Guest post: Any specious argument or catechism will do
Originally a comment by Holms on Who advocate for their rights or interests.
Sastra
I just had a TRA tell me that thinking that a child going through puberty naturally […] is the Naturalistic Fallacy.
There seems to be surge in people calling things fallacies without realising a statement needs to meet a certain extremely basic formulation “A because B” in order to be an argument at all; before it can be declared a fallacious argument, it must first be an argument. And so it is extremely common lately for people to declare that any insult in a comment renders the entire comment an ad hominem argument, irrespective of whether the insult was relied upon in making an argument, or if the insulting thing was a conclusion of the argument rather than being a premise of it, or if the comment made an argument at all.
This seems to be part of a broad trend in TRA arguments – words and terms have simply lost their original meanings. Trying to set the record of a conversation straight, regarding who said what and when, with references to comment numbers and direct quotes? Gaslighting. Pointing out someone’s abusiveness? Sea Lioning. Responding to abuse in kind? Ad hominem. Explaining the difference between infer and imply, because someone leapt to an idiotic conclusion and called that lunacy a ‘direct implication’ of what I said? Intent is not magic.
And so on throughout arguments with TRAs on the usual topics… I have been told, in a discussion about the origins of public toilets being sex rather than gender segregated, bringing up the history of toilets is an Appeal to Tradition fallacy. I have been told, in a discussion about the meaning of the words ‘woman’ and ‘man’, pointing out that word meanings in natural languages arise from common use is an Appeal to Popularity. Oh and forget about etymology in a discussion of historical words meanings and their changes, that’s just another Appeal to Tradition.
Any specious argument or catechism will do, if it is convenient in the moment.
I’m glad you liked it!
Excellent points, Holms! I’m particularly annoyed at the use of “ad hominem” whenever someone just means “insult”. It seems to be the favorite phrase of particularly unread persons, and reminds me of the time when I was told that ” ‘whom’ is just a fancy way to say ‘who’ “.
Yes, I think people in general draw analogies which don’t really apply, and then, if we’re interested in clear thinking, we fit them into a fallacy.
I think this would be true if we were dealing with a child whose own hormones weren’t working right, and, when doctors prescribed well-tested artificial replacement hormones, the parent objected. “I won’t give my baby anything made in a lab — Nature works best!” That might fall under the label of Naturalistic Fallacy.
But of course with Lupron we’re not dealing with that sort of scenario. We’re stopping a healthy hormonal process with a drug with known side effects, unknown side effects, being used off-label, in order to give different hormones the body wasn’t developed to handle. All in the name of conformity.
I’ve seen TRAs increasingly refer to forcing children into a ‘non-consensual puberty’. A nonsense – one might as well object to non-consensual toenail growth – but a subtle couching of the issue in the language of sexual assault, with feminists as predators.
And don’t forget the Biology Fallacy, involving a specious male-female dichotomy, and thus the Science Fallacy, as biology is included in science. And so, please always remember the Philosophy Fallacy, as science, along with all other knowledge, is included in philosophy.
And so all is Fallacy, and the enormous edifice of human understanding comes crashing down in ruins, and all because of one monumental advance: Transargument.
And so further, ladies and gentlemen, we cross a frontier and enter the next universe. Well, as the trendy saying goes: shit happens.
“Consensual…” where have I heard that word before? Ah, right. Consensual relations, consensual relationships, consensual intercourse, etc.
What’s the age of consent again? Ah, right, sometime well after puberty. Children are below the age of consent; they may not, by definition, consent. There is no consensual sex with children, there is no consensual puberty and no non-consensual puberty.
Pervy TRAs. Giving up the game: it’s all about sex with them.
Papito #6 wrote:
The comparison between consensual sex vs. non consensual sex (i e rape) and “consensual puberty” vs “non consensual puberty” (i e identity rape) is an analogy based on the idea that children are on level with adults when it comes to basic human rights. Which is basically true.
But again there are limitations. The discussion I referred to included this:
I don’t really disagree with that… the problem lies in the interpretation of the last phrase. “The child’s terms” can involve childishness— lack of insight, foresight, and information. Children aren’t adept at understanding situations, or even themselves very well.
Gender Identity Theory overrides that when it claims that gender identity is innate, unmistakable, and immutable. The child is an expert. Their terms then aren’t derived from their surrounding culture, but are as clear, valid, and necessary as a baby demanding to be fed.
False Analogy.
I do disagree with that – it’s way too sweeping. “A child says they have a problem” all the time, because children want a lot of things they can’t have. And “children are their own people” is pretty sweeping too. Sure they are, in a sense, but they’re also related to their parents unless adopted, they’re also under the protection of their parents, they’re the responsibility of their parents, and so on and so on. Children are not fully independent, because that wouldn’t work, because they’re children. They get more freedoms over time, but they’re not just miniature adults who somehow ended up in the household of some random full-size adults.
