Category: Critical Thinking

During ethical discussions about abortion, I am sometimes asked if I believe that person who holds the anti-abortion position must be a misogynist. While there are misogynists who are anti-abortion, I hold to the obvious: there is no necessary connection between being anti-abortion and being a misogynist. A misogynist hates women, while a person who holds an anti-abortion position believes that abortion is morally wrong. There is no inconsistency between holding the moral position that abortion is wrong and not being a hater of women. In fact, an anti-abortion person could have a benevolent view towards all living beings and be morally opposed to harming any of them, including zygotes and women.

While misogynists would tend to be anti-choice because of their hatred of women, they need not be anti-abortion . That is, hating women and wanting to deny them the choice to have an abortion does not entail that a person believes that abortion is morally wrong. For example, a misogynist could be fine with abortion (such as when it is convenient to him) but think that it should be up to the man to decide if or when a pregnancy is terminated. A misogynist might even be pro-choice for various reasons; but almost certainly not because he is a proponent of the rights of women.  As such, there is no necessary connection between the two views.

There is also the question of whether a pro-choice position is a cover for misogyny. The easy and obvious answer is that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Since it has been established that a person can be anti-abortion without being a misogynist, it follows that being anti-abortion need not be a cover for misogyny. However, it can provide cover for such a position. It is easier to sell the idea of restricting abortion by making a moral case against it than by expressing hatred of women and a desire to restrict their choices and reproductive option. Before progressing with the discussion, it is important to address two points.

The first point is that even if it is established that an anti-abortion person is a misogynist, this does not entail that the person’s position on the issue of abortion is mistaken. To reject a misogynist’s claims or arguments regarding abortion (or anything) on the grounds that they are a misogynist is to commit a circumstantial ad hominem.

This sort of Circumstantial ad Hominem involves substituting an attack on a person’s circumstances (such as the person’s religion, political affiliation, ethnic background, etc.) for reasons against her claim. This version has the following form:

 

Premise 1. Person A makes claim X.

Premise 2. Person B makes an attack on A’s circumstances.

Conclusion. Therefore X is false.

 

A Circumstantial ad Hominem is a fallacy because a person’s circumstances (religion, political affiliation, etc.) do not affect the truth or falsity of the claim. This is clear from following example: “Bill claims that 1+1 =2. But he is a Republican, so his claim is false.” As such, to assert that the anti-abortion position is in error because some misogynist holds that view would be an error in reasoning.

A second important point is that a person’s consistency or lack in terms of their principles or actions has no relevance to the truth of their claims or the strength of their arguments. To think otherwise is to fall victim to the ad hominem tu quoque fallacy. This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that a person’s claim is false because 1) it is inconsistent with something else a person has said or 2) what a person says is inconsistent with her actions. This type of “argument” has the following form:

 

Premise 1. Person A makes claim X.

Premise 2. Person B asserts that A’s actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X.

Conclusion. Therefore, X is false.

 

The fact that a person makes inconsistent claims does not make any specific claim they make false (although of any pair of inconsistent claims only one can be true while both can be false). Also, the fact that a person’s claims are not consistent with their actions might indicate that the person is a hypocrite, but this does not prove their claims are false.

A person’s inconsistency also does not show that the person does not believe their avowed principle as they might be ignorant of its implications. That said, such inconsistency could be evidence of hypocrisy. While sorting out a person’s actual principles is not relevant to logical assessment of the person’s claims, doing so is relevant to many types of decision making regarding the person. One area where sorting out a person’s principles matters is voting. In the next essay, this matter will be addressed.

After Cecil the Lion was shot in 2015, the internet erupted in righteous fury against the killer. But some argued against feeling bad for Cecil, sometimes accusing the mourners of being phonies and pointing out that lions kill people. What caught my attention, however, was the use of a common rhetorical tactic—to “refute” those condemning Cecil’s killing by claiming the  “lion lovers” do not get equally upset about fetuses killed in abortions.

When HitchBOT was destroyed, in 2015, there was a similar response. When I have written about ethics and robots, I have been criticized on the same grounds: it has been claimed that I value robots more than fetuses. Presumably they think I have made an error in my arguments about robots. Since I find this tactic interesting and have been its target, I thought it would be worth my while examining it in a reasonable and fair way.

One way to look at this approach is to take it as an application of the Consistent Application method. A moral principle is consistently applied when it is applied in the same way to similar beings in similar circumstances. Inconsistent application is a problem because it violates three commonly accepted moral assumptions: equality, impartiality and relevant difference.

Equality is the assumption that moral equals must be treated as such. It also requires that those that are not morally equal be treated differently.  Impartiality is the assumption that moral principles must not be applied with undue bias. Inconsistent application would involve biased application.

Relevant difference is a common moral assumption. It is the view that different treatment must be justified by relevant differences. Sorting out which differences are relevant can involve controversy. For example, people disagree about whether gender is a relevant difference in how people should be treated.

Using the method of Consistent Application to criticize someone involves showing that a principle or standard has been applied differently in situations that are not relevantly different. This allows one to conclude that the application is inconsistent, which is generally regarded as a problem. The general form is as follows:

 

Step 1: Show that a principle/standard has been applied differently in situations that are not adequately different.

Step 2: Conclude that the principle has been applied inconsistently.

Step 3 (Optional): Insist that the principle be applied consistently.

 

Applying this method often requires determining the principle being used. Unfortunately, people are not often clear about their principles, even if they are operating in good faith. In general, people tend to just make moral assertions. In some cases, it is likely that people are not even aware of the principles they are appealing to when making moral claims.

