by Jamie Whyte
The evidence can be mixed. Some of it points in one direction, some in another. In such circumstances, it can still be rational to draw one conclusion rather than another: on balance, the evidence favors this one. But it is cheating to tip the balance by ignoring evidence that doesn’t suit. Evidence should be ignored only when it is unreliable. A scientist gets a positive result but then discovers that the equipment in his laboratory is faulty. So he discards the result. That’s fine. And utterly different from acknowledging something and then ignoring it for no reason except that you wish to draw a different conclusion.
’Tis Evident
Some things are said only when false. The popular sign, “Authentic Olde English Pub,” is one of them. Authentic old English pubs do not display such signs. “It goes without saying” is almost as bad. What goes without saying goes without saying. If you feel the need to mention that something goes without saying it probably doesn’t.
You should be similarly suspicious when someone tells you that his opinion is self-evident or obvious. If it is obvious, why would he feel the need to point out that it is? Just say it. Its obvip. 48ousness will do its own work. And if it is not really obvious, then his claiming it is probably means he is trying to obscure the fact that he has no evidence at all—like those poor men who, unable to think of anything witty to write in their self-portrait for the personal ad, simply inform us that they have a good sense of humor (GSOH). Evidence, like a GSOH, is always more convincing displayed than merely claimed.
The boldest example of a bogus claim to obviousness is the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Perhaps these statements are true, perhaps not. We can’t get into that here. But they are not self-evidently true.
Take the claim that all men are created equal. Equal must here be used with some special meaning. For it is not normally grammatical to say that things (other than numerical values) are simply equal. They must be equally something: equally tall, equally green, equally obtuse, or something. What does it mean to say simply that people are equal? But if a statement is hard even to understand it surely cannot be self-evident.
Entitled to equal treatment under the law, or something along those lines, is probably what was meant. Yet principles of jurisprudence of this kind are debated even today. This one must have looked pretty bizarre to most reading it in 1776. Then, many Americans, including the authors of the Declaration, owned p. 49 slaves. Can it really have been self-evident that, in a country full of slaves, everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law? Candidates for self-evident truth are statements such as, “I’ve just fallen in a puddle” or “This tea is hot.” Grand principles of justice that few have ever heard before and can hardly understand aren’t really the sort of thing. It is, indeed, pretty hard to come up with any kind of evidence or support for them at all—as philosophers working in the field will tell you. Hence, the temptation to declare them self-evident.
The ploys considered in this chapter have a common failing that may help you to recognize their relatives. They apply not only to the opinion for which they are adduced, but to any opinion at all including its direct contradiction. And that makes them worthless. Something that supports every opinion equally thereby supports none at all.
Another test for the hopeless absence of evidence is what might be called moral positioning. Does the opinion’s defender seem a little precious on the topic? Perhaps it hasn’t yet come to a fatwa, but she may in more subtle ways suggest that those who wish to keep friends in polite society ought to back off. Hurt feelings are in the cards if the matter is pushed too far.
Such sentiments are rarely roused in someone who can defend his position with sound argument and evidence. Tell someone his feet don’t look like a size nine and he will gladly prove you wrong by displaying an old shoe box or setting his feet against someone’s whose you accept are a nine. It is only when someone canp. 50not defend his opinion, and is not interested in believing the truth, that she will attempt to stifle discussion with good manners. Those who take religion, politics, and sex seriously do not adhere to the general prohibition on discussing these topics. And they don’t take offense when they are shown to be wrong.
If you start to feel during a discussion that you are not so much incorrect as insensitive, then you are probably dealing with a respectable bigot.
Only a thug would expose him.
5 – Shut Up!
p. 51 Suppose you suggest to your husband that subsidized llama farming would set California’s economic woes aright, and he takes issue with you on the ground that you are an old bag. He has clearly committed a bad mistake in logic (and perhaps others as well). Because, even if you are an old bag, it may still be true that subsidized llamas are exactly what California needs. The two statements are not inconsistent. Your husband has not won the argument; he has not refuted your opinion.
In another sense, however, he probably has won the argument. Unless you have a really exceptional devotion to agrarian reform in California, his remark will have diverted you from your original hypothesis and on to other topics. Indeed, if you are of normal sensibilities, you may well have been left altogether silent by the remark. The brute has won the argument, in the sense of getting you to drop your point, getting you to shut up.
p. 52 Of course, you gentle readers would never marry such a thug, nor keep his company even as a casual acquaintance. But you will, nevertheless, have encountered remarks that serve only to shut you up, without showing that your position is wrong. And precisely because your friends and family, and your political representatives too, are nice, well-educated people, these remarks will be less obviously brutal and so easier to confuse with a proper refutation. In this chapter, I discuss three kinds of abuse that are commonly passed off as refutation. They are slightly better etiquette than calling your wife an old bag, but no better logic.
