Fallacy Monday: Non Sequitur [Clinton Wilcox]

Follow the following links to the different parts in this series: Introduction, Ad Hominem, Strawman, Begging the Question, Slippery Slope, and Equivocation.

The term "non sequitur" is a Latin term that simply means "it does not follow." A non sequitur is committed when an argument does not follow logically from its premises. This is obviously fallacious since in order for an argument to succeed, it must be both valid and sound (see the introduction for a refresher on the difference).

Let's take the following argument, that I found at this linked site: Maria drives a car. Maria must be rich. But it obviously doesn't follow from the fact alone that Maria drives a car that she must be rich. Perhaps she is poor but was given the car as a gift.

Here are a couple of examples of Non Sequiturs:

An argument a pro-life person might make would be: The only reason someone would be pro-choice is because they hate babies. But that doesn't follow at all: there may be some pro-choice people who hate babies, but one does not have to hate babies to be pro-choice. Many pro-choice people don't believe the unborn human being to be a baby, and some believe that it is a baby but that the mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps the child's right to life.

An argument a pro-choice person might make is: the unborn are not valuable because they cannot breathe on their own. But again, this doesn't follow. People on life support are still human, even though they can't breathe on their own (whether or not they have a good chance of recovery). The fact that someone is more dependent does not give us grounds to treat that person any way we wish. In fact, some might say that someone being more dependent gives us a greater obligation to care for that person.

Fallacy Monday: Equivocation [Clinton Wilcox]

For the previous parts in this series, see the Introduction, Ad Hominem, Strawman, Begging the Question, and Slippery Slope articles.

The fallacy of equivocation is essentially made when you use a term in the premises in your argument in two different ways. For example, take the following argument from the linked webpage:

P1: Brad is a nobody.
P2: Nobody is perfect.
C: Therefore, Brad is perfect.

The fallacy here is apparent: In the first premise, you are using the word "nobody" to mean "someone unknown." In premise two, you mean "nobody" to mean "absolutely no one." You are switching terms illegitimately to prove your conclusion.

This is a fallacy of ambiguity. In order to make a convincing logical argument, you must use all the terms in the same way in all of your premises and make your arguments as specific as possible.

Examples of equivocation in the abortion issue:

A pro-choice equivocation I hear very often goes something like this: "Human beings have basic rights. Fetuses cannot drive or vote. (From 1 and 2) Therefore fetuses do not have basic rights. (From 1 and 3) Therefore fetuses are not human."

This equivocates on the term rights. The person making this argument is failing to make a distinction between natural rights, rights that human beings have by virtue of being human (the rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, bodily autonomy/integrity, etc. fall into this category) and legal rights, rights that the government bestows on its citizens and can rightly take them away (the rights to vote, drink, drive, etc. fall into this category). So the equivocation is obvious here: The first premise talks about natural rights, but the pro-choice advocate appeals to legal rights in their second premise to lead to their conclusion.

Pro-life people tend to be accused of equivocation with the standard argument, that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings, fetuses are innocent human beings, therefore it is wrong to kill fetuses. Mary Anne Warren, in her essay On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion, made this charge fairly famous. The charge is that in the first premise, the genetic (biological) sense is in mind, and in the second premise, the moral sense is in mind. However, this is a mistaken charge. The term "human beings" is used in the same sense in both premises, as a full-fledged member of the human species. One could mean the genetic sense in both premises and arrive at the same conclusion without equivocating. Then Peter Singer may accuse you of speciesism, but of course, it is not wrong to hold that the human species is special among all the animals on Earth because it is not merely belonging to the biological species, but the kind of thing that species is, that grounds their value. Human beings, all human beings, have the inherent nature as rational, moral agents, and that grounds their value.

Fallacy Monday: Slippery Slope [Clinton Wilcox]

It's been two weeks since my last part in this series. The month of April was incredibly busy for me but now I'm back with a new installment in this series. Here are the links to the introduction to this series, to the Ad Hominem fallacy, to the Strawman fallacy, and to the Begging the Question fallacy.

A slippery slope argument is an argument that you start with one thing, and another, related thing will happen, and eventually it will snowball into something horrible. The reason that this type of argument can be fallacious is because it is often just a form of fear mongering. But like most fallacies, this type of argument is not always fallacious. What's important is whether or not you have warrant for the slippery slope.

