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How to Think Like Aquinas

Page 13

by Kevin Vost


  Got them all? Good! If not, please refer another time or two to the summary table in chapter 7 or in the Master Mnemonic Table in the appendix.

  We have so much more to remember in the pages ahead, but since we will memorize concepts expressed in just one word or a brief phrase, I believe you will find them much easier to recall than the ten precepts, especially as your powers of memory continue to grow through these guided exercises. There is far too much to learn to cram into our memory foyer. Therefore, I invite you right now to follow me (or better yet, St. Thomas Aquinas) out of the foyer and into our adjoining mnemonic living room.

  Ah, but first one piece of advice. Our memories operate best when they are fed digestible chunks of reasonable size. Therefore, I will dispense this mnemonic and intellectual feast in small servings of only five items at a time. Please feel free to learn five at a time, and then get up from the table, relax a bit, walk the dog, see to your other responsibilities, and come back another time to add the next five. Rome, after all, wasn’t built in a day. On the other hand, if you are a stalwart soul with a ravenous appetite for knowledge, and you have the time and energy to spare, I invite you to see if you can consume, digest, and remember all twenty fallacies contained in this chapter without getting mental indigestion. In any event, this chapter’s dinner will now be served in the living room, the dining room, and even in the family room!

  Logical Fallacies 1–5 (Locations 11–15)140

  Now, the first odd thing that strikes you as you walk into this room is that Thomas himself greets you in Latin. Judging by the look on your face, which indicates that Latin may be all Greek (unfamiliar) to you, he continues in perfect, modern-day English. I’ll soon explain the reason for this.

  For now, let’s proceed into the center of the living room (location 11), where you find the first of seven quite argumentative people. The first one is the scariest because he is wielding in one hand what you first thought was a vacuum cleaner, but which, upon closer inspection, you see is really a big club. Next, gazing through the large picture window (12) into the backyard, you see an archaeologist arguing with an ancient-looking skeleton he has dug up there. “This skeleton,” he yells to you, “is an early Homo sapiens.” Going back into the living room and over to a sofa (13), you behold a scene just as odd, if not more so, for there sits a man who has just finished arguing with a human-size ant on the cushion next to him. Apparently, he has had enough, for his arms are folded and he has turned his back now, ignoring the ant. In front of the sofa is a large coffee table (14), on which sits an old miser wrapping a cord around a bag of money. Across from the coffee table is a wide-screen TV (15), and who should be on it but two of the nation’s most popular actors arguing with each other.

  Living Room

  So then, have you locked in your memory the man with a club that looked like a vacuum in the center of the living room (11), the archaeologist arguing with a Homo sapiens skeleton seen through the picture window (12), the man ignoring an ant on the sofa (13), the miser with his corded bag of money on the coffee table (14), and the popular actors arguing on TV (15)? I imagine that you have, but if not, please just rehearse them another time or two, and then I will show you what else you’ve just remembered, too!

  All right then, it is time to reveal the serious abstract concepts those whimsical images help call to mind. We imagined an argumentative man with what looked like a vacuum but was really a club to help us remember the logical fallacy known in Latin as the argumentum ad baculum, meaning “the argument to the cudgel” or “the appeal to the stick,” a false form of argument that really consists of a threat. The archaeologist and the Homo sapiens skeleton will call to mind the fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem (argument to the man), which attacks the arguer instead of the argument. The man ignoring the ant represents, of course, the argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument from ignorance); the miser and his cord represent the argumentum ad misericordium (the appeal to misery or pity); and the popular actors are playing the part for us of the argumentum ad populum (argument to the people).

  These simple mnemonic images are based on homonyms and puns that remind us of the sound of the names of these logical fallacies. Some, like the stick-wielding man for the argumentum ad baculum, also lock in clues to their meanings. Fuller descriptions of their meanings will follow in just a page or two, once we’ve made sure we’ve memorized all their names. First, let’s lay out all of this room’s fallacies clearly for all to see — and remember:

  Location

  Image

  Fallacy

  11. Center of living room

  Man with vacuum, no — stick

  Argumentum ad baculum

  12. Picture window

  Archaeologist and Homo sapiens

  Argumentum ad hominem

  13. Sofa

  Man ignores ant

  Argumentum ad ignorantiam

  14. Coffee table

  Miser with cord and money bag

  Argumentum ad misericordium

  15. Big-screen TV

  Popular actors argue

  Argumentum ad populum

  Oh, and lest I forget, Thomas began the tour of our living room speaking Latin because our first seven fallacies are presented with their Latin forms to show how long they have been known to logicians and because they are often still referred to by their Latin names. We’ll remember the last two with Latin names as we head out of the living room in our next chapter’s memory tour.

  Now, let’s dig in a little deeper, for if you would think like Aquinas, you would do well to learn every one of them, so as to be able to identify them and call them out whenever you might find them lurking about, trying to lure you or others from the truth.

