Category: Critical Thinking

My Siberian husky, Isis, joined the pack in 2004 at the age of one. It took her a little while to realize that my house was now her house. She set out to chew all that could be chewed, presumably as part of some sort of imperative of destruction. Eventually, she came to realize that she was chewing her stuff. More likely, joining me on 16-mile runs wore the chew out of her.

As the years went by, we both slowed down. Eventually, she could no longer run with me (despite my slower pace) and we went on slower adventures. One does not walk a husky; one adventures with a husky. Despite her advanced age, she remained active. After one adventure, she seemed slow and sore. She cried once in pain but then seemed to recover. Then she got worse, requiring a trip to the emergency veterinarian.

The  x-rays showed no serious damage, just an indication of the wear and tear of age. She also had some unusual test results, perhaps indicating cancer. Because of her age, the main concern was with her mobility and pain. If she could get about and be happy, then that was what mattered. She was prescribed medications, and a follow up appointment was scheduled with the regular vet. By then, she had gotten worse in some ways, and her right foot was “knuckling” over, making walking difficult. This is often a sign of nerve issues. She was prescribed steroids and had to go through a washout period before starting the new medicine. As might be imagined, neither of us got much sleep during this time.

For a while the steroids worked and she could go on slow adventures and enjoy basking in the sun while watching the birds and squirrels, willing the squirrels to fall from the tree and into her mouth.

While philosophy is often derided as useless, it was very helpful to me during this time and I decided to write about this usefulness as both a defense of philosophy and, perhaps, as something useful for others who face similar circumstances with an aging canine.

Isis’ emergency visit was focused on pain management and one drug she was prescribed was Carprofen (more infamously known by the name Rimadyl). Carprofen is an NSAID that is supposed to be safer for canines than those designed for humans (like aspirin) and is commonly used to manage arthritis in elderly dogs. Being curious and cautious, I researched all the medications. I ran across forums which included people’s sad and often angry stories about how Carprofen killed their pets. The typical story involved what one would expect: a dog was prescribed Carprofen and then died or was found to have cancer shortly thereafter. I found such stories worrisome and was concerned as I did not want my dog to be killed by her medicine. But I also knew that without medication, she would be in terrible pain and unable to move. I wanted to make the right choice for her and knew this would require making a rational decision.

My regular vet decided to go with the steroid option, one that also has the potential for side effects and there were horror stories on the web. Once again, it was a matter of choosing between the risks of medication and the consequences of doing without. In addition to my research into medication, I also investigated various other options for treating arthritis and pain in older dogs. She was already on glucosamine (which might not be beneficial, but seems to have no serious side effects), but the web poured forth an abundance of options ranging from acupuncture to herbal remedies. I even ran across the claim that copper bracelets could help pain in dogs. They cannot.

While some alternatives had been subject to scientific investigation, most discussions involved a mix of miracles and horror stories. One person might write glowingly about how an herbal product brought his dog back from death’s door while another might claim that the same product killed his dog. Sorting through all these claims, anecdotes and studies turned out to be a lot of work. Fortunately, I had numerous philosophical tools that helped, specifically of the sort where it is claimed that “I gave my dog X, then he got better (or died) and X was the cause.” Knowing about two common fallacies is very useful in these cases.

The first is what is known as Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (“after this, therefore because of this”).  This fallacy has the following form:

 

Premise: A occurs before B.

Conclusion: Therefore, A is the cause of B.

 

This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that one event causes another just because the alleged cause occurred before the alleged effect. More formally, the fallacy involves concluding that A causes or caused B because A occurs before B and there is not sufficient evidence to warrant such a claim.

While cause does precede effect (at least in the normal flow of time), proper causal reasoning involves sorting out whether A occurring before B is just a matter of coincidence or not. In the case of medication involving an old dog, it could be a coincidence that the dog died or was diagnosed with cancer after the medicine was administered. That is, the dog might have died anyway or might have already had cancer. Without a proper investigation, simply assuming that the medication was the cause would be an error. The same holds true for beneficial effects. For example, a dog might go lame after a walk and then recover after being given an herbal supplement. While it would be tempting to attribute the recovery to the herbs, they might have had no effect at all. After all, lameness often goes away on its own or some other factor might have been the cause.