Turning now to the cases of the lion, the HitchBOT and the fetus, this method could be applied as follows:

 

Step 1: Those who are outraged at the killing of the lion are using the principle that the killing of living things is wrong. Those outraged at the destruction of HitchBOT are using the principle that helpless things should not be destroyed. These people are not outraged by abortions in general and Planned Parenthood abortions in particular.

Step 2: The lion and HitchBOT mourners are not consistent in their application of the principle since fetuses are helpless (like HitchBOT) and living things (like Cecil the lion).

Step 3 (Optional): Those mourning for Cecil and HitchBOT should mourn for the fetuses and oppose abortion in general and Planned Parenthood in particular.

 

This sort of use of Consistent Application is appealing, and I routinely use the method myself. For example, I have argued (in a reverse of this situation) that people who are anti-abortion should also be anti-hunting and that people who are fine with hunting should also be morally okay with abortion.

As with any method of arguing, there are counter arguments. In the case of this method, there are three general reasonable responses to an effective use. The first is to admit the inconsistency and stop applying the principle in an inconsistent manner. This obviously does not defend against the charge but can be an honest reply. People, as might be imagined, rarely take this option.

A second way to reply (and an actual defense) is to dissolve the inconsistency by showing that the alleged inconsistency is merely apparent. One way to do this is by showing that there is a relevant difference (or differences). For example, someone who wants to morally oppose the shooting of Cecil while being morally tolerant of abortions could argue that an adult lion has a moral status different from a fetus. One common approach is to note the relation of the fetus to the woman and how a lion is an independent entity. The challenge lies in making a case for the relevance of the difference or differences.

A third way to reply is to reject the attributed principle. In the situation at hand, the assumption is that a person is against killing the lion simply because it is alive. However, that might not be the principle the person is, in fact, using. His principle might be based on the suffering of a conscious being and not on mere life. In this case, the person would be consistent in his application.

Naturally enough, the true principle is still subject to evaluation. For example, it could be argued the suffering principle is wrong and that the life principle should be accepted instead. In any case, this method is not an automatic “win.”

An alternative interpretation of this tactic is to regard it as an ad homimen: An ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected based on some irrelevant fact about the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made. Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of “argument” has the following form:

 

Premise 1. Person A makes claim X.

Premise 2. An irrelevant attack is made against Person A.

Conclusion:  Therefore, A’s claim is false.

 

The reason why an ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).

In the case of the lion, the HitchBOT and the fetus, the reasoning can be seen as follows:

 

Premise 1. Person A claims that killing Cecil was wrong or that destroying HitchBOT was wrong.

Premise 2. A does not condemn abortions in general or Planned Parenthood’s abortions.

Conclusion. Therefore, A is wrong about Cecil or HitchBOT.

 

Obviously enough, a person’s view of abortion does not prove or disprove her view about the ethics of the killing of Cecil or HitchBOT (although a person can, of course, be engaged in inconsistency or other errors—but these are different matters).

A third alternative is that the remarks are not meant as an argument and the point is to assert that lion lovers and bot buddies are awful people or, at best, misguided.

The gist of the tactic is, presumably, to make these people seem bad by presenting a contrast: “these lion lovers and bot buddies are broken up about lions and trashcans, but do not care about fetuses. What awful people they are.”

But moral concern is not a zero-sum game. That is, regarding the killing of Cecil as wrong and being upset about it does not entail that a person thus cares less (or not at all) about fetuses. After all, people do not just get a few “moral dollars” to spend, so that being concerned about one misdeed entails they cannot be concerned about another. A person can condemn the killing of Cecil and condemn abortion.

The obvious response is that there are people who condemned the killing of Cecil or the destruction of HitchBOT and are pro-choice. These people, it can be claimed, are morally awful. The obvious counter is that while it is easy to claim such people are morally awful, the challenge lies in showing that they are awful. That is, that their position on abortion is morally wrong. Noting that they are against lion killing or bot bashing and pro-choice does not show they are in error. Although, as noted above, they could be challenged on the grounds of consistency. But this requires laying out an argument rather than merely juxtaposing their views on these issues. This version of the tactic simply amounts to asserting or implying that there is something wrong with the person because one disagrees with that person. But a person who thinks that hunting lions or bashing bots is okay and that abortion is wrong, does not prove that the opposing view is in error. It just states the disagreement.

Since the principle of charity requires reconstructing and interpreting arguments in the best possible way, I endeavor to cast this sort of criticism as a Consistent Application attack rather than the other two. This approach is respectful and, most importantly, helps avoid creating a straw man of the opposition.

For my personal ethics, as opposed to the ethics I use for large scale moral judgments, I rely heavily on virtue theory. As would be expected, I have been influenced by thinkers such as Aristotle, Confucius and Wollstonecraft.

Being moral, in this context, is a matter of developing and acting on virtues. These virtues are defined in terms of human excellence and virtues might very well differ among species. For example, if true artificial intelligence is developed, it might have its own virtues that differ from those of humans. Like Aristotle, I see ethics as analogous to the sciences of health and medicine: while they are objective, they depend heavily on contextual factors. For example, cancer and cancer treatment are not subjective matters, but the nature of cancer and its most effective treatment can vary between individuals. Likewise, the virtue of courage is not a matter of mere subjective opinion, but each person’s courage varies and what counts as courageous depends on circumstances.

