Subtitled: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders
(UK 2003 as Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking; US edition here McGraw-Hill, 2005, xi + 157pp; no index)
Here’s a small book from the mid-2000s that overlaps with numerous books I’ve read on psychological biases, but cast rather as matters of logical flaws.
Key points:
- People don’t have a ‘right’ to an opinion, but they’d rather believe what they’d like to be true, rather than what is true.
- Exposing the motive for someone’s opinion doesn’t invalidate that opinion.
- Parents and experts might be authorities in limited circumstances, but most claims of authority, by ‘the people’ or politicians, or celebrities, are fallacies.
- Defenses of opinions as mysteries that cannot be understood, as requiring faith, by playing the odds, by citing weird ideas not understood, hedging, or claiming something is evident, are used when no actual evidence is available, and can be used to justify any conclusion at all.
- Telling people to shut up, because they’re unqualified or boring or sound like Hitler, is not a refutation of their claims.
- Beware jargon, weasel words, generalities like ‘justice,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘education,’ and quotation marks, all of which tend to obscure rather than explain.
- Beware contrary and contradictory statements, which people often make via implied generalizations, weird new-agey ideas, or redefining words.
- Equivocation occurs when people use words in slippery ways, confusing common definitions with specific ones.
- Begging the question occurs when things are assumed to be intolerable (abortion, Islamic fundamentalism), without explaining why.
- Some people invent elaborate explanations for events (sports, finance, healing) that are simply coincidences.
- Many statistics can be misleading, or even wrong, often due to sample bias, or because most people have no sense of scale for big or small numbers.
- Claims that what’s wicked is false, what’s beneficial is true, why the oppressed have moral authority, or how someone argues sincerely, are signs of morality fever, and are not about understanding the world as it actually is.
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Detailed Notes
1, The Right to Your Opinion
People believe they have all sorts of rights, including the right to your own opinion. But it isn’t true.
When people say “I have a right to my opinion” in an argument—as if in answer to some point—it’s irrelevant; a fallacy. Because holding an opinion has nothing to do with whether the opinion is true or not.
It helps to understand that rights entail duties. A right IS the duty that it entails upon others. A right to life is the duty of others not to kill you. Saying people have a right to be healthy makes no sense, because no one can guarantee your health (everyone dies eventually).
What duties would a right to an opinion entail?
That I should agree with it? No. To listen to you? No, there isn’t time to listen to everyone.
To let you keep your opinion? This is what most people mean. But this can’t be right either, because of cases where it would be dangerous not to point out a truth contrary to their opinion (about the safety of a situation, say).
The fallacy exists because in many cases people don’t care about believing the ‘truth’; as with religion, e.g., believed because it would be nice if it were true.
2, Motives
The Motive Fallacy is to suppose that by exposing the motive for someone expressing an opinion, you show their opinion to be false. Obviously this can’t be true in legal cases where paid lawyers argue opposite opinions. But it’s a popular subject in interpersonal situations. It’s a problem when the subject of motives obscures the importance of what is being discussed—as in politics. Political discussion is almost never about actual policy; it’s about the motives of one side or the other in making this or that proposal or criticism. It’s easier to dismiss a think tank’s white paper by implying a motive by calling it a right or left wing think tank—than to actually read the paper and evaluate its content.
Clue for spotting the fallacy: “you’re just saying that”; why ‘just’?
3, Authority
The Authority Fallacy occurs when we’re told something is true ‘because I say so’. Sometimes this is true; parents do indeed determine their children’s bedtimes. In other cases, an ‘expert’ is more likely to have an opinion that is true than a nonexpert. The fallacy occurs when someone claims something about which they have no scope or authority. It’s not up to parents whether or not Mary was a virgin.
These days there are fewer old-fashioned ‘authorities’, but the fallacy routinely occurs with reference to The People, the majority of the population, whose votes do indeed determine certain things, but whose collective opinion is no more likely to be true because of that. Yet politicians cite the will of the people all the time to justify their policies (and get re-elected).
Some things are not ‘matters of opinion’. If a child doesn’t like vegetables and his mother does, it’s not a difference of opinion about whether vegetables are bad or good; it’s a matter of taste, rather than opinion.
Other authority fallacies: victims of tragedies, whose personal interest is taken as if some special authority (in determining safety standards, e.g.), and of course celebrity endorsements, usually of politicians. The fallacy occurs whenever anyone’s opinion is offered in an area in which they have no expertise. Even Einstein wasn’t an expert on everything.