This is not to say that such stories should be rejected out of hand, but they should be approached with due consideration that the reasoning involved is post hoc. In concrete terms, if you are afraid to give your dog medicine she was prescribed because you heard of cases in which a dog had the medicine and then died, you should investigate more (such as talking to your vet) about whether there is a risk of death. As another example, if someone praises an herbal supplement because her dog perked up after taking it, then you should see if there is evidence for this claim beyond the post hoc situation.

Fortunately, there has been considerable research into medications and treatments that provide a basis for making a rational choice. When considering such data, it is important not to be lured into rejecting data by the seductive power of the Fallacy of Anecdotal Evidence.

This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. The fallacy is considered by some to be a variation on hasty generalization.  It has the following forms:

 

Form One

Premise: Anecdote A is told about a member (or small number of members) of Population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is made about Population P based on Anecdote A.

 

For example, a person might hear anecdotes about dogs that died after taking a prescribed medication and infer that the medicine is likely to kill dogs.

 

Form Two

Premise 1: Reasonable statistical evidence S exists for general claim C.

Premise 2:  Anecdote A is presented that is an exception to or goes against general claim C.

Conclusion: General claim C is rejected.

 

For example, statistical evidence shows that the evidence that glucosamine-chondroitin can treat arthritis is, at best, weak. But a person might tell a story about how their aging husky “was like a new dog” after she started taking it. supplement. To accept this as proof that the data is wrong would be to fall for this fallacy. That said, I did give my husky glucosamine-chondroitin because it is affordable, has no serious side effects and might have some benefit. I am fully aware of the data and do not reject it, I gambled that it might have done her some good.

The way to avoid becoming a victim of anecdotal evidence is to seek reliable, objective statistical data about the matter in question (a credible vet would be a good source). This can be a challenge when it comes to treatments for pets. In many cases, there are no adequate studies or trials that provide statistical data and only anecdotal evidence is available. One option is, of course, to investigate the anecdotes and try to do your own statistics. So, if most anecdotes indicate something harmful (or something beneficial) then this would be weak evidence for the claim. In any case, it is wise to approach anecdotes with due care  as a story is not proof.

The United States has settled into a post-shooting ritual. When a horrific shooting makes the news, many people offer some version of this prayer: “Oh God, let the shooter be one of them and not one of us.” Then people speculate about the identity of the shooter. In most cases the next step is that the Republicans offer thoughts and prayers while the Democratics talk about wanting to pass new gun control laws, if only they could win more elections. The final step is forgetting about that shooting when the next one occurs. My focus in this essay is on the speculation phase.

One of the most recent shootings is the attack on a Mormon church in Michigan which resulted in four people dying in the church and the attacker being killed by the police. As soon as the attack made the news, speculation began on the identity and motives of the shooter. Laura Loomer seemed to claim that the shooter was a Muslim acting as part of a broader plan while Donald J. Trump asserted that it appeared to be a targeted attack on Christians. And, of course, social media was awash with speculation. As this is being written, the suspect has been identified as 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford. He is believed to be a military veteran and there is some evidence he held anti Mormon views. There is currently no evidence that he was Muslim. The investigation is ongoing, but the speculation continues.

In terms of why people speculate so quickly and without much (if any) evidence, there are various psychological reasons. I will leave those to the psychologists. There are also some practical reasons that connect to critical thinking, so I will briefly discuss those.

One practical reason to speculate immediately and even claim to know the identity and motives of the shooter is to generate clicks and hence income. One recent example of this is when 77 year old Michael Mallinson, a retired banker living in Toronto, was falsely claimed to be Charlie Kirk’s killer by an account pretending to be a Fox News outlet. Whoever was behind it also claimed he was a registered Democrat, which suggests they had some understanding of their targets. This example, and others like it, shows the importance of confirming a source as credible before accepting a claim. While one outlet might scoop a story, if it is credible, then other news outlets will run it as well and thus it is also wise to see if a claim is confirmed by other credible sources. There is, of course, the obvious problem that there has been a longstanding war against credible media outlets and that we are awash in misinformation and disinformation.  