When I teach about virtue theory in my Ethics class, I use an analogy to Goldilocks and the three bears. As per the story, she rejects the porridge that is too hot and that which is too cold in favor of the one which is just right. Oversimplifying things, virtue theory enjoins us to reject the extremes (excess and deficiency) in favor of the mean. While excess and deficiency are bad by definition, the challenge is working out what is just right. Fortunately, this is something we can do, albeit with an often annoying margin of error. This is best done by being as specific as possible. To set a general context, I will focus on the moral (rather than legal) justification for violence in self-defense based on a person being afraid for their life. This takes us to the virtue of courage, which is how we deal with fear. Or fail to do so.

For most virtue theorists, including myself, acting virtuously (or failing to do so) involves two general aspects. The first is understanding and the second is emotional regulation. Depending on what you think of emotions, this could be broadened to include psychological regulation. As you might have guessed, this seems to involve accepting a distinction between thought and feeling. If one is Platonically inclined, one could also have a three-part division of reason, spirit and desire. But, to keep things simple, I will stick with understanding and emotional regulation.

Understanding is having correct judgment about the facts. While this can be debated and requires a full theory of its own, this can be seen as getting things right. In the context of self-defense based on being afraid for one’s life, proper understanding means that you have made an accurate threat assessment in terms of how afraid you should be.  Being able to make good judgements about threats is essential to acting in a virtuous manner: you need to know what would be just right as a response. Being good at this requires critical thinking skills as well as expertise in violence as this allows you to judge how afraid you should be.

Emotional regulation is the ability to control your emotions rather than allowing them to rule you in inappropriate and harmful ways. This ties into understanding because it is what enables you to adjust your emotions based on the facts. As Aristotle argued, emotional regulation is developed by training until it becomes a habit. Obviously enough, there are two general ways you can be in error about being afraid for your life.

The first is an error of understanding; you misjudge the perceived threat and overestimate or underestimate how afraid you should be. Interestingly, you could have the right degree of courage based on a misjudgment of the threat and there are many ways such judgments can go wrong. As an example, when I “saw” the machete I had an initial surge of considerable fear that seemed proportional to the perceived threat. Fortunately, I had made a perceptual error and was able to correct my judgment and adjust my emotions accordingly. As someone who teaches critical thinking, I know that a degree of error is unavoidable, and this should be taking into consideration when making judgements. And judging people’s judgements.

The second error is a failure of regulation and occurs when your emotional response is excessive or deficient. This could also, in some cases, involve feeling the “wrong” emotion. As would be suspected, most people tend to err on the side of excess fear, being more afraid than they should be. Failures of regulation can lead to failures of judgement, especially in the case of fear and anger. As I experienced myself, fear can easily cause a person to honestly “see” a weapon clearly and distinctly. As I have noted before, the stick looked like a machete: I could see the sharp metal blade, although it really was just a stick. A frightened person can also see another person as a threat, even when this is not true. This can lead to terrible consequences. These errors can also be combined, with a person making an error in judgment and failing to regulate their emotions in accord with that erroneous judgment. Acting in a virtuous manner requires having good judgment and good regulation.

As Aristotle said, “To feel these feelings at the right time, on the right occasion, towards the right people, for the right purpose and in the right manner, is to feel the best amount of them, which is the mean amount – and the best amount is of course the mark of virtue.” Understanding is required to sort out the right time, occasion, people, purpose and manner. Emotional regulation is needed to handle the feeling aspect. In the context of violence and self-defense, developing the right understanding and right regulation requires training and experience in both good judgment and in violence. Going back to the machete that wasn’t incident, my being a philosopher with a “history of violence” prepared me well for acting rightly. And such ethical behavior depends on past training and habituation. This is why people should develop both good judgment and good regulation, in addition to making them more adept at self-defense it also makes them more adept at acting rightly when they are afraid for their lives.

This training and habituation are important for professions that deal in violence, such as soldiers and the police. It is especially important for the police, assuming their function is to protect and serve rather than intimidate and extort. Police, if they are acting virtuously, should strive to avoid harming citizens and should be trained so that they are not ruled by fear.

Anyone who goes armed, be they a citizen or a police officer, would be morally negligent if they failed to properly train their understanding and emotions. By making themselves a danger to others, they obligate themselves to have proper control over that danger and the moral price of being armed is a willingness to endure fear for the sake of others. Otherwise, one would be like a gun without a safety that could discharge at any moment, striking someone dead. If a person is incapable of such judgment and regulation, they should not be armed. If a person is too easily ruled by fear, they should not be in law enforcement. To be clear, I am speaking about morality—I leave the law to the lawyers.

The murder of nine people in the Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina in 2015 ignited an intense discussion of race and violence. While there was near-universal condemnation of the murders, some argue it was part of a broader problem of racism in America. This claim is supported by reference to the well-known history of systematic violence against blacks in America as well as consideration of contemporary data. Interestingly, some people respond to this approach by asserting that more blacks are killed by blacks than by whites. Some even seem obligated to claim that more whites are killed by blacks than blacks are killed by whites.

While these points are often “thrown out there” without being forged into a coherent argument, presumably the intent of such claims is to disprove or at least diminish the significance of claims about violence against blacks by whites. To be fair, there might be other reasons for bringing up such claims. Perhaps someone wants to broaden the discussion to all violence out of a genuine concern for the well-being of all people.

In cases in which the claims about the number of blacks killed by blacks are brought forth in response to incidents such as the church shooting, this tactic appears to be a specific form of a red herring. This occurs when an irrelevant topic is presented to divert attention from the original issue. The idea is to “win” an argument by leading attention to another topic.