An example of the slippery slope fallacy is one I am drawing from this linked website: If we ban Hummers because they are bad for the environment, eventually the government will ban all cars. So we should not ban Hummers.

Do you see how that argument is nothing more than fear mongering? There is absolutely no warrant for the fear that the government will ban all cars, especially since most cars are not as bad for the environment as Hummers. They're invoking fear of banning all cars because they don't want their Hummers to be banned from operation.

Here is an example of a pro-life argument that is not a fallacious slippery slope, though it is a slippery slope argument: Legalizing abortion will lead to legalizing other forms of killing, like killing infants or the seriously disabled. The reason that this is not fallacious is because there is warrant for it, especially regarding the philosophers who argue that the unborn are not persons due to lacking some property that, in their view, grounds personhood. It's simply following their logic to its natural conclusion. And we can see that this type of argument is warranted because there are, in fact, philosophers who are advocating infanticide and euthanizing the seriously disabled.

An example of a pro-choice slippery slope argument that is fallacious is that if pro-life people have their way, women will be back in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. Many pro-choice people argue that taking away the legal right to an abortion will take us back into the dark ages where men are able to oppress women. This is clearly not a good argument and is merely fear mongering because they don't want their freedom to abort their unborn children taken away. But pro-life people do not want to oppress women, we just want our government to stop allowing the legalized slaughter of unborn human children.

So don't be fooled if someone tries to argue that your slippery slope argument is fallacious. Depending on what the argument is, if you can show that there is warrant for it then the argument is not fallacious.

Fallacy Monday: Begging the Question [Clinton Wilcox]

Here are links to the first three articles in this series: Introduction, Ad Hominem, Strawman.

This is probably one of the most common fallacies you'll come across. To beg the question is essentially assuming what you're trying to prove. But if you're trying to prove something, then assuming it implicitly in a premise of your argument won't be convincing, even though the argument is a valid one.

Philosopher Matthew Flanagan describes this fallacy as follows: "'Begging the question' refers to the informal fallacy known as petitio principii, which literally means 'requesting first principles.' The 'question' in 'begging the question' refers to the matter at the heart of the debate, the issue being debated. To 'beg the question' is to attempt to have that question conceded by assuming it either implicitly or explicitly in the premises of the argument the arguer offers for its truth. In other words, the arguer assumes what he [is] trying to prove and uses that assumption to prove that assumption correct."

Begging the question differs from other fallacies in that a question-begging argument is valid, whereas most other fallacious arguments are invalid. An example of a question-begging argument would be:

P1: God wrote the Bible.
P2: The Bible says that God can't lie.
P3: Therefore, God exists.

It's true that if God wrote the Bible and that God can't lie, then everything in the Bible is true, including the fact that God exists. But the problem is that you must first accept the premise that God exists before this argument will be convincing to you. Of course, there are independent reasons to believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, but this argument won't get you there.

Circular reasoning is a specific type of question-begging argument. Not all question-begging arguments are guilty of circular reasoning, but many are. An example of a case of circular reasoning would be something like the following: Women are better at writing poetry because men don't write poetry as good as women do.

Now, not everyone will make it easy on you to identify fallacies. Usually, unless someone specifically studies logic, the person you are talking to won't put their argument in the form of a syllogism. If you learn to do that, though, recognizing errors in reasoning will become much easier.

It also bears mentioning that people often confuse begging the question with raising the question, but the two are not interchangeable. For example, someone might say, "the weatherman this morning said there is a sixty percent chance of rain, which begs the question: Should I take an umbrella, just in case?" What this person really means is that it raises the question. It doesn't beg the question, which is a logical fallacy.

Examples of this fallacy in the abortion issue:

Many arguments that pro-choice people make beg the question. What is at the heart of the abortion issue is whether or not the unborn are full human persons (that is, human beings that have a serious right to life). So arguments from situations beg the question because you have to assume that the unborn are not valuable human beings with a serious right to life in order for the argument to succeed. So the argument that women need abortion because they might not be able to afford a child begs the question because we wouldn't allow a mother to kill her two-year-old child to make it easier to afford raising her other children (or because we think that growing up poor will mean the child won't have a good life). So if the unborn are full human persons, we can't justify abortion for that reason, either.