While people can speculate in good faith (believing what they claim), there can be bad faith speculation intended to get an ideological narrative out there as soon as possible. This is because what is claimed first can often establish itself as plausible and then resist efforts to debunk it if it turns out to be false.

 Such false claims also provide others with “evidence” that they can use later when making their own false claims. For example, I regularly see people posting the false claim that many mass shooters are trans people, despite this being obviously untrue. As “evidence” people often post images of other posts making a false claim about a shooter’s identity. In some cases, people are acting in a form of good faith: they are being duped and wrongly think they are making true claims. For people who want to believe true things, a wise approach is to confirm whether a claim is true by seeking out multiple credible sources. But there is the obvious problem that people are often locked into ideological bubbles and what they see as credible sources are heavily biased or even dedicated spreaders of disinformation. There are also those who act in bad faith, posting claims about the identity and motives of shooters they know are false and using other untruths as “evidence” in order to advance their agenda, even if that is just to troll and trigger.

It is, of course, tempting to speculate about the identity and motives of shooters. While it might seem reasonable to draw inferences from such things as the target of the shooting, such speculation is still just speculation. For example, Trump speculated that the shooting might have been a targeted attack on Christians because the shooter attacked a church. As noted above, there is now some evidence that Trump was somewhat right: the attack might have been motivated by the shooters alleged dislike of Mormons. As this is being written, the religious beliefs of the shooter are unknown, but the United States does have a history of Christian Anti-Mormonism. When Mitt Romney was running for President, I (an Episcopalian) had to argue that Mormons are Christians. As such, any inferences about the shooter’s religious beliefs would be drawn from very thin evidence. The shooter could be a Christian who detested Mormons; but this is just speculation.

From a critical thinking and moral standpoint, the rational and ethical thing to do is to not speculate about a shooter’s identity and motives in public (such as posting on social media). Leave the investigation to the professionals and wait for adequate evidence to become available. This applies whether one is a pundit, a president or just a random person like me. People do, of course, have the right to speculate but rights should always be exercised with prudence and moral restraint.

As this is being written, the story of the stalled escalator is making international news. The gist of the tale is that an escalator at the United Nations building came to a sudden stop just as Trump and the First Lady began their journey upwards. The UN claims that a White House videographer accidentally tripped a safety system, stopping the mechanism. Aside from Trump and Melania getting in some unexpected cardio, nothing happened. While this event might seem utterly insignificant, it provides an excellent and absurd example of the state of American politics.

Some on the right rushed to present a narrative of a sinister plot against Trump, suggesting that it was a deliberate attempt to harm Trump or perhaps even set him up for an assassination attempt. While Trump initially seemed to laugh off the escalator incident, he is now calling for arrests in the wake of what some in the media are calling “escalatorgate.” Fox News personality Jesse Watters jokingly (one hopes) suggested blowing up or gassing the U.N. in retaliation. While all this might strike rational people as nonsense, it is philosophically interesting in terms of critical thinking, epistemology and ethics. In this essay I’ll briefly look at some of these aspects.

In causal explanations it is usually wisest to follow the popular conception of Occam’s Razor and go with the simplest explanation. In the case of the escalator, the simplest explanation is the stated one: someone tripped a safety mechanism. If someone intended to harm the President, rigging an escalator would be both needlessly complicated and extremely unlikely to cause any meaningful harm. Times being what they are, I am obligated to state unequivocally that I condemn any efforts to harm the President or anyone else with escalator sabotage. But there are reasons why someone might claim something sinister occurred and other reasons why someone might believe it. I make this distinction because people can obviously make claims they do not believe.

While there are various psychological reasons why the claim might be made, there are some “good” practical reasons to claim a sinister plot. One is to create a distraction that will take attention from other topics, such as economic woes and the Epstein files. Trump and his allies have turned this into an international story, and I have been drawn in to do my part. However, my point is that this should not be an important story. The second is to energize the base with an “example” of how “they” are out to get Trump. The third is that it provides a pretense for Trump to go after the U.N.. But why would anyone believe that there is something sinister going on?