This sort of “reasoning” has the following form:

 

  1. Topic A is under discussion.
  2. Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when it is not).
  3. Topic A is abandoned.

 

In the case of the church shooting, the pattern would be as follows:

 

  1. The topic of racist violence against blacks is being discussed, specifically the church shooting.
  2. The topic of blacks killing other blacks is brought up.
  3. The topic of racist violence against blacks is abandoned in favor of focusing on blacks killing other blacks.

 

This sort of “reasoning” is flawed because changing the topic of discussion is not an argument against a claim. In the specific case at hand, switching the topic to black-on-black violence does nothing to address the topic of racist violence against blacks.

While the red herring label would certainly suffice for these cases, it is certainly appealing to craft a more specific version for cases in which something bad is “countered” by bringing up another bad. The obvious name for this fallacy is the “two bads fallacy.” This is a fallacy in which a second bad thing is presented in response to a bad thing with the intent of distracting attention from the first bad thing (or with the intent of diminishing the badness of the first bad thing).

This reasoning has the following pattern:

 

  1. Bad thing A is under discussion.
  2. Bad thing B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to A (when it is not).
  3. Bad thing A is ignored, or the badness of A is claimed to be diminished or refuted.

 

In the case of the church shooting, the pattern would be as follows:

 

  1. The murder of nine people in the AME church, which is bad, is being discussed.
  2. The claim that blacks killing other blacks, which is bad, is brought up.
  3. The badness of the murder of the nine people is ignored, or its badness is claimed to be diminished or refuted.

 

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because the fact that something else is bad does not entail that another bad thing has its badness lessened or refuted. After all, even if there are worse things than something, this does not entail that it is not bad. In cases in which there is not an emotional or ideological factor, the poorness of this reasoning is usually evident:

 

Sam: “I broke my arm, which is bad.”

Bill: “Well, some people have two broken arms and two broken legs.”

Joe: “Yeah, so much for your broken arm being bad. You are just fine. Get back to work.”

 

What seems to lend this sort of “reasoning” some legitimacy is that comparing two things that are bad is relevant to determining relative badness. If a person is arguing about how bad something is, it is certainly reasonable to consider it in the context of other bad things. For example, the following would not be fallacious reasoning:

 

Sam: “I broke my arm, which is bad.”

Bill: “Some people have two broken arms and two broken legs.”

Joe: “That is worse than one broken arm.”

Sam: “Indeed it is.”

Joe: “But having a broken arm must still suck.”

Sam: “Indeed it does.”

 

Because of this, it is important to distinguish between cases of the fallacy (X is bad, but Y is also bad, so X is not bad) and cases in which a legitimate comparison is being made (X is bad, but Y is worse, so X is less bad than Y, but still bad).

My critical thinking class covers credibility, experiments and studies. As critical thinking is often seen as dull, I use real-world examples that might be marginally interesting to students. One is John Bohannon’s detailed account of how he “fooled millions into thinking chocolate helps weight loss.”

Bohannon’s con provides an excellent cautionary tale for critical thinkers. First, he shows how easy it is to rig an experiment to get “significant” results. As I point out to my students, a small experiment or study can easily generate results that seem significant. This is why it is important to have an adequate sample size. What is also needed is proper control, proper selection of the groups, and so on.

Second, he provides a clear example of a blight on academic publishing, namely “pay to publish” journals that lack peer review. While bad science does slip through peer review, these journals seem to publish almost anything, provided payment is made. Since the journals have reputable sounding names and most people do not know which journals are credible, it is easy to create a journal publication that seems credible. This is why I cover the importance of checking sources in my class.

Third, he detailed how news outlets published or posted the story without even perfunctory efforts to check its credibility. I cover the media in my class both from the standpoint of being a good journalist and being a critical consumer of news. I stress the importance of confirming credibility before accepting claims, especially when doing so is (supposed to be) one’s job.

While Bohannon’s con is evidence of problems with corrupt journals, uncritical reporting and consumer credulity, it raises other points worth considering. One is that while he might have “fooled millions” of people, he seems to have fooled relative few journalists (13 out of about 5,000 reporters who subscribe to the Newswise feed Bohannon used) and these seem to be more of the likes of the Huffington Post and Cosmopolitan as opposed to what might be seen as more serious health news sources. While I do not know why the other reporters did not run the story, it is worth considering that some did look at it critically. In any case, the fact that a few reporters fell for a dubious story is hardly shocking. It is, in fact, just what would be expected given the history of journalism.

Another point of concern is the ethics of engaging in such a con. It can be argued that Bohannon acted ethically. One way to do this is to note that using deceit to expose a problem can be justified on utilitarian grounds. For example, it seems morally acceptable for a journalist or police officer to use deceit and go undercover to expose harmful criminal activity. As such, Bohannon could contend that his con was effectively an undercover operation. He and his fellows pretended to be the bad guys to expose a problem and thus his deceit was morally justified.

One obvious objection is that Bohannon’s deceit did not just expose corrupt journals and incautious reporters. It also misinformed people. To be fair, any harm would be minimal. At worst, people who believed the story would consume dark chocolate and this is not a health hazard. Interestingly, as I am writing this, the view is that dark chocolate is beneficial. However, intentionally spreading such misinformation is morally problematic, especially since story retractions or corrections get far less attention than the original story.

One way to counter this objection is to draw an analogy to the exposure of flaws by “white hat” hackers. These hackers reveal vulnerabilities in software with the professed intent of forcing companies to address them. Exposing vulnerabilities can do some harm by informing the bad guys, but the usual argument is that this is outweighed by the good done when the vulnerability is fixed. Assuming it gets fixed.

