Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated)

by Jay Heinrichs

  Bad proof

  Bad conclusion

  Disconnect between proof and conclusion

  False comparison. Two things are similar, so they must be the same. The all natural fallacy falls under this sin: “Some natural ingredients are good for you, so anything called ‘natural’ is healthful.” The appeal to popularity makes another false comparison: “Other kids get to do it, so why don’t I?” Reductio ad absurdum falsely compares a choice with another, ridiculous choice. The fallacy of antecedent makes a false comparison in time: this moment is identical to past moments. “I’ve never had an accident, so I can’t have one now.” The closely related false analogy joins apples to oranges and calls them the same. “Because gay men are sexually attracted to other men, we should keep them out of the classroom—they must be pederasts as well.” Finally, the unit fallacy does weird math with apples and oranges, often confusing the part for the whole. “Violent crime dropped by 5 percent last year, and by another 8 percent this year, so it dropped a total of 13 percent.” A part of a part gets confused with a part of the whole.

  Bad example. The example that the persuader uses to prove the argument is false, unbelievable, irrelevant, or wrongly interpreted. The hasty generalization uses too few examples and interprets them too broadly. “LeBron James uses a certain kind of sneaker; buy it and you’ll become a basketball star.” A close relative is the fallacy called misinterpreting the evidence. It takes the exception and claims it proves the rule. “That guy lost weight eating Subway sandwiches. If you eat at Subway, you’ll lose weight!”

  Ignorance as proof. In this case the argument claims that the lack of examples proves that something doesn’t exist. “I can’t find any deer, so these woods don’t have any.” The fallacy of ignorance has its flip side: “Because my theory has never been disproved, it must be true.” Just about any superstition falls under this fallacy.

  Tautology. A logical redundancy in which the proof and the conclusion are the same thing (we’re here because we’re here because we’re here because…). “We won’t have trouble selling this product because it’s easily marketable.”

  False choice. The number of choices you’re given is not the number of choices that actually exist. The many questions fallacy is a false choice; it squashes two or more issues into a single one. “When did you stop beating your wife?” A related fallacy, the false dilemma, offers the audience two choices when more actually exist.

  Red herring. This sin distracts the audience to make it forget what the main issue is about. A variant is the straw man fallacy, which sets up a different issue that’s easier to argue. You say, “Who drank up all the orange juice?” and your spouse says, “Well, you tell me why the dishes aren’t done.”

  Wrong ending. The proof fails to lead to the conclusion. Lots of fallacies fall under this sin; one of the most common is the slippery slope, which predicts a dire series of events stemming from a single choice. “Allow that newfangled rock music, and kids will start having orgies in the streets.” Another is post hoc ergo propter hoc, the Chanticleer fallacy. It assumes that if one thing follows another, the first thing caused the second one.

  16. Call a Foul

  NIXON’S TRICK

  The pitfalls and nastiness that can bollix an argument

  Rhetoric is an open palm, dialectic a closed fist. —ZENO

  My first experience with debating was in junior high school. We didn’t have a debate team; this was more like a Lunch Period Repartee Society. My friends and I sat in the cafeteria and amused ourselves by arm-wrestling over half-melted slabs of ice cream; when we tired of that game, we turned to another, equally intellectual pursuit called “If You Do That.” The object was to threaten each other with such elaborately disgusting harm that the loser wouldn’t be able to finish his lunch. It was like snaps, the game of bantering insults, except that we didn’t insult each other. We just grossed each other out.

  If you do that, I’ll dig out your eyeballs and shove them—

  Meanings

  Philosophers call the mannerly dialogue of formal logic dialectic. It’s like the figures in figure skating: precise, self-contained, and boring. Zeno, the ancient Greek philosopher-mathematician, contrasted dialectic’s “closed fist” with rhetoric’s “open palm.”

  I’m sorry, but it is impossible to describe this game without alienating the reader, and myself for that matter. The point is that we used our thirteen-year-old wit competitively in a classically useless and time-wasting fashion. Without knowing it, we mimicked some of the early Sophists, who included the sleaziest rhetoricians. They argued simply to win arguments, using logical and pathetic trickery to tie their opponents in knots. This is where the term “sophistry” comes from, and how rhetoric got its less than stellar reputation. These guys were out to dominate, not deliberate. In rhetoric, that constitutes the biggest foul of all: to turn an argument into a fight.

  Fighting also happens to be practically the only foul you can commit in rhetoric. In sports they say it’s a foul only if the ref blows the whistle; the same is true in argument. When someone commits a logical fallacy, it rarely helps to point it out. The purpose of argument is to be persuasive, not “correct.” Pure logic works like organized kids’ soccer: it follows strict rules, and no one gets hurt. Argument allows tackling. You wouldn’t want to put yourself in a game where the opposing team gets to tackle while your team plays hands-off. That’s what happens when you stick to logic in day-to-day argument; you play by the rules, and your opponents get to tackle you. While it is important to know how to spot and answer a logical fallacy, if you limit yourself to simply pointing them out, your opponents will clobber you. Rhetoric allows logical fallacies, unless they distract a debate or turn it into a fight.