  11. Argumentum ad baculum. Baculum is Latin for “stick” or “cudgel,” so this fallacy is also known in English as the “argument to the cudgel” or “appeal to the stick.” It is the substitution of a threat of force for a valid logical argument for those who believe that “might makes right.” It essentially says, “Agree with me — or else!” St. Thomas dealt with this tactic in his Summa Contra Gentiles, when he warned against religious beliefs that had spread not through the persuasive evidence of supernatural signs, but through force and armed violence.141 Unfortunately, we see that this form of “argument” has reared its violent, ugly head again in some modern-day Islamic radical extremists, and at the world’s great peril. Still, no one people, region of the world, religion, or belief system has a complete monopoly on the argument ad baculum. We can see it, for another example, in some modern secular opponents of the freedom of speech in the United States in recent years, as some speakers invited to American college campuses have been prevented from voicing their arguments by crowds of people intolerant of contrary views, carrying and using not figurative, but literal sticks.

  12. Argumentum ad hominem. Arguments “against the man” instead of his reasoning really boil down to insults rather than logical refutations. Perhaps the most common version of the ad hominem is called “poisoning the well.” Here, something negative is stated about a person to discredit whatever arguments he might make, thereby bypassing the arguments themselves. I tried to illustrate this tactic with two that have been slung at me on a popular bookseller’s website. In one attack, a commentator on one of my reviews of another author’s book on evolution and language said that he saw that I believed in God and was therefore unqualified to comment on scientific topics (as would be countless Catholic scientists, from devout layman Louis Pasteur, the “Father of Microbiology,” to the priests Father Gregor Mendel, the “Fa
ther of Genetics,” and Father George Lemaître, originator of the big bang theory in cosmology). In another, a man attacked me for a book I wrote with arguments countering atheism — before the book had been released. I thanked him and noted that I looked forward to further reviews from people who had a chance to read it! I now see that both examples are no longer on the site, removed either by their authors or the website administrators. Unfortunately, in our time, we see these kinds of attacks used increasingly in political discourse — labeling, for example, religious believers or holders of particular political positions as being “against science” without any specific analysis of their arguments on particular issues. Such tactics have no place in the repertoire of those who think like Aquinas.

  13. Argumentum ad ignorantiam. A person using this fallacious argument appeals to our ignorance or lack of knowledge by claiming that if we cannot prove that his statement is false, then it must be true. A favorite aphorism of my mentor in neuropsychology was “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Just because we do not yet have evidence of some phenomenon or condition, it does not mean it could not be present. This was frequently seen when patients whose family members suspected they had dementia were found to have normal cursory mental status by their physician or neurologist, but were soon after found, upon more thorough neuropsychological testing, to be in the early stages of dementia. This fallacy can also entail a misuse of the “burden of proof” in logical argumentation. If an atheist proclaims that God does not exist, then the burden of proof is on him to make his case. If a theist proclaims that God does exist, then the burden of proof is on him to make his case — as St. Thomas Aquinas did so well, appealing not to ignorance but to the highest capacities of the human intellect!

  14. Argumentum ad misericordium. The appeal to misery or pity perverts the positive human capacity for empathy to circumvent the use of reason. If you tell your professor you need a certain grade to keep a scholarship or perhaps get into a particular graduate school, hoping to bypass his normal grading scale, you have employed this fallacy. (Having been an adjunct professor, I can attest that this fallacy is still alive and well!) It may be applied to even more serious and far-reaching issues, too. For example, an advocate of abortion might attack a person who opposes it as lacking in empathy for the welfare of the mother, sidestepping the issues of the welfare and very life of the child, not to mention the potential negative lingering effects on the mother’s physical, mental, and moral well-being, the negative effects on the father, and on the nation that promotes the death of the future generations of its own citizens.

  15. Argumentum ad populum. This argument “to the people” is an “appeal to the masses,” also referred to as “the bandwagon fallacy.” It asserts that some idea, product, or practice must be true or good if the majority or a vast number of people in a population believe it is true, use the product, or practice the activity. It appeals to a desire to fit in and be accepted by others, and teens may be especially vulnerable to such false arguments from their friends. “Why not do X, because everybody’s doing it?” It is the kind of fallacy that my own mother used to warn my siblings and me about: “If all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off too?” In a sense, embracing this fallacy is an abdication of the use of our own reason, functioning at the sensitive level of a parrot or a sheep rather than as a rational human being made in God’s image.

  Logical Fallacies 6–10 (Locations 16–20)

  Now, let’s move right along in our living room and meet the next five logical fallacies lurking there. Across the living room and under the chimney, you see now a fireplace (16) and standing over a pot inside is an argumentative man disputing with a fish that is starting to boil. You can tell by its ferocious teeth that it is a huge barracuda. Having had about enough of the odd and argumentative crew of the living room, you decide to make your exit. Arriving at the living-room doorway (17) you see one last strange and disconcerting scene, for there stands a dictator, yelling at a simpleton who is wearing one of those old-fashioned pointed dunce caps.

