American Paradox

Logical Fallacies are a favorite subject for my late-night efforts to evade doing real work that I should be doing. For one thing, it is fascinating how many people have heard of these fallacies and still keep on employing them in arguments. Not that humans are always or even often rational, of course.

Some good web collections of logical fallacies can be found here on Wikipedia and here at the Fallacy Files website. One of my favorite is Tu Quoque, which is Latin for "you, too" or "you, also" (or however you want to translate it). As the name implies, this fallacy is when someone, say person B, responds to person A's argument that person B does or believes something wrong or inconsistent (for example) by saying, "yes that is true, but you [person A] do that as well!" This isn't really an argument defending person B, but interestingly, very few humans pick up on that. Most people in person A's position immediately go on the defensive, which is exactly what person B wanted them to do. The example used on the Fallacy Files site is where Osama Bin Laden responds to a CNN interview question (in 1997) about whether he is funding terrorism in Afghanistan by saying that the U.S. engages in terrorism too. Well that obviously doesn't answer the question (indeed, in this case it is an admission!) and it is an irrelevant response to the argument/question.

Another neat list on Wikipedia, somewhat related to Logical Fallacies, is their long list of Cognitive Biases. These biases prevent people from being perfect "rational actors" as many economists seem to assume they are...

A related logical fallacy to Tu Quoque that I encounter a lot is the "illusion of double standards" argument. This is where someone argues that the other person is being hypocritical by applying one rule or standard to themselves and another to other people. The tricky part of this fallacy is that sometimes the allegation is true -- there do exist, unsurprisingly, examples of pepople acting hypocritically or inconsistently applying rules when it is convenient, et cetera. However, this is not always the case, and jumping to that conclusion is a sign of poor reasoning in some situations. The key thing to remember is that double standards only exist where the rule to be applied, as properly stated, actually applies to both situations. Let me put it this way -- if you accuse someone of hypocritically violating a rule that they criticize other people for violating, you must first ensure that the rule actually applies to the alleged hypocrite, because sometimes it won't. Maybe other rules apply to them. This is not as disingenuous a rationale as it at first seems, and many people also have a knee-jerk response to this explanation!

Here is a simple example that illustrates the problems of telling when the rule is being applied consistently or not. If a vegan argues with a typical American omnivore that the latter's dietary choices are hypocritical, what is he claiming? The vegan is arguing that the omnivore treats animals and humans differently, and perhaps he throws in the fact, "and you own a dog too! Would you eat your own dog? How are cows and pigs any different?!?" The omnivore has a simple explanation, however. To the omnivore, there are hierarchies of moral worth, and some animals do not have moral status whereby a standard that says, "do not eat creatures that have high moral value similar to humans" (an expansion on the old human taboo against cannibalism) would apply to them. Apparently pigs and cows are out of luck. Now, the vegan can object ferociously to what he would view as the illogical line-drawing between animals of comparable intelligence, et cetera - or however he puts it. But that is an entirely separate debate! All I am saying in this case is that you cannot argue that the omnivore is pursuing a "double standard" by owning a dog and also eating beef and pork.

Wow, that got over-long...