We humans tend to attribute human motivations or intentions to objects or natural phenomena and this gives rise to what we philosophers call the anthropomorphic fallacy. While Trump and his supporters are not making this mistake about the escalator, they could be committing a similar error: they are inferring without adequate evidence that an accidental event was caused by sinister intentions. This “reasoning” involves rejecting the accident explanation in favor of the sinister intention explanation based on psychological factors rather than evidence. That is, Trump and his supporters probably feel that there is a sinister conspiracy against him, so accidents and coincidences are explained in terms of this conspiracy because the explanation feels right. And if the conspiracy theory is questioned, the questioner is accused of being in on the conspiracy. Other accidents and coincidences are also offered as “evidence” that this specific accident or coincidence is part of the conspiracy. It might be objected that people really have tried to hurt Trump, such as occurred with the two failed assassinations attempts (that I also condemn). While those do serve as evidence that those two people wanted to harm Trump, they have no relevance to the escalator incident and evidence in support of the escalator conspiracy in particular would be needed.

Another reason why some people might believe this is based in the claim about the right that “every accusation is a confession.” While there are various ways to explain this, a plausible one in some cases is the false consensus effect cognitive bias. This occurs when people assume that their personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through the general population. People who might themselves think of sabotaging an escalator to harm someone they dislike would be inclined to believe other people think like them, just as a liar would tend to think other people are also dishonest. Times being what they are, I must clarify that I condemn using escalators to harm people and I am not accusing anyone on the right of planning to do this. This is but a hypothesis about why some people might believe the elevator was sabotaged. Lastly, I’ll take a brief look at an ethical issue of free expression.

As noted above, Jesse Watters joked about bombing the U.N. in retaliation for the escalator. As I am a consistent advocate of free expression, I believe he has the moral right to say this although it would be morally acceptable for him to face any relevant proportional moral consequences. Times being what they are, I must be clear that I do not condone any attempts to harm Watters or even firing him over this. But his remarks are another example of the apparent moral inconsistency of the right, with Brian Kilmeade’s assertion that we should consider executing mentally ill homeless people being the most extreme example to date. Kilmeade had to apologize but faced no meaningful consequences.

After the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk, many on the right rushed to punish those who spoke ill of Kirk, with Watters himself calling for Matthew Dowd to be fired. There was also the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after alleged intimidation by Trump’s FCC. Less famous people have also been fired, with Vice President Vance urging people to report criticism of Kirk to get these critics fired. This is but one of many examples showing that folks on the right either do not believe in free expression or define the right of free expression as only allowing what they want to express and hear. While this is moral inconsistency, it can be an effective strategy since it allows them the pretense of ethics without the inconvenience of being ethical.

 

The American right is partially defined by its embracing debunked conspiracy theories such as the big lie about the 2020 election and those involving all things COVID. While some conspiracy theories are intentionally manufactured by those who know they are untrue (such as the 2020 election conspiracy theories) other theories  might start by people being bad at reading things correctly. For example, consider the claim that there were microchips in the COVID vaccines because of Bill Gates.

The Verge does a step-by-step analysis of how this conspiracy theory evolved, which is an excellent example of how conspiracy claims arise, mutate, and propagate. The simple version is this: in a chat on Reddit, Gates predicted that people would have a digital “passport” of their health records. Some Americans who attended K-12 public schools have already used a paper version of this.  I have my ancient elementary school health records, which I recently consulted to confirm I had received my measles booster as a kid. As this is being written, measles has returned to my adopted state of Florida. The idea of using tattoos to mark people when they are vaccinated has also been suggested as a solution to the problem of medical records in places where record keeping is spotty or non-existent.

Bill Gate’s prediction was picked up by a Swedish website focused on biohacking which proposed using an implanted chip to store this information. This is not a new idea for biohackers or science fiction, but it was not Gate’s idea. However, the site used the untrue headline, “Bill Gates will use microchip implants to fight coronavirus.” As should surprise no one, the family tree of the conspiracy leads next to my adopted state of Florida.

Pastor Adam Fannin of Jacksonville read the post and uploaded a video to YouTube. The title is “Bill Gates – Microchip Vaccine Implants to fight Coronavirus,” which is an additional untruth on top of the untrue headline from the Swedish site. This idea spread quickly until it reached Roger Stone. The New York Post ran the headline “Roger Stone: Bill Gates may have created coronavirus to microchip people.”

