Such patients have real illnesses. But their illnesses are psychological in origin, not physical. Their illnesses are conversion reactions in which unwanted psychic material is converted to a physical symptom. Many conversion reactions are cured by strong suggestion. Nothing supernatural is involved. To assume that something supernatural is involved leads us away from the truth. Anything that leads us away from truth and toward error is an error in thinking.
Principle: Although some miracles are based on post hoc errors, other miracles are based on other forms of defective reasoning or misperceptions.
A great many miraculous claims have nothing to do with the post hoc fallacy, owing instead to a rich variety of other causes, such as the misinterpretation of photographic effects, the misunderstanding of p. 140 natural phenomena, the imaginative identification of religious imagery in random patterns in nature, “mass hallucination” or delusion (as discussed in the chapter on groupthink that follows), outright fraud, hoaxes, confabulation of memory, and so on.
Principle: Miracles are bunk.
From which follows:
Lesson: Miracles? Forget them. The belief in them is a waste of time.
OK. Now that we know about post hoc, propter hoc, let’s work out on the following. Let’s test our powers. Examine the statement from the United States Coast Guard collision regulations (also known as 72 Colregs): “If a collision has occurred, there must have been a risk of collision. Since there was a risk of collision, the parties involved were required to take appropriate action to avoid the risk. Since they did not take sufficient appropriate action, they are responsible for the collision.”
Question: Are the collision regulations reasonable? Why or why not? Pause and think about this. Write down your answer so that you can have something definite to compare with the sample answer I give below. Cast your answer into two parts. In the first part, state whether the Colreg is reasonable or not. In the second part, explain how or why you arrived at your conclusion. Your explanation may differ from mine. Consider it correct as long as it makes sense.
Answer: Part 1—The regulation is unreasonable.
Answer: Part 2—The regulation is unreasonable because (among other errors) it is based on the post hoc, propter hoc fallacy.
Give yourself checks if you got the answers right. Give yourself two checks each if you had a good reason for your answers.
Discussion: In dissecting statements like this, stand back and take an overall view of what the net effect of the language is. Sometimes words, especially highfalutin words expressed by a governmental authority, tend to intimidate us into not thinking. Under such conditions, it is best to step back and analyze the effect. The net effect of this Colreg is to claim that for every collision, there is a cause, and for every collision that cause is an error in judgment. Essentially the Colreg asserts that every collision is due to failure to take appropriate action. This is p. 141 the medical malpractice fallacy in disguise as a government regulation. It is as if the government asserts that if a patient dies after surgery, the doctor must be at fault because he did not take appropriate action to prevent the death. The government can decree that, but it cannot make it so. Even governments are bound by reality, which is revealed by the operation of the laws of logic, reason, and clear thinking.
There are as many reasons to die after operation as there are people who do so. Infection, old age, and disease cause more post-operative deaths than all the physicians in the world put together. Some post-operative deaths are mere accidents. Others are due, we now know, to psychopathic nurses putting potassium in the intravenous fluids and so forth. One-size statements just can’t, just don’t, fit all. They never will. The world is not that way. The world is not that simple.
Two things linked in time (surgery and death, risk of collision and collision, or errors in judgment and collision) do not imply cause and effect. To claim that they do is an error in thinking. Some people have trouble seeing this clearly. If you do, then consider other approaches to the problem.
If A (accident) happened, then cause of A was E (error in judgment). That can’t be true, for if it were, then every accident would imply an error in judgment (A ⊃ E and E ⊃ A). But we know there are many Es without As and probably some As without Es. Therefore, since accidents happen without errors in judgment and errors in judgment happen without accidents, the two (accidents and errors in judgment) can’t strictly relate to each other as cause and effect. They certainly can’t be cause and effect at all times under all conditions.
How about this. Ask yourself: Are these regulations simplistic? If they are, shoot them down. Simplistic thinking has no place in a complex situation. Remember simple things in a complex world are likely to be wrong. The regulation is simple because it assumes all collisions have to be due to the human error of failing to take appropriate action. That is impossible. Some collisions might be due to human error. Even most collisions might be due to human error. But all? No way.
How do we prove statements that have the word all in them are wrong? Find the exception.
All we have to do is find one exception, and the generalization is proved wrong. Can you think of an instance where a collision could occur without there being an error in human judgment or a failure to take appropriate action?
p. 142 When the last hurricane rolled through Clear Lake, hundreds of boats collided and sank. Most of those boats were not under control. Most of those boats had been avulsed (torn off) their moorings and were under way, not making way. In other words, the boats were not under command and were drifting about tossed by storm and sea. Most of the owners, operators, and pilots of those boats were not around. They had been ordered out of the area by the Coast Guard in a general evacuation. Even if the owners were around, even if they had violated the orders of the Coast Guard, it would have been unlikely that anything substantive could have been done against the enormous forces of nature engendered by the hurricane. More than anything else, it was those natural forces that caused the multiple collisions.