While this does have some appeal, there is the concern that the harm might not outweigh the good. In Bohannon’s case it could be argued that he did more harm than good. After all, it was well-established that the “pay to publish” journals are corrupt, that there are incautious journalists and credulous consumers. As such, Bohannon did not expose anything new and merely added more misinformation to the pile.

It could be countered that although these problems are well known, it does help to continue to bring them to the attention of the public. Going back to the analogy of software vulnerabilities, it could be argued that if a vulnerability is exposed, but nothing is done to patch it, then the problem should be brought up until it is fixed, “for it is the doom of men that they forget.” Bohannon brought these problems into the spotlight and this might do more good than harm. If so, then this con would be morally acceptable—at least on utilitarian grounds.

 

If you have made a mistake, do not be afraid of admitting the fact and amending your ways.

-Confucius

 

I never make the same mistake twice. This is because there are an infinite number of mistakes, and I keep making new ones. Fortunately, philosophy helps minimize the impact of mistakes by teaching a crucial aspect of wisdom: not committing the same error repeatedly.

One way to avoid repeating errors is skill in critical thinking. While critical thinking is now something of a buzzword bloated fad, the core remains as important as ever. The core is the methods of rationally deciding whether a claim should be accepted as true, rejected as false or if judgment about the claim should be suspended. Learning the basic mechanisms of critical thinking (which include argument assessment, fallacy recognition, credibility evaluation, and causal reasoning) is relatively easy. Reading through the readily available texts will provide the basic tools. But, as with carpentry or plumbing, merely having a well-stocked tool kit is not enough. A person must also have knowledge of when to use a tool and the skill with which to use it properly. Gaining knowledge and skill is usually difficult and, at the very least, takes time and practice. This is why people who merely click through a class on critical thinking or flip through a book on fallacies do not suddenly become good at thinking. After all, no one would expect a person to become a skilled carpenter merely by skimming a DIY book or watching a few videos on YouTube.

Another factor in avoiding repeating mistakes is the ability to admit that one has made a mistake. There are many “pragmatic” reasons to avoid admitting mistakes. Public admission to a mistake can result in liability, criticism, damage to one’s reputation and other such harms. While we have sayings that promise praise for those who admit errors, the usual practice is to punish such admissions and people are quick to learn from such punishments. While admitting the error only to yourself will avoid the public consequences, people are often reluctant to do even this. After all, such admission can damage a person’s pride and self-image. Denying errors and blaming others is easier on the ego.

The obvious problem with refusing to admit errors is that this will keep a person from learning from their mistakes. If a person recognizes an error, they can try to figure out why they made that mistake and consider ways to avoid making the same sort of error in the future. While new errors are inevitable, repeating the same errors repeatedly due to a willful ignorance is either stupidity or madness. There is also the ethical aspect of the matter since being accountable for one’s actions is a key part of being a moral agent. Saying “mistakes were made” is a denial of agency, to cast oneself as an object swept along by the river of fate rather than an agent rowing the river of life.

In some cases, a person cannot avoid the consequences of his mistakes. Those that strike, perhaps literally, like a pile of bricks, are difficult to ignore. Feeling the impact of these errors, a person might be forced to learn or face ruin. The classic example is the hot stove in that a person learns from one touch because the lesson is so clear and painful. However, more complicated matters, such as a failed relationship, allow a person room to deny their errors.

If the negative consequences of one’s mistakes fall entirely on others and one is never called to task for these mistakes, a person can keep making the same mistakes. After all, they do not get the teaching sting of pain trying to drive the lesson home. One good example of this is the political pundit, since pundits can be endlessly wrong and still keep on expressing their “expert” opinions. Another good example is in politics. Political parties can also embrace “solutions” that have never worked and relentless apply them whenever they get into power. Other people suffer the consequences while the politicians generally do not directly reap consequences from bad policies. They do, however, routinely get in trouble for mistakes in their personal lives (such as affairs) but the consequences vary based not on the misdeed so much as the person.

While admitting to an error is an important first step, it is not the end of the process. After all, merely admitting I made a mistake will not do much to help me avoid that mistake in the future. What is needed is an honest examination of the mistake in terms of why and how it occurred. This needs to be followed by an honest consideration of what can be changed to avoid that mistake in the future. For example, a person might realize that his relationships ended badly because he made the mistake of rushing into it too quickly, by getting seriously involved without developing a real friendship.

To steal from Aristotle, merely knowing the cause of the error and how to avoid it in the future is not enough. A person must have the will and ability to act on that knowledge, and this requires the development of character. Fortunately, Aristotle presented a guide to developing character in his Nicomachean Ethics. Put simply, a person must do what it is they wish to be and stick with this until it becomes a matter of habit (and thus character). That is, a person must, as Aristotle argued, become a philosopher. Or be ruled by another who can compel correct behavior, such as the state.

 

Shortly after Renee Good was killed, officials of the Trump administration and their allies began a propaganda campaign to cast her death as the justified elimination of a dangerous domestic terrorist. From the start, their narrative included deliberate factual errors and made extensive use of rhetorical techniques. In this essay, I’ll discuss this campaign from the standpoint of critical thinking.

As others have noted, officials of the Trump administration presented their interpretation of the event almost immediately, without waiting for an investigation. This was likely to pre-emptively capture the narrative, as the side that defines the narrative first usually enjoys a rhetorical advantage. Logically, of course, this is irrelevant to the truth of the narrative, and a rushed narrative is likely to be less accurate than one based on an investigation.