Those familiar with telephone might see this as a dangerous version as each person changes the claim until it has almost no resemblance to the original. Just as with games of telephone, it is worth considering that people intentionally made changes. In the case of a game of telephone, the intent is to make the final version funny. In the case of conspiracy theories, the goal is to distort the original into the desired straw man. In the case of Bill Gates, it started out with the innocuous idea that people would have a digital copy of their health records and ended up with the claim that Bill Gates might have created the virus to put chips in people. In addition to showing how conspiracy claims can devolve from innocuous claims, this also provides an excellent example of how conspiracy theories sometimes do get it right that we should be angry at someone or something but get the reasons why we should be angry wrong.

While there is no good evidence for the conspiracy theories about Gates and microchips, it is true that we should be angry at Bill Gate’s COVID wrongdoings. Specifically, Gates used his foundation to impede access to COVID vaccines. This was not a crazy supervillain plan; it was “monopoly medicine.” As such, you should certainly loath Bill Gates for his immoral actions; but not because of the false conspiracy theories. As an aside, it is absurd that when there are so many real problems and real misdeeds to confront, conspiracy theorists spend so much energy generating and propagating imaginary problems and misdeeds. Obviously, these often serve some people very well by distracting attention from these problems. But back to the origin of conspiracy theories.

While, as noted above, people do intentionally make false claims to give birth to conspiracy theories, it also makes sense that unintentional misreading can be a factor. Having been a professor for decades, I know that people often unintentionally misread or misinterpret content.

For the most part, when professors are teaching basic and noncontroversial content, they endeavor to prove the students with a clear and correct reading or interpretation. Naturally, there can be competing interpretations and murky content in academics, but I am focusing on the clear, simple stuff where there is general agreement and little or no opposition. And, of course, no one with anything to gain from advancing another interpretation. Even in such cases, students can badly misinterpret things. To illustrate, consider this passage from the Apology:

 

Socrates: And now, Meletus, I will ask you another question—by Zeus I will:  Which is better, to live among bad citizens, or among good ones?  Answer, friend, I say; the question is one which may be easily answered.  Do not the good do their neighbors good, and the bad do them evil?

 

Meletus: Certainly.

 

Socrates: And is there anyone who would rather be injured than benefited by those who live with him?  Answer, my good friend, the law requires you to answer— does any one like to be injured?

 

Meletus: Certainly not.

 

Socrates: And when you accuse me of corrupting and deteriorating the youth, do you allege that I corrupt them intentionally or unintentionally?

 

Meletus: Intentionally, I say.

 

Socrates: But you have just admitted that the good do their neighbors good, and the evil do them evil.  Now, is that a truth which your superior wisdom has recognized thus early in life, and am I, at my age, in such darkness and ignorance as not to know that if a man with whom I have to live is corrupted by me, I am very likely to be harmed by him; and yet I corrupt him, and intentionally, too—so you say, although neither I nor any other human being is ever likely to be convinced by you.  But either I do not corrupt them, or I corrupt them unintentionally; and on either view of the case you lie.  If my offence is unintentional, the law has no cognizance of unintentional offences: you ought to have taken me privately, and warned and admonished me; for if I had been better advised, I should have left off doing what I only did unintentionally—no doubt I should; but you would have nothing to say to me and refused to teach me.  And now you bring me up in this court, which is a place not of instruction, but of punishment.

 

Socrates’ argument is quite clear and, of course, I go through it carefully because this argument is part of the paper for my Introduction to Philosophy class. Despite this, every class has a few students who read Socrates’ argument as him asserting that he did not corrupt the youth intentionally because they did not harm him. But Socrates does not make that claim; central to his argument is the claim that if he corrupted them, then they would probably harm him. Since he does not want to be harmed, then he either did not corrupt them or did so unintentionally. This is, of course, an easy misinterpretation to make by reading into the argument something that is not there but seems like it perhaps should or at least could be. Students are even more inclined to read Socrates as claiming that the youth will certainly harm him if he corrupts them and then build an argument around this erroneous reading. Socrates claims that the youth would be very likely to harm him if he corrupted them and so he was aware that he might not be harmed.