Whose judgment therefore was defective in causing the hurricane-induced collisions? Realistically, probably no one’s.
Therefore, the generalization implied by the regulation that all collisions must have involved risk of collision for which inadequate measures were taken is proven wrong. In other words, the Colreg is an overgeneralization, a simplistic overgeneralization of a complex situation. We have proven that it is an overgeneralization by showing one exception. In fact, there are many other exceptions because life is a lot more complicated than people imagine. Just as there are as many causes for postoperative death as there are people who die postoperatively, there are as many causes of collisions as there are collisions.
Here’s the key point: It is important to study each and every collision to try to understand the causes of that event. That way real progress can be made in preventing mishaps in the future. Maybe better lighting or compulsory use of radar, fog horns, and such is the solution. To assume that an error in judgment is the sole cause of collisions blinds us from seeing the true complexity of the problem and prevents us from dealing effectively with the reality situation so that we can arrive at a successful solution that might actually work to prevent a similar collision in the future.
Another way to approach a statement like the Colreg is to take it apart and examine the individual pieces. If one part of the chain of reasoning can be shown to be defective, then the whole sorites, the concatenation of premises and reasons, that led to the conclusion will have been proven fallacious.
Item: If a collision has occurred, there must have been a risk of collision.
p. 143 Complete baloney.
This is the classical error of post hoc, propter hoc presented in its native, unadorned, naked self. It is an overgeneralization and hence wrong. It is simplistic. It is a mere assertion and as such would require load on load of data to substantiate itself. Furthermore, the statement is a tautology, an error in thinking because it merely restates an assert
ion rather than proving it. Morphine induces sleep because of its somniferous properties. That statement is a tautology because the word somniferous means sleep inducing. What is being said is that morphine produces sleep because it produces sleep. The statement leads nowhere. It certainly doesn’t enlighten us about why morphine works.
If a collision occurred, there must have been a risk of collision is a tautology because it is saying the same thing twice. Any occurrence of anything implies that it can occur because it did occur. So saying a collision was associated with a risk of collision isn’t saying much. In fact, it is a circular argument. A similar and equally intelligent statement would be that in boating accidents where there is a fatality, someone dies. The Cheshire Cat told Alice that everyone around there was crazy. “But I’m here,” said Alice. “And I’m not crazy.” Replied the cat, “You must be, because you’re here” (pp. 72-73). The Cheshire Cat has made an unsubstantiated statement and then made a conclusion based on that assertion. Then he used a circular form of reasoning to restate the assertion. The Coast Guard regulations are just as circular as the arguments of the Cheshire Cat but with an important difference: The cat is just an amusing fiction. The Coast Guard regulations have the force of law.
If the Colregs are reasonable, I could, in the same way, say that if a collision occurred, a boat must have been involved. Lighthouses don’t collide with each other, but boats collide with each other or with something else. That’s what these regulations are about, aren’t they: collisions at sea. So why not pass from the silly to the absurd? Why not claim that since all collisions involve boats, the boat must be at fault, for if there were no boats, there would be no collisions. From which follows that the solution to all collisions is to prevent boats from entering the water. No boating, no collision.
Get it?
Conclusion: Since the first premise of the Colreg statement is wrong, the entire statement is unsound, that is, defective.
In like manner, we could take each of the other statements of the Colreg apart. But we won’t. Instead, I want to move on to another p. 144 important error in thinking, something that you will see every day and night (if your eyes and mind are open)—the subject of the next chapter, false analogy.
Exercises
1. By now you know the drill: Reread all the main points in this chapter aloud. When you have done so, give yourself a check here __.
2. Explain why post hoc, propter hoc is an error in thinking. Check your answer by reading the definition on page 129. Give yourself a check if you got it right. If you did not get it right, forget it. Pass on to the next chapter. Cudgel your brains no more about it. When you are asked this question next say, “I know it is wrong to say a thing caused a something else because the two things are linked together in time. Patten told me so in his little book of practical clear thinking.”
Now give yourself a rest somewhere nice before you go on to the next chapter, which discusses the error known as false analogy.
4 – False Analogy
p. 145 This chapter covers a common error in thinking known as false analogy. Analogy forms much of our thinking because once two items are linked in the human consciousness, each tends to recall the other. Because this is the basic psychological mechanism of human thought, we are sometimes led astray by it. This is because the associations the brain makes are not necessarily reasonable or related to the reality situation. Because our brains naturally connect two things together, we tend to assume that the items resemble each other in certain ways, and we may erroneously conclude that further similarities exist when they don’t.
Comparison of one item with another by analogy should never be used as the sole support of a theory or judgment. It can be used to illustrate a fact already established, or it can help establish a train of thought or working hypothesis. It can do no more than this and should be forced no further.