Given that the video evidence obviously contradicts some of the administration’s claims, it might be wondered why they would make such false claims. They are probably not trying to convince people that their obviously false claims are true, but flooding the zone with falsehoods can be an effective tactic for bogging down critics. For example, the administration claimed that Good menaced agents while they were trying to free their vehicle from the snow. As the video shows, this is entirely untrue. Rather concede this, it makes more rhetorical sense to continue to lie and fight about that point, thus wearing down the opposition on an issue that is less important than the main issue of whether the killing was justified.

As is standard practice, the Trump administration and the right-wing media have tried to demonize the victim and angelize the officer who killed her. By calling her a terrorist, the event is also cast as a matter of national security rather than a possible case of ICE misconduct.

Jesse Watters provides an excellent example of this. He (and others) focused on her use of pronouns and her being a lesbian, thus distracting people from the actual issue and signaling to the “in-group” that Good is not one of them to make it seem that her death is at least not tragic or perhaps even justified on this basis. In contrast, the right-wing narrative about the ICE agent is that he is a Christian, a husband and a parent. Ironically, these claims make his actions even worse. As a Christian, he should have considered the use of violence more carefully and should have shown the compassion of Christ to Good. As a spouse and a parent, he should have considered that she was also a spouse and a parent before killing her. Or, if he did not know this, considered she might be a spouse and a parent as well.  But getting back to the untruths.

As noted above, officials in the Trump administration made claims that are objectively not true and persisted in these claims. While it is reasonable to attribute errors to these officials based on incompetence, ignorance and laziness, there are other “good” reasons for them to advance untruths.

One reason is that these untruths provide a clear loyalty test. When the Trump administration makes an obviously untrue claim, they can then observe who loyally embraces the untruth and who chooses truth. Given that most Trump officials and supporters profess to be Christians, this is an interesting test of their faith: is their ultimately loyalty to God (who condemns lying and is the God of truth) or Trump? By choosing the lie over the truth, a professed Christian is making a profound statement of loyalty, for they are explicitly abandoning Christ for Trump. Roughly put, they are saying they will accept the risk of Hell to express their loyalty to Trump. Assuming, of course, that they are not lying when they profess to be Christians. Laying aside religion, the person who sincerely embraces such a lie is signaling that they trust Trump and his officials more than their own eyes.

To be fair, people can also be psychologically pressured into sticking with an untruth because it would cost them to reject a claim they publicly accepted or defended. So, while they now know it is not true, they are unwilling to risk the embarrassment of admitting error. They then double down on the untruth and can double down so hard that they convince themselves the untruth they are doubling down for is therefore true.

In addition to a loyalty test, the obvious lie is also useful as a corrosive tool of corruption. If a person reluctantly goes along with a lie as a show of loyalty (or as an opportunist), this can have a corrupting effect on their character. This means they are more likely to embrace lies in the future and this can progress to the point where they have little ethics remaining.

Finally, people can embrace untruths because of their values: if success is more important than truth, then lying is a means justified by this end. An extreme version of this is how people who know the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a fabrication, yet they see them as expressing a deeper truth. On this view, a supporter of Trump and ICE might “reason” that although the administration is lying in this case, the goals of the administration justify lying about killing innocent people. They might also think even if Good was innocent of any wrongdoing in this incident, she deserved to die because of who she was and her opposition to Trump. That is, her execution was warranted not as a case of self-defense against a dangerous driver but because she opposed the will of Trump.

In closing, the way the Trump administration and the right address incidents like these is the reason I am not overly worried about AI fakes in the context of “deeper truths.” For AI fakes to influence people, people would need to be influenced primarily by evidence rather than other factors. As this incident and others, such as the infamous claims about migrants eating cats and dogs, people see what they believe more than they believe what they see—that is, the evidence or lack of evidence is largely irrelevant and people, especially on the right, stick with their “deeper truth” or wish to show loyalty.

What I think AI fakes will be most “useful” for is giving people images and videos that match what they already believe. For example, people who think Good was a terrorist who hit the agent with her car would presumably believe AI generated fakes “showing” that. But they obviously believe that she hit him with her vehicle even when the video evidence does not support this. This is not to say that AI fakes will not be a problem, but I think they will be a problem for claims that people are willing to accept or reject based on evidence rather than on their ideology. Fortunately, the people most likely to be swayed by evidence also tend to be those with better critical thinking skills. Crudely put, people who believe (or profess their belief) based on their ideology are unlikely to have their views changed by AI fakes. People who are critical thinkers and believe based on careful consideration of evidence are also unlikely to have their views changed by AI fakes.

A Philosopher’s Blog 2025 brings together a year of sharp, accessible, and often provocative reflections on the moral, political, cultural, and technological challenges of contemporary life. Written by philosopher Michael LaBossiere, these essays move fluidly from the ethics of AI to the culture wars, from conspiracy theories to Dungeons & Dragons, from public policy to personal agency — always with clarity, humor, and a commitment to critical thinking.

Across hundreds of entries, LaBossiere examines the issues shaping our world:

  • AI, technology, and the future of humanity — from mind‑uploading to exoskeletons, deepfakes, and the fate of higher education
  • Politics, power, and public life — including voting rights, inequality, propaganda, and the shifting landscape of American democracy
  • Ethics in everyday life — guns, healthcare, charity, masculinity, inheritance, and the moral puzzles hidden in ordinary choices
  • Culture, identity, and conflict — racism, gender, religion, free speech, and the strange logic of modern outrage
  • Philosophy in unexpected places — video games, D&D, superheroes, time travel, and the metaphysics of fictional worlds

Whether he is dissecting the rhetoric of conspiracy theories, exploring the ethics of space mining, or reflecting on the death of a beloved dog, LaBossiere invites readers into a conversation that is rigorous without being rigid, principled without being preachy, and always grounded in the belief that philosophy is for everyone.