Shut Up—You’re Not Allowed to Speak
The Turner Prize is the United Kingdom’s most prestigious contemporary art award. Each year, the candidates are whittled down to a short list of four artists whose work is then displayed in a London gallery before the winner is announced a few weeks later. The event always stimulates a kind of ritualized debate on the merits of contemporary art. Some say it isn’t art at all; others say it is art but extremely bad, while its defenders say it is good art precisely because it elicits the first two responses. This ritual is enormous fun for its participants and so not normally allowed to politicians. In 2002, however, the notoriously indiscreet new Minister for Culture, Kim Howell, dipped a toe in. He scribbled on the gallery comments board that the short-listed works were unworthy of the prize. Or, more precisely, he claimed they were “cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit.”
p. 53 This could not stand. What might the paying public (the tax payers) think? Keith Tyson, the eventual winner of the Turner Prize, came to the rescue, rejecting this criticism by pointing out that the minister couldn’t do better. Or, more precisely, that a drawing by Mr. Howell, sold for charity, was “laborious . . . insipid, a piece of middle-class kitsch so lacking in life that it could win the Daily Mail’s competition for ‘real’ art.”[5.1]
Harsh, but irrelevant. Mr. Howell did not claim that he ought to win the Turner Prize. He claimed that the short-listed artists ought not. His artistic abilities are neither here nor there. It could perfectly well be true that he is a dreadful artist and that the short-listed works are “cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit.” Exposing Mr. Howell’s artistic limitations may have won the argument, in the sense of getting him to keep quiet—it must, after all, be painful to be sneered at by artists when you are Minister for Culture. But this childish “you couldn’t do better” response is still only abuse and intimidation, not refutation.
So is t
he equally common “you can hardly talk” reply. Fat Jack tells Jill that she has put on some weight lately and she replies that he can hardly talk. Well, perhaps Jack can hardly talk; perhaps he is so obese that it takes all his strength to move his lips. But Jill may in fact have put on weight for all that. Jack’s weight is irrelevant. She hasn’t refuted him, just abused him.
Nothing could make the poverty of the “you can hardly talk” reply more obvious than its old-fashioned equivalent: “That’s the p. 54 pot calling the kettle black.” The kettle is black! If the pot is black too, well, so much the worse for the pot, but that hardly changes the kettle’s color.
These are clichés, but don’t think that the underlying mistake is made only by those who use them. In public debate, the idea that you can refute a view by claiming its advocate is not entitled to speak is pervasive, especially on race-related issues.
Fat Jack may not comment on others’ obesity on account of his own. When it comes to race, however, the matter is reversed. Racial characteristics, or issues affecting a race, should be commented upon only by members of the race concerned. As I write, an important case concerning the constitutional status of preferential admission for black university applicants (Grutter v. Bollinger) is being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. I have just read an article by the Associated Press that canvasses the opinions of President Bush’s three top-ranking black secretaries and advisers (Colin Powell, Rod Paige, and Condoleeza Rice): one is for preferential admissions, one is against it, and the other is unsure. Why they hold these positions the article does not say. I gather also, from television and newspapers, that both sides of the debate are keen to have their case publicly supported by blacks. There is, you will admit, nothing unusual about this. That is how it is nowadays with the public discussion of sensitive issues.
There may be a good reason for this, and for all the other complex but reasonably well-understood speech entitlements in our modern society. But, whatever the reason, it cannot be that only those entitled to speak can speak the truth. Whether or not a preferential admission policy is constitutional has nothing to do with p. 55 the race of those who say it is or those who say it isn’t, as the fact that both sides have black advocates makes clear.
Most of us delight in making critical observations about the characteristics of our compatriots or the foibles of family members. The same observation made by an outsider can be offensive. But if it was true in your own mouth, then it is also true in the outsider’s. We mustn’t confuse being sensitive with being right. Nor rudeness with error.
Shut Up—You’re Boring
An opinion’s entertainment value suffers from wear and tear. When you hear something over and over it is likely to become dull. But its truth value does not. An opinion that was true on its first outing does not become false through overuse. Yet it is a common objection to an opinion—as if it constituted a refutation—that we have heard it all before. Opinions and arguments are dismissed as pedestrian, plodding, obvious, tired, and so on. Such objections might be to the point if we were discussing radio plays or striptease shows, but they are irrelevant when considering the truth of an opinion. The speaker may be shamed into silence, but his opinion is not thereby shown false.
On the contrary, most truths are apt to become familiar and unexciting. No one thrills to the idea that the earth orbits the sun like they used to. But this new blasé attitude has not altered the structure of the solar system. Equally, much fiction is surprising and not in the least dull to read, but it remains fiction for all that.
The best refutations also tend to draw on facts that are tediously obvious. How better can you refute an opinion or thep. 56ory than by showing it to be inconsistent with something well-known to be true? Of course, being inconsistent with anything true, well-known or not, refutes a theory. But we avoid unnecessary squabbling when we choose a theory-contradicting truth not itself in dispute.