4, Prejudice in Fancy Dress
Various ways people try to defend opinions for which they have no evidence—
Mystery. If something cannot be understood, just declare it a mystery that cannot be understood, like the Trinity of the Catholic Church. Genuine mysteries abound, local or universal, but they are matters of ignorance, not licenses to believe whatever you like.
Faith. Declare something to be a matter of faith, and no evidence is required; you admit, actually, that no evidence exists.
Odds On. Pascal’s wager claims that one might as well be a Christian, just in case. But the same is true for any religion, even a made up one.
Weird Science. Claiming that science is unreliable or bankrupt gives no evidence to the idea that rubbing mud on yourself cures cancer. A frequent ploy is to cite quantum mechanics, as if such a weird idea makes any other weird idea just as respectable. Author quotes opening of a book by Lyall Watson…
But Still. Racists and others cite evidence for one view then claim the opposite as if it were self-evident; “but still…”
Tis Evident. If something is claimed to be self-evident, why does it need to be said? Most such things aren’t, including the words about ‘equal’ in the Declaration of Independence.
What’s common in all these ploys is that they can equally be applied to any conclusion at all. And often are accompanied by moral positioning, the suggestion that such issues can’t be discussed in polite society without inciting offense.
5, Shut Up!
Various ways of telling someone they have no right to speak is abuse, not refutation.
Shut up—you’re not allowed to speak. E.g., a critic of the Turner Prize for art was told that his own drawing wasn’t any better. Maybe true or not, but irrelevant. “You can hardly talk”, pot calling the kettle black. In contrast, on racial issues certain opinions are valued just because they come from a member of a certain race, e.g. black politicians opining about affirmative action.
Shut up—you’re boring. It’s also irrelevant when someone cites an argument that’s overly familiar, or to be expected given their viewpoint. The arguments may still be true. Relativists have this problem; it doesn’t bother their ideas to point out that, really, the earth has always circled the sun, no matter what people once thought.
Shut up—You sound like Hitler. Refutation by association; your idea is just what Hitler would have thought. Or religious fundamentalists, etc. Similarly there is a widespread gang membership to belief; many hold ideas common among their peers, without having thought about each one itself, e.g. among leftist college students.
6, Empty Words
Academic seminars are famous for offering incomprehensible summaries of their topics, using language that obscures rather than explains.
Jargon. Terminology appropriate to a field can clarify and aid precision, but some use it to obscure, especially management consultants, who dotes on words like leverage and moving forward; their messages would never be worth what they charge if stated in plain language.
Weasel words. Some people couch opinions in qualifiers that deprive their statements of any useful information. Could, believed to be, possible; these are typical of financial advisors and even some scientists with political agendas.
Hooray and boo words. Everyone wants justice, and freedom, but what do these words mean when used by a particular speaker? Tony Blair emphasizes ‘education’ without explaining what he means.
Quotation marks. They can be used to express skepticism of a claim, but when overused they amount to ‘sneer quotes’ that obscure the actual meaning of the words. Examples in academic writing…
7, Inconsistency
Statements can be contrary if at least one has to be false but both may be; contradictory if only one can possible be true.
Some people are blatantly inconsistent without realizing it – author’s father stating that all people eat in Britain is such and such (a different example each day). Evil exists, and God is all-powerful and good. Governments should cut taxes, and spend more on programs.
Implied generalizations. More often people make statements that imply contradictions because they don’t examine the implications of what they say. Homosexuality should be illegal, because the Bible condemns it. But the Bible condemns many other things; should they be illegal? No. Tony Blair comes out against fox-hunting, but not hunting in general, without explaining the difference. Maybe these behaviors are pragmatic, but they are still illogical.
Weird Ideas. That is, the new-agey stuff: astrology, reincarnation, homeopathy, etc. The problem with these is that they contradict well-established principles of science, our understanding of the laws of nature; to believe in them would require abandoning those laws. But many adherents not only don’t see the contradictions, they cling to the laws anyway! E.g. homeopathy, in which water from different sources is presumed to have different effects.
Real contradictions. Some thinkers think contradiction means merely conflict, or being opposed; the Dialectal Materialists, e.g. Mao, spoke in this way. They are redefining the words. Goblins don’t exist just because you call birds goblins.