Pro-life people can beg the question, too, especially religious ones. The argument that abortion is wrong because God has commanded us not to murder is a question-begging argument. You have to assume that God exists for this argument to have force. But of course, most pro-choice people we talk to will not be religious, so this argument won't be convincing to them.

This is a fallacy that many of us make often without even realizing it. But as we learn to think more clearly and to give reasons for our views, we will stop making so many assumptions and be able to give compelling reasons for why we hold to the position that we do.

Fallacy Monday: The Strawman Fallacy [Clinton Wilcox]

Here is the introduction to this series, and here is my discussion of the first fallacy in this series. In today's article, I'm going to be looking at the strawman fallacy.

Simply stated, the strawman fallacy is committed when you attack a similar argument to the one a person presents, but is a distorted version. So you are responding to a different argument which means that your response does not engage with and rebut his argument.

According to Daniel T. Edward in Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments (Wadsworth, pp. 157-159), the origins of the term are unclear. The usage of the term in rhetoric suggests a human figure made of straw which is easily knocked down or destroyed, such as a military training dummy, scarecrow, or effigy (as cited and quoted by Wikipedia).

The reason that this is a fallacy should be obvious: By attacking a similar but distorted argument, you are not really addressing the argument made. So the argument stands, but it may appear you have defeated it because of the similarities.

Here are a couple of examples of this fallacy in action:

A common pro-choice strawman argument is: If abortion is homicide, then masturbation is mass murder. I have given this argument a much fuller treatment elsewhere, but essentially, as Scott Klusendorf mentions in his book The Case for Life, this makes the elementary mistake of confusing parts with wholes. Sperm cells are part of the parent organism's body, whereas the unborn is a whole, separate, individual organism of the human species that develop themselves from within into a more mature version of themselves, along the path of human development. All of us began life as a zygote, then developed into an embryo, fetus, newborn, infant, etc.

A common pro-life strawman I hear is when a pro-life person misunderstands bodily rights arguments. When a pro-choice person tries to argue they have a right to refuse life-giving treatment to the unborn, pro-life people often mistake this as the much weaker argument that a woman can do whatever she wants to or with anything in her body. It's important to keep these two arguments separate in your mind. Here is an article I've written on this very topic for clarification.

This is one fallacy that is easy to make but is also easy to avoid. If we just take the time to really understand what the other person is saying, then we can easily avoid frustrating them by responding to something they're really saying and not misrepresenting them or their views.

Fallacy Monday: The Ad Hominem Fallacy [Clinton Wilcox]

Last week I began a new series on logical fallacies. The first fallacy I would like to examine is a very common one in the abortion debate, the Ad Hominem fallacy.

Ad hominem is a Latin term that means "to the man." An argument that makes an ad hominem fallacy is an argument that dismisses someone's conclusion based on something about their character. You are attacking them rather than their argument. I often see the term "ad hominem" thrown around in an attempt to stop a debate, but we need to understand that a personal attack does not automatically mean someone's argument is fallacious. It may be unkind to call someone names, but it is not logically fallacious.

For example, if I were to say, "You're an idiot. Now let me show you how you're wrong..." you are not making a fallacious argument. You are definitely being unkind, but if you are going to show them how their argument fails (by responding to one of their premises, for example), then you have not committed a logical fallacy.

Now if I was to say, "You're a jerk, so I don't have to listen to anything you say," that is clearly fallacious. You are dismissing their argument based on the fact that they're just not a nice person. But even jerks can be right.

Additionally, like most fallacies, the Ad Hominem attack is not always fallacious; sometimes it is called for. Philosopher Ed Feser gives an example of a time at which attacking someone's character is appropriate: "For example, suppose what is at issue is whether a certain person is a reliable witness or an unbiased source of information, as in a court case. Then there is no fallacy whatsoever in showing that his track record reveals him to be a compulsive liar, or to have a bad memory or bad eyesight, or to have been drunk at the time of the events he claims to have witnessed, or to have a personal stake in the outcome of the case. These are ad hominem criticisms -- criticisms directed 'against the man' himself -- but there is no fallacy involved, because the credibility of the man himself is precisely what is at issue" (emphases his).