  So long as you stick to argument, making a genuine attempt to persuade instead of score points, rhetoric lets you get away with many fallacies that formal logic forbids. Take this old-time family argument.

  PARENT: Eat everything on your plate, because kids are starving in [insert name of impoverished nation].

  The parent commits the logical sin of the wrong ending: the proof fails to lead to the choice. Eating everything is unlikely to end starvation in the Third World; in fact, a kid can point out that the opposite might be true.

  CLASSIC WISE-ASS REPLY: Well, hey, let’s send them my vegetables. I’ll help pay postage.

  My children love to talk back like that, which is my own fault. Proud as I am that they know how to handle a fallacy, I have been a lenient parent, rhetorically speaking. But you can do more than just recognize fallacies. In rhetoric, it’s actually kosher to use many of them in your own arguments.

  Strangely enough, while logic forbids illogical thinking, rhetoric allows it. The kids-are-starving angle, for example, is rhetorically wrong only if it fails to persuade. That’s because, nonsensical as the argument is logically, it makes emotional sense. The parent uses it not to end starvation but to make his child feel guilty. So while it’s not a logical argument, it makes a decent pathetic one—provided the kid misses the fallacy.

  Common Fallacy

  THE FALLACY OF POWER: The person on top wants it, so it must be good. This logical fallacy is fine to use in argument.

  Here’s another logical mistake, which I deliberately excluded from the seven deadly logical sins: the fallacy of power. Because the guy in charge wants it, this fallacy says, it must be good.

  COWORKER: Hey, if the boss wants to do it, I say we should do it.

  Does the boss’s inclination make the choice a good one? Besides, what does she have underlings for? Surely not to think.

  PROPER RHETORICAL REPLY: Are you making a good decision or just being a suck-up?

  But back up a second. Was that response really fair? What if the boss is smart and know
s the business better than anyone else? Is it such a bad idea to trust her decision? The appeal to authority can be a logical fallacy, but it’s also an important ethos tool. If your boss thinks it wise to relocate the company to Anchorage, and you know her to be a savvy businesswoman, then you have a decent probability that Anchorage is a good idea.

  This is where pure logic and rhetorical logos part ways. In most cases, there are no right or wrong decisions in argument; there’s only likely and unlikely. We find ourselves back in the misty realm of deliberative argument, where black-and-white becomes the Technicolor of probability. If the boss’s inclination makes the decision seem more legitimate, then your colleague has a good reason to try it on you. After all, he is not trying to persuade the boss; he’s talking to you.

  Logically inclined parents (no, that is not an oxymoron) usually call a fallacy when a kid uses a peer as an authority.

  KID: My friend Eric says Mr. LaBomba is a mean teacher.

  PARENT: Just because Eric says he’s mean doesn’t mean it’s true.

  But do we really deal with the truth here? The kid states an opinion, not a fact. Aristotle might actually back her up, since in deliberative argument the consumer makes the best judge. If she can convince her parent that Eric is a psychological prodigy, then the probability of Mr. LaBomba’s meanness goes way up.

  KID: Oh, yeah? Well, remember when Eric said there was something sneaky about Miss Larson and the cops caught her stealing money from all the other teachers and she went to jail?

  Eric is starting to look like a pretty good forensic psychologist. If I were the parent, I would keep an eye on Mr. LaBomba.

  The essential difference between formal logic and rhetoric’s deliberative argument is that, while logic has many rules, argument has but a few.

  Actually, it has just one rule, with a few ramifications: never argue the inarguable. In other words, don’t block the argument. Anything that keeps it from reaching a satisfactory conclusion counts as a foul.

  Meanings

  Ramification is an eponym—a word named after a person. Petrus Ramus was a sixteenth-century French rhetorician who banished logic from rhetoric. A strict Calvinist who believed that only God and truth could rule us, he emasculated rhetoric by dividing it into dysfunctional academic departments. In short, Ramus ramified. French authorities had him burned at the stake as a heretic.

  Imagine a game of no-rules soccer, where the field has no bounds, you can body-check and tackle any way you want, and all you have to do is get the ball past the goalie. Even though things might get rough, the game is playable as long as everybody has the right attitude. But what if players went beyond body-checking and started kicking one another in the groin? Or worse, whipped out their smartphones and started texting their friends? Then the game would deteriorate. Alternatively, if there was only one ball and a player picked it up and took it home, that would end the game altogether. Even a “no-rules” game has a few minimal rules: you need a ball and goals, and the players have to play.

  The same thing goes for argument, only without the ball. You need goals, and everyone has to remain intent on real persuasion. Things can get a little rough—you might have some logical horseplay, an ad hominem attack or two, some intense emotions, crude language, even—but the game continues. The argument can reach its conclusion so long as no one fights or distracts. In rhetoric, fighting and distracting constitute the same foul: in each case it means arguing the inarguable.

  Persuasion Alert

  Who said anything about buying the world a Coke? I set up an idealistic straw man to make my no-rules argument sound more reasonable.

