It might seem strange to speak of arguments that lack grounds, but they do occur. They are the least sound arguments of all, for to lack grounds for assertions is to fail the first test for rational adequacy in argumentation. An argument that misses grounds is nothing other than a bare-faced assertion, no real evidence is presented for the claim in question. Because no reasons are actually offered for making an assertion, we can designate such efforts as pseudo-arguments. Perhaps the best example of such pseudo-argumentation traditionally recognized by stu dents of reasoning is embodied in the fallacy of begging the question.
Begging the question
We commit this fallacy when we make a claim and then argue on its behalf by advancing "grounds" whose meaning is simply equivalent to that of the original claim. We seem to be asserting C and offering additional grounds, G. in its sup port, but actually C and G tum out to mean exactly the same things-though this fact may be concealed because they are phrased in different terms.
A: Smith is telling the truth. Q: Why do you say that?
A: He wouldn't lie to me about this.
If "he wouldn't lie" is understood to mean "is not on this occasion lying," A's second statement is nothing more than a disguised restatement of his first state ment; it adds nothing to it. The two statements differ only in that one is stated in positive, the other in negative, terms.
As with many other fallacies, begging the question becomes easier and more deceptive in larger and more extended arguments:
A: Pablo Picasso is the greatest painter of this century.
Q: How do you know that?
A: People who know about art admire Picasso above all other twentieth
century artists.
Thus far there is nothing to object to about this argument. But it can quickly become question-begging if our assertor is asked to expand on his grounds:
Q: Just who are these people who know so much about art?
A: The people who know about twentieth-century art are people who
understand Picasso's work well enough to admire him above all other painters of the present century.
In this second case, we are more likely to overlook the "circularity" because we so rarely insist that people spell out their arguments in detail. Yet the demand that our arguments be based upon reasons that can be articulated (and must be articulated, if a questioner requires clarification) implies that we should in every case be prepared to spell out the whole of our reasoning on a given subject. This will become clearer if we look at Figures 1 5-1 and 1 5-2:
People who know about art admire Pablo Picasso is the twentieth Picasso above all other twentieth-century century's greatest painter. artists.
G
c
FIGURE 1 5-1
So far this looks like a legitimate argument. However, when we add the step that allegedly warrants this move, as we do in Figure 1 5-2, we find the following result:
People who know about art admire Pablo Picasso is the twentieth Picasso above all other twentieth-century century's greatest painter. artists.
G
C
The people who know about twentieth- century art are people who under- stand Picasso's work well enough to admire him above all other twentieth- century artists.
W
MISSING GROUNDS
1 37
Once we articulate the warrant we discover that we have not really moved at all in our apparent passage from grounds to claim. The warrant simply asserts that knowing about art is tantamount to insisting that Picasso is the greatest twentieth century painter. As soon as we ask how we would go about backing such a warrant we realize that it would involve establishing exactly the same claim as our original grounds attempted to establish. Our argument has not advanced in the least. Though we have stated grounds, we have not really performed the grounding procedure.
Question-begging also occurs in definitions. The so-called circular definition actually begs the question involved in defining the term under discussion. Consider the following definitions:
A cat is a feline animal.
A cause is anything that produces an effect. Distillation is the operation of distilling.
Each of these formulations presupposes an understanding of the term to be defined. Nobody who does not already know what a cat is can have any idea what it means to be feline. Nor can someone who does not already understand what a cause is grasp the notion of an effect. Nor, for that matter, is it likely that someone who has no idea of what distillation is will know what distilling is. The last instance is an example of defining by synonym-a typical feature of vest-pocket dictionaries (this is one of the reasons teachers discourage students from using such dictionaries).
Question-begging amounts to a failure to advance substantial evidence in support of a claim. What appears to be offered as evidence is in fact merely a restatement of the claim itself. Nevertheless, question-begging is never by itself fatal to an argument. Although nothing substantive has been added to the original claim, nothing has been done to discredit it either. If the assertor has a position that can be defended-if grounds are available on which we can build the claim he must merely start anew and approach the subject from another direction.
Question-begging epithets. Another frequent source of fallacies is the use of question-begging epithets. These are phrases that are either fallaciously circular or else permit complex questions to enter into arguments. Terms such as "naive optimist," "bleeding-heart liberal," "foolhardy radical," "cowardly pacifist," "dangerous atheist," "mindless Fundamentalist," "obscurantist conservative," and the like may in a few cases be perfectly apt descriptions of the individuals concerned. But the use of such phrases can quickly become a dangerous habit. Each is a complex description, in which the modifying epithet ("naive," "mind less," and so on) comes to be treated as a universal feature of all who belong to the group designated by the corresponding noun ("optimist," "Fundamentalist," and so on). Yet all optimists need not be naive, even if it were true that the major-
ity were. Nor is it a foregone conclusion that radicals must be foolhardy, pacifists cowardly, atheists dangerous, Fundamentalists mindless, or conservatives obscur antist. The question-begging character of most cliches and stereotypical ideas makes appeals to them objectionable in most rational arguments.