Here are a couple of examples of the ad hominem fallacy in use:

From the pro-life side, I commonly see the argument that pro-choice people hate babies. Clearly, some of them do. I have met some pro-choice people on-line who are quite open about it. But I take it that these people are in the minority. Most pro-choice people don't hate babies. But even if they do, how does that negate their argument that abortion is permissible because of bodily rights, or because the unborn is not a person? It doesn't, so whether or not a pro-choice person actually hates babies, their argument still needs to be engaged with.

From the pro-choice side, one of the most common arguments I see are that if you are a man, your argument is invalid because you can't get pregnant. Again, this is clearly fallacious thinking because my being a man does not refute my argument that the unborn are full human persons from fertilization and it should be illegal to kill innocent human children.

So as we strive to have better conversations, let's stop trying to dismiss peoples' arguments by throwing around claims of logical fallacies and really try to engage with the arguments. Only by doing so can we really hope to understand the reasons that someone takes a position on this issue.

Fallacy Monday: A Discussion of Fallacies [Clinton Wilcox]

I've decided to institute a series called Fallacy Monday, in which each Monday I will take a particular logical fallacy, give a brief examination of it, discuss why it is a fallacy, and how it relates to the abortion issue, giving examples of the fallacy being used on both sides of the issues. Why Fallacy Monday instead of Fallacy Friday? Because Fallacy Friday is cliche, despite the sweet, sweet use of alliteration.

I'll admit it: one of my pet peeves is when someone throws around a fallacy in an attempt to dismiss a well-intentioned argument, especially if the person throwing the fallacy around doesn't really understand what the fallacy is. It goes something like this: Person A makes an argument, Person B responds with "that's just fallacy X. Try again." To this kind of person, engaging with arguments becomes simply a game of Spot the Fallacy. He is not trying to honestly engage with the argument. The problem is you must first engage with an argument before you can decide whether or not it is fallacious, because most fallacies are not always fallacies.

There are many different forms of logic, but the most common argument you'll encounter (even if someone doesn't frame it in this way) takes the form of a syllogism, which is just an argument containing two or more premises that lead to a conclusion (sometimes there will be multiple conclusions if the argument gets more and more complex; but usually simpler arguments are seen as more reliable since there's less of a chance that the argument will go wrong somewhere). A syllogism looks like this:

Premise 1: All men are mortal.
Premise 2: Socrates was a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates was mortal.

An argument is said to be valid if the conclusion follows from its premises. If it is impossible for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true, the argument is valid. If a conclusion does not follow from its premises, it is invalid.

If an argument is valid and all of its premises are also true, then it is sound. Otherwise, it is unsound. It's important to recognize these distinctions because an argument can be valid, but unsound. Take the following argument:

Premise 1: All fish are mammals.
Premise 2: All mammals have hair.
Conclusion: Therefore, all fish have hair.

Now, this is a valid argument. If all fish are mammals, and all mammals have hair, then it follows that all fish have hair. However, this argument is unsound because as we know, fish are not mammals. So while valid, the argument is unsound.

So what is a logical fallacy? Simply put, it is an error in reasoning. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says about fallacies, "Traditional accounts define a fallacy as a pattern of poor reasoning which appears to be (and in this sense mimics) a pattern of good reasoning...Such accounts are a problematic basis for a general account of fallacies insofar as what appears to be good reasoning to one person may not appear so to another. In assessing ordinary arguments, these issues can be avoided by understanding fallacies more simply, as common patterns of faulty reasoning which can usefully be identified in the evaluation of informal arguments." To reiterate, one must engage with all arguments because an argument that appears fallacious on the surface may not actually be fallacious once you really understand the argument. Most fallacies are not always fallacious. Fallacies are not recognized so we can try and poke holes in someone's argument, they are recognized to help us avoid errors in reasoning.

So on Mondays for an indefinite and undetermined number of weeks, I'll be looking at a different fallacy. I am a big believer in taking people and their arguments seriously, especially those who disagree with us. You just can't know if your argument is right unless you're interacting with the arguments of those who believe differently than you do. You also can't respect someone if you don't take their arguments seriously. So let's take our conversations to the next level. Rather than engaging in pithy statements and bumper sticker philosophy, let's really look at the issue seriously and see which side has the stronger case.