This collection is for readers who want more than hot takes — who want to understand how arguments work, why beliefs matter, and how to think more clearly in a world that rewards confusion.

Thoughtful, wide‑ranging, and often darkly funny, A Philosopher’s Blog 2025 is a companion for anyone trying to make sense of the twenty‑first century.

 

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Terrorism, like assassination, is violence with a political purpose. An assassination might also be intended to create terror, but the main objective is to eliminate a specific target. In contrast, terrorism is not aimed at elimination of a specific target; the goal is to create fear and almost any victims will suffice.

An individual terrorist might have any number of motives ranging from the ideological to the personal. Perhaps the terrorist sincerely believes that God loves the murder of innocents. Perhaps the terrorist was rejected by someone they were infatuated with and is lashing out in rage. While speculation into the motives of such people is interesting and important, behind all true terrorism lies a political motivation, although this motivation might be on the part of those other than the person conducting the act.

While a terrorist attack can create fear on the local level by itself, terrorists need the media and social media to spread their terror on a large scale. The media is always happy to oblige. While this coverage can be defended on the grounds that people have a right to know the facts, the coverage does have some important and (hopefully) unintended consequences.

One effect of extensive media coverage is to serve as an impact multiplier. The whole world is informed of the terrorist act and the group that claims credit gains terrorist credibility and status. This improves the influence of the group and enhances its ability to recruit as the group is getting free advertising. Assuming that aiding terrorists is morally wrong, this coverage is morally problematic.

A second effect of the coverage is that it fuels the spotlight fallacy. This is a fallacy in which a person estimates the chances that something will happen based on how often they hear about it rather than based on how often it occurs. Terrorist attacks in the West are very rare and what Americans should really be worried about, based on statistics, is poor lifestyle choices that are encouraged by businesses. These include the use of tobacco, over consumption of alcohol, misuse of pain killers, eating unhealthy food and driving automobiles. Since terrorist attacks are covered relentlessly in the news and the leading causes of premature death are not, it is easy for people to overestimate the danger posed by terrorism. And underestimate what will probably kill them.

A third effect of coverage is that it can make people victims of the fallacy of misleading vividness. This fallacy occurs when a person overestimates the chances that something will occur based on how vivid or extreme the event is. While the media typically exercises some restraint in coverage, terrorism is obviously scary to most and this can cause people to psychologically overestimate the threat.

Whether a person falls victim to the spotlight fallacy or misleading vividness, the result is the same: the person overestimates the danger and is thus more afraid then they should be. This has beneficial effects for those who wish to exploit this fear.

Obviously enough, the terrorists aim to exploit the fear they create. They want people to believe that they are in terrible danger and face an existential threat. Lacking the capacity to engage in actual war, they must make use of the strategy of terror. These two fallacies are critical weapons in their war and people who fall victim to them have allowed the terrorists to win.

One of the ironies of terrorism is that there are American politicians who exploit the fear created by terrorists and use it to influence people for their political ends. While they do not deploy the terrorists, they benefit from the attacks as much as the masters of the terrorists do.

Not surprisingly, they make use of some classic fallacies: appeal to fear and appeal to anger. An appeal to fear occurs when something that is supposed to create fear is offered in place of actual evidence. In the case of an appeal to anger, the same sort of thing is done, only with anger. This is not to say that something that might make a person afraid or angry cannot serve as actual evidence; it is that these fallacies offer no reason to support the claim in question and only appeal to emotions.

Interestingly, terrorists like ISIS and the American politicians that exploit them have very similar objectives. Both want to present the fight as a clash of cultures, the West (and Christianity) against Islam. They both want this for similar reasons: to increase the number of their followers and to keep the conflict going so it can be exploited to fuel their political ambitions. If Muslims are accepted by the Western countries, then the terrorist groups lose influence and propaganda tools and thus lose recruits. If Muslims accept the West, then the Western political groups exploiting fear of Islam also lose influence and propaganda tools and thus lose recruits.

Both the terrorists and their Western exploiters want to encourage Westerners to be afraid of refugees coming from conflict areas in the Middle East. After all, if the West takes in refugees and treats them well, this is a loss of recruits and a propaganda loss for the terrorists.  It is also a loss for those who try to build political power on fear and hatred of refugees. 

If refugees have no way to escape conflict, they will be forced to be either victims or participants. Children who grow up without education, stability and opportunity will also be much easier to recruit into terrorist groups.  This is all in the interest of the terrorists; but also, the Western political groups who want to exploit terrorism. After all, these groups are founded on identity politics and need a scary “them” to contrast with “us.”

This is not to say that the West should not be on guard against possible attacks or that the West should not vet refugees. My main point is that overreacting to terrorism only serves the ends of the wicked, be they actual terrorists or those in the West who would exploit this terror to gain power.

One challenge in combatting fake news is developing a principled distinction between the fake and the real. One reason defense is to defend against the misuse of the term “fake news” to attack news on ideological or other irrelevant grounds. I make no pretense of being able to present a necessary and sufficient definition of fake news, but I will endeavor to provide a rough sketch. My approach is built around three attributes: intention, factuality, and methodology. I will consider each in turn.