8, Equivocation
Are Christians good? The problem is not what ‘good’ means, but what is meant by Christian—someone who believes in Jesus’ divinity; someone who does good things; etc. Slipping between meanings in an argument is to equivocate.
Sometimes this captures a sort of truth—boy will be boys (obviously the word means different things each time). But when government statistics about poverty were announced, they depended on a very special statistical meaning of the term – 35%, those more than 60% < median income. The alarm came from the common definition of poverty, which had nothing to do with the reality of the people in Britain.
Similarly, Marx adopted loaded words as technical terms in his discussions of economics—exploitation, alienation—thereby condemning capitalism by definition.
The UK government increased university attendance simply by redefining technical colleges as universities! Euphemisms involve similar redefinitions, but eventually they undermine themselves; the target meaning tarnishes the replacement words.
9, Begging the Question
A newspaper editor’s rejection of evangelical Christian objection to a column about Egyptian gods, asking them to be tolerant, missed the point—to the Christians, the column was intolerable. Begging the question assume what is in contention; it doesn’t get to the root of the issue.
Tolerance is often asked of anti-abortionists, missing the point that if abortion is murder, it’s intolerable. The issue should be whether abortion is murder, not about being tolerant.
Similarly intolerance about victimless crimes, drugs etc., assumes that such things are to be avoided, without explaining why. In fact, the motive to take drugs—to feed good—is often left out of the equation altogether.
Political questions may appear pragmatic but actually do depend on ideology. Thus, western politicians reject Islamic fundamentalism, without coming out and stating that they don’t believe that Allah’s word is the end all. Oddly, people say they ‘respect’ other religions even though they would never defend their content.
Some assumptions are disguised, as when calling tax cuts ‘giveaways’, or asking if you’ve stopped beating your wife, or calling a nuclear disarmament group the ‘Peace Movement’.
10, Coincidence
Some people just don’t believe in coincidence, even though they should. People invent elaborate explanations for sports statistics or financial behavior, when all that’s necessary is simple coincidence.
What you’d expect. Simple statistics explains why some traders score big wins, some of the time. Yet financial institutions reward them with bonuses and lure them away with big bucks, without wondering if their performance was due to skill or luck. They might as well pay lotto winners to buy more lotto tickets.
Coincidental healing. People attribute cures to homeopathy, say, based on anecdotal claims, without doing controlled studies of test vs control groups. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work for ‘some people’, a circular argument. Any such effect can be tested.
Thank you Lord… Improbability does not by itself prove anything, such as that God exists. Any particular person or circumstance is unlikely…
11, Shocking Statistics
Statistics can be misleading, and they can also be wrong. The poverty measure above would be better measured by actual consumption, rather than income. Examples about whether someone would switch banks, or whether they smoked dope with their Dad, suffered from sample bias, and that people lie in surveys, which is why politicians ignore protest marchers and other fanatics—they’re not representative of the larger population. The popular statistics about homosexuals being 10% of the population resulted from sample bias—prisoners—whereas subsequent studies show it to be more like 4%.
Big numbers. An obviously off-based statistic about the number of girls who die from anorexia reveals that people have no sense of scale, for big or small numbers. Results that sound incredible may be quite reasonable when averaged out to the person, or the day, rather than summed for an entire year.
12, Morality Fever
Explaining that someone is bad because of such and such doesn’t refute the claim that they are bad; it’s an example of morality fever.
What’s wicked is false. Arguments against homosexuality claim it should be illegal because it’s unnatural. Proponents accept the structure of the argument, reverse the conclusion, than back up to argue that homosexuality isn’t unnatural – when what should be the issue is why that should determine its legality. Similarly, results about IQ are simply rejected because they would appease racists, which is taken to be bad.
What’s beneficial is true. If believing in God makes people feel better, then God must exist? But the belief would work, even if it weren’t true. Just because the wrong-headed poverty statistic raised the issue to a high level, doesn’t mean it’s a good statistic.
Meek shall inherit the truth. A debate about touring South Africa needn’t depend on the opinions of blacks in South Africa; just because they’re the oppressed doesn’t given them moral authority, or infallibility. Cultural relativism has similar issues.
Be Serious. Just because someone argues sincerely, doesn’t make him rational. There may be reasons people give in to the fallacies described in this book, but if one really cares about reality, about the welfare of others (including their children), then they should try to understand how the world actually is.
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