Accordingly, when someone is accused of being a "cowardly pacifist," he can respond by distinguishing the complex question implied in the epithet:
"Yes, a pacifist I am; but I deny that I am cowardly."
Whenever we encounter derogatory adjectives modifying class terms, like those listed here, we should always be on the lookout for question-begging epithets. They are one of the commonest features of political rhetoric.
Phrases like cowardly pacifist become circular whenever the suppressed assumption (that anyone who is a pacifist must be a coward) is left uncriticized. The element of question-begging accordingly involves also something of the fal lacy of poisoning the wells: there may be no evidence that is capable of falsifying the allegation implied in the epithet. Question-begging epithets are insidious pre cisely because they are so easily overlooked, unless we keep our eyes skinned for them. A short phrase, carelessly introduced, can thus undermine an otherwise sound argument.
There are also a large number of similar phrases that express qualities gen erally admired in our society. Using these terms, or their opposites, can color our arguments to the point at which those arguments become fallacious. We all want to be thought sincere, spontaneous, tolerant, authentic, and so on, and few of us really want to be thought of as impractical or aloof. Similarly, writers and speak ers regularly use certain words to embellish their points; for example, evident and obvious. certain and precise. Yet these terms are frequently misused. We are expected to acquiesce in the arguments concerned just because the assertor pre sents views in this way. Yet what is asserted as " evident" or "obvious" is in fact often far from being so. (It pays to be on the lookout for such question-begging terms also; they are insidious precisely because they so easily pass unnoticed.)
The basic step involved in question-begging is common to a number of fal lacies that we shall discuss in detail in subsequent chapters. In a sense, any argu ment in which the grounds are irrelevant to the conclusion-any situation in which we might be agreed about the facts of the case but may dispute whether they are the right type of facts-we beg the question in the wide sense. However, we can do this in so many ways that each of those traditionally identified as a fallacy of relevance merits special discussion for the insight they give us into var ious aspects of fallaciousness. It is to these fallacies that we shall turn in the next chapter. Two fallacies that deserve special attention as arguments with missing grounds are evading the issue and poisoning the wells. It is to the first of these as a model of arguments with irrelevant grounds that we shall now turn.
16
Fallacies
resulting
froID.
irrelevant
grounds
In addition to arguments that go wrong because they miss grounds, there is a larger and more insidious group of arguments that go wrong not because they fail to produce grounds for the assertions they advance but because they advance the wrong sorts of grounds for establishing their claims. These fallacies occur when the evidence we present for our claim is not directly relevant to that claim.
It is important to emphasize that evidence may be relevant to a claim without being directly relevant to it. For example, it may or may not be fallacious to argue that someone should be barred from government work on the grounds that she had once been a Communist. If the person in question is applying for a position as a letter carrier, her Communist past is hardly directly relevant to the capacity to deliver mail. However, it might be a very important consideration in deciding whether she is fit for a State Department job. Everything depends upon what is at stake: the nature of the claim and the warrants which determine what is and what is not justifiably asserted regarding the subject of the claim. This will become clearer as we examine some of the classic instances of irrelevant efforts to ground claims. The fallacy of evading the issue is the simplest instance of irrel evance, so we shall begin with it.
Evading the Issue
We evade the issue when we attempt to ground our claims on evidence not directly relevant to the issues at stake. We can do this in a number of ways. In some instances, we introduce the wrong sort of data purely and simply; in other 139
cases, the data is only tenuously linked to our assertion; and in yet other instances we may evade the issue by sidestepping a question addressed to us. The fallacious ness of such arguments usually becomes apparent when we articulate the warrants upon which they have been constructed.
Figure 1 6-1 presents an argument in which the claim rests upon grounds that are loosely relevant and that are generally the sorts of considerations to which most members of a typical American community would agree. However, the argu ment is fallacious because the considerations advanced as grounds do not allow us to infer a claim as specific as the one being made.
Teachers are valued members of the community. Teachers deserve a salary Teachers perform an indispensible social function.
Teachers have long lasting effects on their pupils. increase of 1 0%.
G
c
FIGURE 16-1
This becomes clear when we spell out the warrant that would be implicitly appealed to in such an argument as in Figure 1 6-2:
Teachers are valued members of the community. Teachers deserve a salary Teachers perform an indispensible social function.
Teachers have long lasting effects upon their pupils. increase of 1 0%.