It’s as though a significant portion of the people using these terms don’t really understand them. (Yeah, I’m feeling facetious today.) This tendency is unfortunately universal. It’s how we learn language in the first place, as well as how we end up with eggcorns and malapropisms. We learn the barest amount and then extrapolate, often to incorrect extremes. Thus we have hypercorrection and rule over-application. The misuse of fallacies is ultimately no different from the misuse of “gender”, “quantum”, and anything else the woo merchants peddle.
If one were to say, “This is natural. That is unnatural. Natural is better than unnatural. Therefore this is better than that,” then yes, that would be the naturalistic fallacy. However, merely saying, “This is better than that, and this is natural,” is a bare conjunction.
This seems to be the thinking in the rising use of reflexive pronouns where it makes no sense.
“Please, contact Jeff or myself.” “Whenever Jane or myself talk about this…”
It makes me feel like I’m about to experience Cu Chullain’s warp spasm.
@Ophelia;
I do agree that children are people in their own right — “they do not exist to please adults or fulfill the dreams of adults.” Legally speaking, they can’t be used as punching bags or sex toys, and ethically speaking there’s no moral obligation on their part to become a ballerina or give their parents grandchildren. Also, legally and morally, children have a right to have certain problems addressed — they’re hungry, sick, cold, etc. That’s not a concession to the whole, it’s strengthening the common ground. Doing so is not just fair to the other side, it helps head off unnecessary attacks about me wanting obedient little puppets and so forth. “Yes, this.”
But the second part — “But not this” — is exactly as you put it. So it’s probably a matter of tactics or emphasis, rather than disagreement between us. The same might even be true for my Transactivist opponent, though I have to reign in my tendency to assume that people who argue like this have never had any children. Plenty of them have. They’re treating gender identity as a special case, and writing romantic stories in their head where they rescue the unhappy prince and princess trapped by Ogres with Expectations, in order to dispel the enchantment and reveal the happy princess and prince inside. We all want to be the hero.
Great comment Holms. The misuse of logic in debate has always been a sore spot for me.
I used to use the following example with students and work through the structure of a logical argument:
All cats are alien invaders
Fluffy is a cat
Therefore, Fluffy is an alien invader
Is this a valid argument? It appears to be total bullshit, but is it a valid argument?
Yes
Huh?!?
To be a valid argument, the conclusion must necessarily follow or be inferred from the premise. The above argument does that.
That’s the essence of American dialogue – make a series of claims – and, this being America, all arguments are innocent until proven guilty, so the onus has shifted to the doubters to attack the validity of their arguments. Of course if they do so, they are nothing but haters, so screw ‘em.
That’s pretty much how decisions are made and opinions are shaped in our courts, our debates, our discussions of social justice, religion, and our national consensus on important matters of state.
How do people get away with bullshit arguments no better than the cat claim above?Skilled arguers direct us away form the other necessary component of a properly constructed logical argument: Is the argument sound.
It’s useful to remember that the above argument should be read as;
‘IF’ All cats are alien invaders
“AND IF’ Fluffy is a cat
‘THEN’ Fluffy is an alien invader
That may seem like trivial semantics but it’s not. It shifts the argument from a series of declarations which must be proven false by the reviewer, to a a series of premises that must be proven factual by the promotor of the argument. It isn’t up to the doubter to prove anything. The arguer must provide compelling proof of the truth of their claims. A much harder thing to do and one which is far less dependent on rhetoric. Soundness is reality based. It’s determined by facts. Which is why it’s the least popular part of logic.
Of course, the debater may rail that you can’t prove all cats AREN’T alien invaders (and in this day and age probably will) , but it’s not our responsibility to do so. It’s up to them to prove that they all are. If not, the argument can be dismissed out of hand. No need to go any further. This is why many arguers ignore the whole soundness thing. One single solitary exception is all that’s needed to send them back to the debaters locker room.
I suspect this is one of the main reasons politicians and professional debaters hate science so much. Science is in some senses, the process of testing valid arguments for soundness and rejecting those wanting. Is there evidence, does the argument fit known observations, does it conflict with existing knowledge, etc. Some criticize philosophy and theology for similar reasons. These disciplines argue premises that aren’t necessarily constrained by a need for verification. They may even argue that proof isn’t even possible for some claims. That they are beyond science. But that’s not logical thinking in the true sense. Logic must be both valid and sound. Otherwise it’s just rhetoric Science always seeks verification. It’s why it works.
@pliny: Pedantically, science seeks both verification and falsification. Exclusively looking for one is useless, as we learned during the time of the positivists. That a hypothesis can be verified does not entail that it can’t be falsified. That a hypothesis cannot be falsified does not entail that it can’t be verified.
But yeah, what you said. A valid argument form is one in which sound premises guarantee a sound conclusion. Garbage in; garbage out. Even a valid argument’s conclusion is not guaranteed when its premises are unsound.
