I’m going to be a bit contrarian. Years ago, one phenomenon that was horribly popular among skeptics was the identification and labeling of logical fallacies — it sill is, as far as I know. There’d be a debate, and after the goofball had made his arguments, our side would triumphantly list his Official Fallacies, preferably in Latin, and declare victory. Here’s an example of thorough detailing with nice graphical fillips to give you a feeling of satisfaction as you tear your opponent apart.
I’m not arguing that these aren’t fallacies — they definitely are, and they do invalidate an argument. As a tactic, though, is this effective? You might as well be peppering your opponent with colorful stickers while propping up your ego and reputation with language that comes out of a first year logic course. It all does nothing. I’ve witnessed creationists gushing out a blizzard of logical fallacies — they’re creationists, after all, and they’re defending very silly ideas — emerging unfazed and undefeated, and the audience is never persuaded to abandon their beliefs. They’re right, don’t you know, since God or their incestuous circle of fellow conspiracy theorists agree with them, so who cares if the college boy knows a bunch of fancy words. Anyone who disagrees with us is a Fake Expert with Nefarious Intent and so can be disregarded. Also, the only Latin fallacy they know is ad hominem, and they’re pretty sure that it means strongly disagreeing with me so anyone who thinks the earth is round or that it’s billions of years old or that the climate is changing are guilty of a logical fallacy, too.
It might be satisfying to have a scorecard and tally up errors, but this isn’t a baseball game and there are no referees to award you with victory. These lists of fallacies isolate you from the audience and short-circuit any attempt to make a well-meaning exploration of the deeper reasoning behind bad ideas.
Blowfish fallacy? Not heard of that one before that I can recall..
So what is the recommended alternative, PZ? Ultimately, logic has to be invoked somewhere, because there arguments are also built on logic. It is just that their logic is based on rotten foundations.
Doesn’t that depend on the audience? The type of debate and circumstances of it?
Isn’t a big part of the issue here the general lack of knowledge of critical thinking and how to analyse arguments and understand which ones are valid and which ones’are not on the part of the majority of the public?
Wouldn’t a key remedy for this be better education especially about logic and critical thinking and how to reason and argue more effectively? Always thought that’s something that should be a key topic taught to everyone from early on for socialand national (& even international) gain.
(Off topid – Alwyas thought it would be great if Parlt or Congress sessions were rated and judged by logicians critically tallying up which side is using which fallacies and awarding debate style wins to the side that makes its case best.)
Which audience are we trying to convince here – one that is partisan and willfully ignorant and determined to disagree or an audience outside of that that is more willing to actually consdier the points and cases being made and rationally evaluate them?
So what are the superior alternatives here?
What about cases where one side is totally disingenuous and not well-meaning at all?
The amount of critical thinking skills I was taught between kindergarten and college graduation wasn’t zero but it also wasn’t much more than zero.
A lot of the USA explicitly opposes teaching people critical thinking skills.
I’d never heard of most of these logical fallacies until I dealt with creationists during the early 21st century.
I found them quite useful though.
.1. You learn to see the holes in all sorts of arguments quickly and why they are wrong.
.2. You learn yourself not to commit all those logical fallacies at one time or another.
Three of the most useful are:
.1. Correlation doesn’t prove causation.
I’ve seen senior scientists with multiple grants make that mistake.
This is one of those fallacies that I did learn in college and it has always been useful.
Wikipedia This differs from the fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc (“after this, therefore because of this”),”
Maybe so but they are related ideas.
.2. “That is an assertion without proof or data and may therefore be dismissed without proof or data.” It and you are wrong.
This is Hitchen’s razor and it’s not old enough to have a Latin original.
.3. Sagan, Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Obviously it takes more effort than just identifying and cataloging the logical fallacies, if you want to engage in the argument. You have to present the counter argument with your evidence. I see videos by one blogger who goes to great effort to do that against Christian dogma, particularly Evangelical dogma. However, I doubt he has much impact and he’s probably not changing many minds. So it becomes a personal question whether it’s worth the effort to you.
I think this speaks to a wider problem with the fetishisation of technical terms.
Very often, when I start teaching ancient literature to Latin or Greek classes, I find that a lot of the students make the assumption that giving a technical name to a literary feature is enough to fully explain it. This is an example of prosopopoeia, there’s some litotes, here we have a tricolon, asyndeton and anaphora. It’s almost as if the words are magic spells and they assume a reader will be wowed by the sheer Latinity or Greekness of it all into peaceful quiescence. And these are students who have actually studied the languages – those who haven’t seem even more susceptible to the magic of technical Latin and Greek.
Sometimes I insist my students start out by writing analytical essays without using any technical vocabulary, so they get used to discussing ideas rather than labels.
In my experience, people aren’t persuaded by logic or even (objective) evidence anyway, at least when it comes to stuff that isn’t direct experience. They believe what they believe for emotional reasons: such as to make the world less scary, or to make them feel like they’re worth something, or to fit in, or to justify themselves, to express their anger, etc.
Logical argument doesn’t address the real reasons they believe what they believe.
That chart is poorly organized. If they would switch “F” and “L”, then “L” could have a line going down the left side, and wouldn’t have to interrupt the “C” grouping.
For that matter, the whole thing could be arranged radially, with the major categories near the middle, and the sub-categories at a larger radius.
Why bother? The outcome of the last election has finally convinced me to give up: Our species is too sick and stupid to survive, much less govern itself. We will NEVER have a progressive or equitable society; we won’t even come close. We will forever be governed by the fickle whims of the lowest common denominator, capitalist greed and theistic superstition. There is not point in living. There is no point in trying.
The only thing to hope for is a swift, painless end, but in truth, we’re not even going to get that.
raven @4: Pretty sure Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur (what is gratuitously asserted is gratuitously denied) came before Hitchens.
They’ve removed the drinks from a perfectly good drinking game!
Reginald Selkirk @8: In that case you lose the mnemonic “FLICC” (for “fallacy”) across the top. Alas.
This is why creationists love to characterize anything they disagree with as “illogical,” without explaining where the illogic lies. And often it is not the logic, it’s the facts (that they ignore) which is really against them. It’s an example of “saying it first.” They know you will say they are illogical, so they call you illogical first
@3 “So what are the superior alternatives here?” Call them LIARS and hit them with the facts! “Logical” depends on “Factual” anyway, so “Facts First.”
Labelling the specific failures in an already-presented argument is not really about discrediting that already-presented argument. It’s primarily a teaching tool to help prevent similar problems in not-yet-presented arguments.
Consider this argument:
• Indigenous ethnic group X did not independently implement Carnot engines at the same time as did Western Europe.
• Therefore, each member of X is less intelligent than those whose ancestry is exclusively from Western Europe.
I really don’t think I need to label each fallacy in there for anyone reading here to understand that it’s an invalid argument on several dimensions, do I? However, labelling the fallacies is useful in avoiding those fallacies in future arguments (inductively… and that’s yet another argumentation problem!) — after all, the probability that the readers will later have to make and/or evaluate arguments closely approaches 1.
tl;dr The labels are far less reason to disbelieve a particular argument than they are a teaching method for future arguments. (When consistently and accurately applied, that is.)
Honestly, I’ve been saying the same for years.
For sure, learn about fallacies. But you don’t need to name drop them in an argument. Have some self-awareness.
I would argue the point of highlighting the logical fallacies is not to win the argument, because in many/most cases the person making the statements are not arguing in good faith. No amount of discussion, data, evidence, logic will alter their expressed viewpoint. I think the point of highlighting these issues is for the audience that is not familiar with the creationist (or similar) talking points or are open to knowledge, learning, and/or logic.