While determining intent can be challenging, it has a role in distinguishing fake news from real news. An obvious comparison is to lying. A lie is not simply making an untrue claim but making it with an intent (typically malicious) to deceive. There are, of course, benign deceits, such as those of the arts.

There are some forms of “fake” news, namely those aimed at being humorous, that are benign. The Onion, for example, aims to entertain as does Duffel Blog and Andy Borowitz. Being comedic in nature, they fall under the protective umbrella of art: they say untrue things to make people laugh. Though they are technically fake news, they are benign in their fakery and hence should not be treated as malicious fake news.

Other fake news operators, such as those behind the stories about Comet Ping Pong Pizza, have different intentions. Some claim to create fake news with a benign intent, professing they want people to be more critical of the news. If this is their real intent, it has not worked out as they hoped. It is also worth considering that this is, at least in some cases, also a deceit that is like the “I was only joking” response when someone is called out for saying something awful.  As such, this sort of fake news is to be condemned.

Fake news is often created to make a profit. Since legitimate news agencies also intend to make a profit, this does not differentiate the fake from the real. However, those engaged in real news do not intend to deceive for profit, whereas the fake news operators use deceit as a tool in their money-making endeavors. This is to be condemned.

Others engage in fake news for ideological reasons or to achieve political goals; their intent is to advance their agenda with intentional deceits. The classic defense of this approach is utilitarian: the good done by the lies outweighs their harm (for the morally relevant beings). While truly noble lies might be morally justified, the usual lies of fake news do not aim at the general good, but the advancement of a specific agenda that will create more harm than good for most people. As this matter is so complicated, it is fortunate that the matter of fake news is much simpler: deceit presented as real news is fake news, even if it could be justified on utilitarian grounds.

In the case of real news, the intent is to present claims that are believed to be true. This might be with the goal of profit, but it is the intent to provide truth that makes the difference. Naturally, working out intent can be challenging, but there is a fact of the matter as to why people do what they do. Real news might also be presented with the desire to advance an agenda, but if the intent is also to provide truth, then the news would remain real.

In regard to factuality, an important difference between fake and real news is that the real news endeavors to offer facts and the fake news does not. A fact is a claim that has been established as true (to the requisite degree) and this is a matter of methodology, which will be discussed below.

Factual claims are claims that are objective. This means that they are true or false regardless of how people think, feel or believe about them. For example, the claim that the universe contains dark matter is a factual claim. Factual claims can, at least in theory, be verified or disproven. In contrast, non-factual claims are not objective and cannot be verified or disproven. As such, there can be no “fake” non-factual claims.

It might be tempting to protect the expression of values (moral, political, aesthetic and so on) in the news from accusations of being fake news by arguing that they are non-factual claims and thus cannot be fake news. The problem is that while many uncritically believe value judgments are not objective, this is a matter of philosophical dispute. To assume that value claims are not factual claims would be to beg the question. But, to assume they are would also beg the question. Since I cannot hope to solve this problem, I will instead endeavor to sketch a practical guide to the difference.

In terms of non-value factual claims of the sort that appear in the news, there are established methods for testing them. As such, the way to distinguish the fake from the real is by consideration of the methodology used (and applying the relevant method).

In the case of value claims, such as the claim that reducing the size of government is the morally right thing to do, there are not such established methods to determine the truth (and there might be no truth in this context). As such, while such claims and any arguments supporting them can be criticized, they should not be regarded as news as such. Thus, they could not be fake news.

As a final point, it is also worth considering the matter of legitimate controversy. There are some factual matters that are legitimately in dispute. While not all the claims can be right (and all could be wrong), this does not entail that the claims are fake news. Because of this, to brand one side or the other as being fake news simple because one disagrees with that side would be unjustified. For example, whether imposing a specific tariff would help the economy is a factual matter, but one that could be honestly debated. I now turn to methodology.

It might be wondered why the difference between fake and real news is not presented entirely in terms of one making fake claims and the other making true claims. The reason for this is that a real news could turn out to be untrue and fake news could turn out to be correct. In terms of real news errors, reporters do make mistakes, sources are not always accurate, and so on. By pure chance, a fake news story could get the facts right, but it would not be thus real news. The critical difference between fake and real news is thus the methodology. This can be supported by drawing an analogy to science.

What differentiates real science from fake science is not that one gets it right and the other gets it wrong. Rather, it is a matter of methodology. This can be illustrated by using the dispute over dark matter in physics. If it turns out that dark matter does not exist, this will not show that the scientists were doing fake science. It would just show that they were wrong. Suppose that instead of dark matter, what is really going on is that normal matter in a parallel universe is interacting with our universe. Since I just made this up, I would not be doing real science just because I happened to get it right.

Another analogy can be made to math. As any math teacher will tell you, it is not a matter of just getting the right answer, it is a matter of getting the right answer the right way. Hence the requirement of showing one’s work. A person could guess the answer and get it right; but they are not doing real math because they are not even doing math. Naturally, a person can be doing real math and still get the answer wrong.

Assuming these analogies hold, real news is a matter of methodology, a methodology that might fail. Many of the methods of real news are, not surprisingly, like the methods of critical thinking in philosophy. For example, there is the proper use of the argument from authority as the basis for claims. As another example, there are the methods of assessing unsupported claims against one’s own observations, one’s background information and against credible claims.

The real news uses this methodology and evidence of it is present in the news, such as identified sources, verifiable data, and so on. While a fake news story can also contain fakery about methodology, this is a key matter of distinction. Because of this, news that is based on the proper methodology would be real news, even if some might disagree with its content.