I actually had to explain material implication to someone Tuesday. I was like, the statement we’re both reading says, “IF you do X, AND IF you do Y, THEN that is Z,” which means that EVERY time you do both X and Y, that’s Z. There is no way to do both X and Y without its being Z. Somehow, my reading was simplistic, inferring certainty without warrant.
I don’t know that this is really a trend, though. It’s been a part of internet culture as long as I can remember. I can still recall posters from message sites that don’t even exist any more, whose entire shtick was to quote other people’s posts and tick off the names of logical fallacies (whether they applied or not).
The abuse of the “ad hominen fallacy” is a classic. It goes back to the 90s at least. Abuse of the terms sealioning and gaslighting are newer because the terms themselves are newer (or at least, their popularity is).
And while I’m nitpicking, I’m going to go ahead and be that person who points out what probably everyone implicitly agreed on anyway, which is: just because these terms are abused doesn’t mean they aren’t sometimes used correctly. Gaslighting is a thing. So is sealioning. The actual ad hominen fallacy (“you are X, therefore your argument is wrong”) is pretty rare but does exist. (“Intent isn’t magic” is more subjective, but I’d say the situations where the target really is under the impression that intent is “magic” in the sense of 100% dispositive of the issue are very rare, compared to the times when the user is employing that phrase to handwave away a discussion of intent in situations where it at least matters a little and sometimes a lot.)
I think maybe it’s just an internet law like Godwin’s — as any online discussion continues, the probability that it will devolve into misuse of logical fallacies and catchphrases approaches 1.
Yeah, bothers me, too. (Or should that be, bothers myself?) For some reason, a lot of people have gotten the idea that there is something wrong with the word “me”.
Nullius – it sort of depends on your definition of “cat” and your definition of “alien invader”. If, like most people, you take cat to be housecats, and like ecologists, use alien invader as a non-native species that spreads and dominates the ecosystem, then actually, your valid argument would also be true. Now, if you include the big cats, as ecologists would, and leave the alien invaders in the ecologist argument, it would no longer be true that all cats are alien invaders. Mountain lions are native here in my part of the world. Cheetahs, panthers, leopards, lions—all these are native somewhere. Now the syllogism is, while still valid, not true.
I call it cargo cult skepticism.
Screechy Monkey
Oh gosh, I see it all the time. Frequently in the form of “You/your source is a terf/conservative, therefore wrong.”
I think I first heard the expression “fallacy naming” from Dan Fincke of “Camels With Hammers”. It certainly captures one key feature of cargo cult skepticism (or “movement skepticism” as I like to call it these days), i.e. the habit of name-dropping logical fallacies instead of engaging with the actual substance of your opponent’s arguments, or even showing how (s)he is indeed guilty of the alleged fallacy. The name itself (“Ad Hominem”, “Appeal to Popularity!”, “Strawman!”*) is the whole analysis (or, more accurately, a substitute for any actual analysis). One example I have often encountered is dismissing any citation of external sources (“Unskeptical” and “irrational” people sometimes mistake this for a virtue or even a necessity in scientific debates) as an “argument from authority”.
Which leads naturally to another key feature of cargo cult skepticism, i.e. the habit of talking and acting as if you had personally done all the science (or even derived all of science, mathematics, logic etc. from first principles**) when all you’re really doing is repeating back half digested, half understood layman’s explanations from books, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos etc. We see this whenever movement skeptics tell others to “just follow the facts were they lead”, “let the evidence speak for itself” etc. as if “following the facts were they lead” were a straightforward matter rather than something that requires vast amounts of experience and accumulated pre-knowledge in its own right. The truth of the matter is that the evidence never speaks for itself. As I have previously written, I could probably provide a decent layman’s explanation of the evidence for things like evolution or climate change based on books I have read, but I wouldn’t personally be able to derive any useful information about past climates from tree-rings or ice-cores.
One of the red flags that turned me off from the alt-left was seeing (basically) the following conversation play out numerous times on twitter:
Person 1: “Check out this wonderful article by [feminist] regarding [aspect of sexism]: http://www.source.com”
Person 2: “Just in case you didn’t know, [feminist] is a known TERF.
Person 1: “OMG, Thanks for alerting me! I will delete my tweet right away! I’m so sorry for the harm etc… etc… etc… etc… etc… etc… etc…”)
* As we all know, one of the most common strawman arguments is falsely accusing others of making strawman arguments, e.g. “Atheists are arguing against an old man with a beard sitting on a cloud. That’s not what Christians actually believe in.”
** The only way to not be guilty of arguments from authority according to these people.
Holms, from the OP:
What, from the same people who tell us that words do get their meanings from common use? Words, we are told, are social constructs which change their cultural meanings as culture itself changes and uses words in different ways. This, we are told, is why transwomen are women, because people are using the word ‘women’ to include transwomen.
What they really mean is that a particular form of argument is fallacious unless it happens to support their argument. Which is why one may not make an appeal to authority but “Have you ever even read Butler? Have you? HAVE YOU?” is a perfectly valid argument winner, according to the odious G at PZ’s.