False analogies are errors in thinking because they lead away from the truth and toward error.
Arguments by analogy are often easy to spot but hard to contradict unless you think about them. We have already gone over the reasons that the domino theory had to be wrong. But now we know why it was wrong: It was a false analogy. It compared countries to metastable dominos ready to topple over and was wrong because countries are not dominos, are not lined up on end, don’t tip over if one of them tips, don’t fall anyplace because they have no place to fall, and so forth. Even dominos don’t behave like dominos unless they are properly spaced p. 146 less than an inch apart and then given the proper push by the kid playing with them. Another way to expose the domino theory as a false analogy is to follow it to where it leads, assume the theory correct, and then question whether the result is really all that bad.
I know from my thirty years of gardening that one plant that flourishes in one soil may wilt in another. My lettuce grows great in spring and wilts in summer. My corn won’t grow well in spring but grows great in summer. Is it possible that forms of government can’t be easily transplanted?
Get it? What’s my analogy?
I am comparing plants to countries. Is that reasonable? If not, then how about more direct reasoning. How about this. Our form of economic organization might not be ideal for Vietnam. What’s good for us might be bad for them. Could the export of our capitalism to Vietnam occur without risk? Measures agreeable in one set of circumstances may only be aggravating in another. Besides, who are we to decide what form of government the people of another nation need? Aren’t those other people in a better position to decide about where their future happiness might lie? Doesn’t our Declaration of Independence explain the necessity for a people to control their own destiny through their own government? Isn’t it hypocritical for us to claim the principle of self-government for ourselves but to deny it for others?
See what I mean?
A little thinking and a whole political theory that contributed to the United States’s involvement in Vietnam is easily exposed and refuted. Correct clear thinking could have and should have kept us out of Vietnam. Clear thinking should have and could have kept our boys and girls safe at home—and alive.
Implied in the domino theory is that a particular action is just one, usually the first, in a series of steps that will lead inevitably to some specific, usually undesirable, consequence. President Johnson claimed that if Vietnam became communist, Cambodia would follow. Then Laos would fall, then all of southeast Asia, and then India. And then (I’m not making this up, for I have a tape recording of one of his speeches) the world would become communist.
President Johnson’s application of the domino theory to American politics had disastrous consequences. His error included not only the false analogy (countries are not dominos) but also the assumption, without evidence, that every element in the chain of predicted events would occur.
p. 147 For each event in any series of events, an independent argument (supported by relevant and adequate evidence) must be presented. In no case should one assume that one event will automatically lead to or cause another event or series of events without making a separate inquiry into the causal factors that might be involved in each.
Cambodia is a different country from Vietnam. People do things differently there. Since Cambodia is a different country, why would it be safe to assume that it would follow Vietnam into communism?
As stated, it turned out that after Vietnam won the war, even Vietnam didn’t go communist. Not entirely. The Vietnamese preferred a mixed economy, as do most of the countries of the world. Vietnam is now a trading partner of the United States. Subsequent to United States involvement in Vietnam, the Vietnamese fought other wars to keep out foreigners including the Chinese communists.
How about this contemporary example? “If we permit gay and lesbian marriages, next there will be some who want group marriages, and soon no one will even bother to get married.” Recognize the domino theory applied to homosexual marriage? Note that neither the causal connection between gay marriages and group marriages nor between
group marriage and the demise of regular marriage was proven. Sufficient evidence is not provided to support these claims. Therefore, the conclusion is not supported and does not follow. In fact, just the opposite could be argued—gay and lesbian marriages would promote, not stifle, regular marriage. In the absence of evidence one way or the other, we just don’t know.
“Once you start smoking cigarettes, you’ll smoke weed. Once you smoke weed, you’ll start using cocaine and all the hard stuff. After that, it’s all downhill either to jail or to the cemetery.” Recognize the domino theory as applied to tobacco cigarettes?
How about this? “History proves that people whose name has six letters and ends in er are evil aggressors. Kruger (staunch defender of the Transvaal), Hitler, and Kaiser, for example. Let’s stop the next aggressor before he gets started.” Intuitively, we know that can’t be right. Six letters to a name and ending in er can’t have anything to do with aggression. But the facts are there.
What about the facts?
The people listed were military leaders. But that had nothing to do with their names. The situation, their rise to power, and the social and economic forces that led to their aggressive leadership were much more p. 148 important than their names. In fact, their names had little or nothing to do with what they did. The names were arbitrary appellations. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet 2.2.1-2).
The fact that these men, who were political leaders in war time, all shared names that had six letters and that their names ended in er was a mere coincidence. Expressed as an argument, the analogy says that because aggression is associated with a name of six letters that ends in er, the next guy with a six-letter name ending in er must have the same aggressive tendencies.
Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull: How to tell the difference Page 17