incredulity fallacy variant. The ‘what, you really believe that? Like, the ‘you really believe that stone-aged folks built Stone-henge without the help of some higher alien force, are you stupid?’ type. It goes to the God thing too – you really believe that all this happened by accident? It might, it might not. That’s not an argument that proves it either way.

The slippery slope fallacy.

This one tries to say that something is bad because a whole load of other things will result that are really bad if this one thing happens. This is a favourite of political arguments – if so-and-so gets in, x, y, and z horrible things will follow. Gay marriage will cause the destruction of the family and lead our young people into a life of sexual deviance, and ruin. ‘nough said on this one… We shouldn’t give people social security benefits, next there will be a communist revolution and we’ll all be living in North Korea – or indeed, the opposite, if you happen to live in North Korea already…

The strawman fallacy.

Beloved of business people, here is a fallacy that can be used to make a winning argument look childish. There are still elements of the original argument in the fallacy, but it’s made into a cartoon! How about you’re making a good case for unilateral nuclear disarmament. The strawman might go “oh, so you want us to be undefended do you, to have our children just left to just what, defend themselves, with catapults, if they were even allowed catapults in your stupid passivist state”.

It mischaracterizes an idea by taking it to a ridiculous conclusion that obviously the person making the actual argument wouldn’t want. The thing being discussed is no longer the original thing being discussed. Now we’re talking about defenceless children warding off waves of enemies armed to the teeth with the latest weaponry.

The ad hominin argument.

This one is easy, the claim that something is false just because the person who said it, said it. A really common one is “you don’t have kids, what would you know”. Or, “says the guy who doesn’t own a car”. The credibility of a person to make a claim is a tricky one however because some people will be more credible than others. However, it cannot be assumed that everything or almost everything, a persona says is rubbish, just because it’s them saying it. Trump was right about European reliance on Russian gas. However, him being right about that doesn’t mean he’s right about other things. Each thing needs to be considered on its merits. Don’t get dragged into a swarm of “he said this, it is proved to be so, therefore” social media messaging!

The fallacy of false equivalence.

I guess this is really people parroting what they hear from what they want to believe is a trusted source, without really thinking about it. However, cats and dogs are fluffy; therefore, cats and dogs are basically the same is obviously wrong. However, a person parroting that cats are fluffy even through personal experience and that because dogs are fluffy, they must be the same thing, is false evidence. The evidence does not support the claim. It is just similarity and/ or coincidence.

Another really common one is “studies have proven”. What studies, was it one study? What evidence did they produce? Are we able to properly consider the evidence, let alone the findings? This is also trotted out as “evidence-based” or “scientifically proven”. That might be the case, but you don’t get to just shove those words around and it becomes the case because of them.

“George Washington wore a hairpiece and Donald Trump wore a hairpiece. They obviously both are very likeminded individuals.” See where this gets ya!

The bandwagon fallacy.

I think we must be getting the hang of this stuff by now huh… just because X influencer or Y footballer says so, or uses Z product, proves nothing… yet how many $billions a year are involved in trotting this one out? It’s the basis of marketing too. Even a non-famous person pictured in circumstances whereby they are clearly getting benefit from something… you get the picture. “They say”, “everyone knows”, “True (nationality) all agree” are all variants of the same thing.

So, that’ll do for now.

Stop and question whether X MUST lead to Y, always. There will be some cases where a judgement is called for, we all know that, and then we need to exercise our judgement in a ‘what is the most sensible case’ fashion – like, The World Heath Organisation and all but a tiny few renegade academics with an axe to grind agree that getting vaccinated give people a far better chance of not developing serious illness, or death. Choose the best authority, the one with the weight of the highly expert community that are subject to massive Government and scientific checks and balances, not someone’s ranting conspiracy YouTube channel with Dr. Disgruntled or Prof. Maverik being interviewed… huh. Or at least, hear from 99 scientists and medical professionals in favour for every one of those against…