For example, Marxism, in its early prediction-making phase, made a number of claims about the inevitable effects of capitalism. One was that the workers’ revolution would first occur in the society most advanced along the capitalist road, namely, England. Another was that the workers would become alienated from the products of their own labor. I’m not certain what this latter claim means, but I’m sure it is an interesting idea that people could debate all day long. This makes it a bad route to the refutation of Marxism. Perhaps the workers are not really alienated from the products of their labor and so Marxism is wrong. But who can say? Better to stick with the perhaps tedious but pretty well-known fact that the workers revolution first happened in feudal Russia, not capitalist England.
It is a strength, not a weakness, of an attempted refutation that it draws on the mundanely familiar. Yet, in the academic humanities (literary studies, sociology, and the like), where being sexy is the fashion, refutations are often dismissed on precisely this ground. For example, most humanities students and many academics claim that truth is culturally relative, so that what is true depends on what is the generally held view in the culture concerned. This relativism about truth is inconsistent with some very well-known facts, such as the fact that the earth orbited the sun in A.D. 900. Cultural relativism entails, on the contrary, that in A.D. 900 the sun orbited the earth. This is what people then p. 57 believed, so it was then true. Contradicting something this well-known has always struck me as a serious problem for relativism, and I have pointed it out in many debates. But, trust me, it doesn’t bother the advocates of relativism in the slightest. It is, after all, such a predictable objection, drawing on such a banal observation. Relativism, on the other hand, is excruciatingly sexy—all the more so for flying in the face of well-known facts. Far from flinching, most relativists reply that yes, in A.D. 900 the sun did indeed orbit the earth. What fun!
Perhaps the most perverse variation on this “you’re boring” theme is the “you would say that” reply. It’s perverse because it attempts to hold it against someone that he is consistent in his opinions. Libertarian Jill offers up her latest idea for a free-market solution to a social problem—reducing unemployment by removing the minimum wage, let’s say. Socialist Jack replies that this would exacerbate already unacceptable levels of income inequality in the workforce. And Jill answers, with a roll of the eyes, “You would say that.”
Yes, Jack would say that because he is a Socialist. This is the kind of view Socialists hold. Jack is simply sticking to his political ideology when he worries about income inequality. The question is whether or not the Socialist view that Jack is so admirably consistent in advocating is correct. And Jill’s observation clearly fails to answer this question.
Of course, if they are old friends, Jack and Jill will have had the Libertarianism versus Socialism debate a million times, and Jill’s “you would say that” may just be a way of suggesting that they not have it again. No one is going to put Jill’s proposal into effect, because they are simply chatting in the pub. They can p. 58 afford to move on to their vacation plans without getting to the right answer about the minimum wage.
When politicians chat about such issues, however, things are (or should be) more serious, because the country is run according to the outcomes of their policy debates. Politicians are not friends who might as well sidestep, with a glib remark, what would otherwise be a tedious debate. They lack Jill’s excuse for the “you would say that” reply. But watch out for it in politics and you will see it often: “This is the senator’s familiar old carping,” “Have we not heard enough from Representative Watson on the plight of dairy farmers?,” and so on. The consistent advocacy of an idea is turned on its head, so that instead of counting as an intellectual virtue in the advocate, it counts as a defect in the idea advocated. The idea must be wrong, look how boring its proponents are.
Politicians should try to remember that, even after the introduction of television cameras into Congress, entertainment is not their primary function. The truth can be boring. It is a little disappointing perhaps, like the fact th
at your husband watches too much football on television. But, if you love it you will put up with the dull moments.
Shut Up—You Sound Like Hitler
Mass murder is something of a lottery. Lenin hasn’t done so badly. I recently had a drink in the popular Lenin Bar in Auckland, New Zealand, decorated with red stars and black and white images of the great Communist. Very fetching. Hitler bars, on the other hand, seem to be in short supply. Lenin is also doing all p. 59 right in the world of ideas. Communism isn’t what it was among intellectuals, but you cannot yet dismiss a political or economic view simply by pointing out that it was held by Lenin. Hitler, on the other hand, is like a reverse Einstein. If you can associate someone’s opinion with Hitler, or the Nazis more generally, then goodbye to that idea.
“That’s just what Hitler thought!” would, on its own, constitute a successful refutation of an opinion only if everything Hitler thought was false, which it clearly wasn’t. Even the worst among us has many true beliefs.
Everybody knows this, of course, and so rarely will someone try to refute, for example, the view that Berlin is in Germany on the ground that Hitler thought so. The bogus refutation is reserved for those opinions that can more plausibly be associated with Hitler’s wrongdoing. Anyone who advocates using recent advances in genetic engineering to avoid congenital defects in humans will pretty soon be accused of adopting Nazi ideas. Never mind the fact that the Nazi goals (such as racial purity) and genetic engineering techniques (such as genocide) were quite different from those now suggested. The association is good enough to do the trick. No one wants to look like a Nazi.
Even if the accusation doesn’t completely silence the advocate of genetic engineering, it will certainly put her on the defensive and elicit the now standard preamble about the many (unspecified) ethical problems raised by genetic engineering, how carefully it must be regulated, and so on and on until all this effort to dissociate herself from Nazism has had exactly the opposite effect in the mind of the listener. Apologizing is such a guilty thing to do.