  I love rhetoric’s refreshing lack of rules. It forgives your logical sins. It says to humanity, Don’t ever change, you’re beautiful. Any sort of discourse that required reforming humans would make me hide in my cabin. Idealists who begin sentences with “Can’t we all just…” should have their guitars smashed and their flowers trampled. I don’t want to buy the world a Coke and live in perfect harmony; harmony means unanimity, and history shows that unanimity is a scary thing. I’d prefer to play rhetoric’s no-rules game with just a few rules.

  Fine Nixonian Rhetoric

  Useful Figure

  The yogiism (“no-rules game with just a few rules”) is a figure of logical nonsense named after the immortal baseball player and manager Yogi Berra, the man who said, “No one goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

  In deliberative argument, the only real foul, arguing the inarguable, makes the conversation grind to a halt or turn into a fight. Take this next quote, which, like the last one, commits the sin of the wrong ending; the proof fails to lead to the choice.

  If we pull out now, our soldiers will have died in vain.

  In that sentence (an enthymeme; remember the enthymeme?), the proof is the supposed endgame—soldiers dying for nothing. (You can find it by planting “because” into the enthymeme: “We shouldn’t pull out now, because that means our soldiers will have died in vain.”) The choice is to pull out or not to pull out. But the proof fails to lead to the choice. We have a real cause-and-effect problem here. Will continuing the war add meaning to the soldiers’ sacrifice? Yes, but only if continuing the war leads to victory, and the quote says nothing about the likelihood of success.

  Common Fallacy

  GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD: Trying to rectify a mistake by continuing it. A logical fallacy, but you can use it pathetically without breaking rhetorical rules. The fallacy is related to a trait psychologists talk about: loss aversion. People are willing to spend more to avoid the risk of a small loss than for the chance of a big gain.

  When corporate types commit this fallacy, they throw good money after bad. A corporation buys a rotten company and then pours money into the lousy merger for fear of wasting the money it already spent.

  Householders do it, too. Take the good-money-after-bad fallacy, known in the economics world as a “sunk cost”: a guy brings home a pricey flat-screen television and discovers he can’t hang it on his wall. So he spends another thousand on a custom-made shelf. But the TV is a lemon, and he returns it, only to find that the company has discontinued that model and all the replacements are a different size. So he returns to the cabinetry store…

  TRY THIS IN A MEETING

  When someone says of a losing investment, “After all we put into it, we can’t stop now,” ask him: “If it were a double-or-nothing bet, do you think the odds would be good enough to take it?”

  You can see why you want to recognize a logical fallacy when it hits you. But while fallacies will gum up formal logic, they can help you in an argument. As with the kids-are-starving chestnut, you can use it as a legitimate pathetic appeal. Mr. Spock’s formal logic forbids emotion, while rhetoric encourages it. Most people can’t bear the thought of abandoning a war in which citizens gave their lives. As long as you stay in the future tense and focus on the likelihood of victory, you still follow the lax rules of rhetoric.

  In fact, a good rebuttal can use the same pathetic weapon.

  RHETORICAL YOU: Don’t you dare talk about our soldiers dying in vain! By successfully ending the war, we’ll be honoring our dead soldiers.

  Notice how I changed the definition of “pulling out” from an ignominious disaster to a sort of victory. Pretty neat trick. Nixon used it to great effect in Vietnam. The logician will have a conniption over this, but deliberative argument, unlike logic, doesn’t seek the truth—only the best choice. If changing the definition helps the audience decide whether to support a war, then your “fallacy” is no foul.

  Consider the effect that a purer, more logically correct response might have on your audience.

  LOGICAL YOU: That’s a fallacy! If the war effort fails, then many more soldiers will have died in vain.

  This solid logical response risks making you look cold and
heartless. Real deaths are more wrenching than theoretical ones. Besides, calling a foul here is like getting mad when someone bumps you in ice hockey. Don’t expect an apology.

  Spock for President

  Take another logical fallacy that’s good rhetoric: the appeal to popularity.

  KID: All the other kids make fun of me for taking the bus. They think I’m weird.

  Instead of logos, the kid makes a pathetic appeal. It could actually work on some besotted parents. But the more rhetorically inclined might choose an unsympathetic response.

  Persuasion Alert

  It would have been more forthright to put fallacies in the “Advanced Offense” section. But a persuader has to start with what the audience believes, and few audiences consider the fallacy a legitimate offense.

  PROPER RHETORICAL REPLY: Ridicule builds character. So does riding the bus.

  You have just left the pure and noble realm of logos and wandered into the seedier neighborhoods of pathos and ethos—the terrain of emotional manipulation and ad hominem attacks, where rhetoric feels right at home. Logos alone rarely inspires commitment. And a tactic that wins a logical argument will almost certainly lose a political one. Michael Dukakis demonstrated this principle during the 1988 presidential campaign, when he gave a disastrous answer to a vicious question. Bernard Shaw, the moderator, asked Dukakis to imagine someone perpetrating a sex crime against his wife.