G
C
Valued members of communities who perform indispensible social functions with lasting effects upon the members of the community deserve salary increases of 1 0%.
w
FIGURE 1 6-2
There can be little doubt that this argument would have a certain force in the abstract. However, if we conceive of it as occurring at a session-perhaps of a New England Town Meeting devoted to fiscal affairs-it will not be difficult to see that the warrant or rule at stake is not one that we could profitably rely upon. In fiscal matters we have a fixed amount of money for budgets. Considerations such as those advanced in our argument certainly have some bearing upon how we ought to allocate community resources, but they are not the sorts of informa tion that will allow us to determine whether or not teachers deserve 10 percent as a salary increase in the coming year. To determine that, we would have to know such things as the current salary scale for teachers, how they had fared in the
FALLACIES RESULTING FROM IRRELEVANT GROUNDS
1 4 1
battle with inflation, their comparative salaries with respect to other comparable school districts, and community employees, as well as the community's fiscal priorities short- and long-term. All of these considerations are more directly rel evant to the question of teachers' salary increases than the considerations which were advanced in the argument in Figure 16- l .
Another mode o f evading the issue focuses upon our response to questions. We can also evade the issue fallaciously when we attempt to sidestep rather than to answer a question. Politicians use this tactic in order to avoid divulging their true opinions about controversial bills. A Congressman may be asked, for exam ple, how he intends to vote on an upcoming bill that would raise benefits for Social Security recipients. He may reply by saying that he considers the elderly a very important segment of the community, that he has fought vigorously on their behalf in the past, and that he deplores the ill treatment of the aged. However noble and highsounding these sentiments may be, none of them in fact answers the question posed. These considerations may, in the end, be of some relevance to answering the question posed-they might, for example contain significant hints to the Congressman's opinion of the bill-but as stated they are not directly rel evant to the question. If he deliberately confines his answer to general statements of this kind in order to conceal the fact that he intends to vote against the bill, he is certainly evading the issue fallaciously.
Two types of diversionary tactics in argumentation deserve mention as part of our discussion. These are the red herring and the straw man.
To introduce a red herring into an argument is to misdirect the discussion by bringing up a topic whose bearing is tangential to the main point under dispute. For example, in an argument about the compatibility of socialism and democracy as abstract concepts (a philosophical discussion within political theory), someone might bring up Stalin's purges as evidence that socialism is essentially undemo cratic. This consideration is certainly germane to any discussion of the compati bility of socialism and democracy in the concrete, but it is unclear to what extent we can illuminate the abstract issues involved in examining the issue by looking at one episode in the development of socialism in one country (any more than the Vietnam War illustrates something about the concept of democracy).
The straw-man argument is another diversionary tactic in which someone ends up making a case for or against a position that nobody in fact holds. Typi cally, straw-man arguments oversimplify issues, though it is not impossible to pro duce a straw-man argument that overcomplicates an issue. To introduce a straw man is similar to introducing a red herring into the discussion in that it has a diversionary function in the argument; however, the way in which the diversion takes place allows us to distinguish the two. A red herring takes the whole dis cussion off on a different track. The straw man, on the other hand, represents an attempt to refute another's position by restating it in such a way that it can be easily rejected. The problem in this is that a straw man typically involves a dis torted or oversimplified restatement so that the refutation that is so easily accom-
plished simply does not address real issues. For example, consider that we are arguing against someone who believes that abortion on demand should not be legal. In the course of that argument we produce a statement that murder is and ought to be illegal. This statement is intended to show that our opponent really is in agreement with us. To establish that murder ought to be a crime is to say nothing about abortion until it has been established that abortion is murder (a considerably more difficult stance to prove). To show that murder is a crime is not utterly irrelevant to the claim that abortion should be prosecuted as murder, but it by no means establishes the moral and legal character of abortion. To argue that it does is to argue with a position not held by any of the participants. We consequently evade the issue by erecting a straw figure that is easily blown over (hence the name).
Of course, not all evasions of the issue are necessarily fallacious. Question ers, for example, do not always have the right to the information they request. Students do not have the right to ask their teachers which questions will appear on their examinations. Similarly, national security demands that the military clas sify certain information (which is not to say that it should be entirely unobtainable to anybody except the military). These situations are significantly different from our earlier example of the politician who is queried by his constitutents, for it is the Congressman's sworn duty to represent his constituents in Congress. Here, as elsewhere, the issue of whether the argumentative procedure in question is falla cious or not can depend upon the situation in which it is employed.
Appeals to authority
Authority is one of the familiar and traditional topics around which sound arguments can be constructed. Such appeals to authority become fallacious at the point where authority is invoked as the last word on a given topic. The opinion of that authority is taken as closing off discussion of the matter in question. No fur ther evidence is considered; the authority's opinion has settled the matter once and for all.
The classic case in which authority was supposedly invoked to counter other, more directly relevant evidence was that of the Aristotelian scientists who refused