  You cross the threshold and arrive at our dining-room doorway (18) which is partially blocked by the largest pair of dice you’ve ever seen, but you conclude that they are false dice when you see that the face of each one shows an overfull seven dots. Next, you spy the table. At its head (19) a giant pair of denim jeans falls from the chair, and you see it. Finally (for this chapter anyway), on the table’s center (20) a man in military uniform loaded with medals and with shoulder epaulets loaded with stars, quickly paces around. You surmise that he seems to be a rather hasty general.

  Dining Room

  So then, do you remember the man and barracuda bickering at the fireplace, the dictator yelling at the simpleton at the living-room doorway, the false dice at the dining-room doorway, the jeans falling off the chair at the head of the table, and the hasty general pacing around the table’s center? You most likely will if you simply rehearse them another time or two (and perhaps once in backward order, to lock them in).

  As for what we have remembered, the barracuda represents the argumentum ad verecundiam (argument to authority). If, after examining its explanation in chapter 12, the image barracuda and name verecundiam do not automatically call to mind the fact that this is the argument from authority, please feel free to embellish your image using the “keyword method” to lock in its meaning. Mnemonic keywords trigger not only a word’s sound, but its meaning as well. So, for example, you could imagine that this barracuda is wearing glasses and reading a book, because he is an authority on fish, or you could imagine him writing a book, so the idea that he is an author will remind you of authority. You could even imagine him reading Aristotle or wearing a sweater with the name Aristotle on it, the ancient Greek being a favorite authority for many a scientist, philosopher, and theologian for centuries.

  In what I hope was a wise use of metamemory (knowledge about how memory operates), I have not made all of our images explicit keywords that also lock in meaning, so as not to overwhelm your memory by making things unnecessarily complicated. Feel free to embellish your images to depict more of the meanings, if and when you find it necessary.

  Now, where were we? Yes, the dictator and simpleton represent the dicto simpliciter that oversimplifies things. The false dice stand for the ever-popular fallacy of the false dichotomy, the jeans falling that you see serve to remind us of the genetic fallacy that circumvents addressing an argument by merely attacking its source or origin. Finally, the hasty general stands (well, paces) most fittingly, for hasty generalization. We’ll dig into what they all mean next.

  Location

  Image

  Fallacy

  16. Living-room fireplace

  Man argues with barracuda

  Argumentum ad verecundiam

  17. Living-room doorway

  Dictator and simpleton

  Dicto simpliciter

  18. Dining-room doorway

  False dice

  False dichotomy

  19. Head of table

  Jeans fall, and you see

  Genetic fallacy

  20. Center of table

  Pacing military general

  Hasty generalization

  16. Argumentum ad verecundiam. The Latin word verecundia denotes modesty and knowing one’s place, but the fallacious argument ad verecundiam bespeaks an inappropriate and misplaced modesty that grants an authority more credit than it is due. It is probably known more widely as the “appeal to authority.” Medieval thinkers are commonly caricatured as people who inappropriately appealed to authorit
y to settle scientific matters, specifically the authority of Aristotle, in lieu of actually investigating them. Thomas does cite Aristotle many hundreds of times in his Summa Theologica, and in almost every “On the contrary” section of each article, he cites some kind of authority. What the modern “authorities” often leave out is that Aristotle himself was a great pioneer in scientific observation, being a father of biology, as well as logic. Further, the greatest medieval thinkers studied Aristotle both to embrace his truths and to refute his errors. Indeed, Thomas’s teacher St. Albert the Great wrote an entire treatise on Aristotle’s errors. Thomas himself wrote that “the argument based on human authority is the weakest.” He cites authorities as starting points to his positions but always continues his “I answer that” sections with his own analyses.

  Also, the partial quotation from Thomas provided above, writing as a Catholic, ended with the statement: “Yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest,” since God’s own authority is indeed impeccable!142

  And, of course, how can we forget precept 7: “Do not place value on who says what, but rather, commit to memory what true things are said.”

  17. Dicto simpliciter. This fallacy involves stating a case too simply, ignoring exceptions to general rules of thumb. An example borrowing from our previous discussion of exercise in chapter 10 would be to declare that since barbell squats stimulate a greater hormonal response than any other exercise, everybody should squat. This would ignore the fact that, due to a variety of possible reasons, including significant damage to one’s knees, back, or hips, or a severe heart or neurological condition, although squats are good in general, they could cause more harm than good for some people with special conditions. There is a sense in which this fallacy is contrary to the virtue of gnome, which Thomas writes about as an aid to the virtue of prudence. Gnome takes not only general rules, but special conditions into consideration before rendering judgments.

 

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