My point is that even when the text is clear, even when someone is actively providing the facts, even when there is no controversy, and even when there is nothing to gain by misinterpreting the text, it still occurs. And if this can occur in ideal conditions (a  clear, uncontroversial text in a class), then it should be clear how easy it is for misinterpretations to arise in “the wild.” As such, a person can easily misinterpret text or content and sincerely believe they have it right—thus leading to a false claim that can give rise to a conspiracy theory. Things are much worse when a person intends to deceive. Fortunately, there is an easy defense against such mistakes: read more carefully and take the time to confirm that your interpretation is the most plausible. Unfortunately, this requires some effort and the willingness to consider that one might be wrong, which is why misinterpretations occur so easily. It is much easier to go with the first reading (or skimming) and more pleasant to simply assume one is right.

Cuphead on SteamDirect

Inuendo Studios presents an excellent and approachable analysis of the infamous Gamer Gate and its role in later digital radicalization. This video inspired me to think about manufactured outrage, which reminded me of the fake outrage over such video games as Cuphead and Doom. There was also similar rage against the She-Ra and He-Man reboots. Mainstream fictional outrage against fiction involved the Republican’s rage against Dr. Seuss being “cancelled.” Unfortunately, fictional outrage can lead to real consequences, such as death threats, doxing, swatting, and harassment. In politics fictional outrage is weaponized for political gain, widens the political divide between Americans, and escalates emotions. In short, fictional outrage at fiction makes reality worse. 

I call this fictional outrage at fiction for two reasons. The first is that the outrage is fictional: it is manufactured and based on untruths. The second is that the outrage is at works of fiction, such as games, TV shows, movies, and books. Since Thought Slime, Innuendo Studios, Shaun, and others have ably gone through examples in detail, I will focus on some of the rhetorical and fallacious methods used in fictional outrage at fiction. These methods also apply to non-fiction targets as well, but I am mainly interested in fiction here. Part of my motivation is to show that some people put energy into enraging others about make-believe things like games and TV shows. While fiction is subject to moral evaluation, it should be remembered that it is fiction. Although our good dead friend Plato would certainly take issue with my view.

While someone can generate fictional outrage by complete lies, this is usually less effective than using some residue of truth. Hyperbole is an effective tool for this task. Hyperbole is usually distinguished from outright lying because hyperbole is an exaggeration rather than a complete fabrication. For example, if someone says they caught a huge fish they would be simply lying if they caught nothing but would be using hyperbole if they caught a small fish. There can be debate over what is hyperbole and what is simply a lie. For example, when the Dr. Seuss estate decided to stop publishing six books, the Republicans and their allies claimed Dr. Seuss had been cancelled by the left. While it was true that six books would not be published, it can be argued whether saying the left cancelled them is hyperbole or simply a lie. Either way, of course, the claim is not true.

   Even if the target audience knows hyperbole is being used, it can still influence their emotions, especially if they want to believe. So, even if someone recognizes that the “wrongdoing” of a games journalist was absurdly exaggerated, they might still go along with the outrage. A person who is particularly energetic and dramatic in their hyperbole can also use their showmanship to augment its impact.

The defense against hyperbole is, obviously, to determine the truth of the matter. One should always be suspicious of claims that seem extreme or exaggerated, although they should not be automatically dismissed as extreme claims can be true. Especially since we live in a time of extremes.

A common fallacy used in fictional outrage is the Straw Man. This fallacy is committed when someone ignores an actual position, claim or action and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of it. This fallacy often involves hyperbole. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:

 

  1. Person A has position X/makes claim X/did X.
  2. Person B presents Y (which is a distorted version of X).
  3. Person B attacks Y.
  4. Therefore, X is false/incorrect/flawed/wrong.

 

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of something does not constitute an attack on the thing itself. One might as well expect an attack on a drawing of a person to physically harm the person. To illustrate the way the fallacy is often used, consider what happened to start the “outrage” over Cuphead. A writer played an early version of the game badly, noted that they were doing badly, and were generally positive about the game. All this was ignored by those wanting to manufacture rage: they presented it as a game journalist condemning the game for being too hard because they are bad at games. And it escalated from there.  

The Straw Man fallacy is an excellent way to manufacture rage; one can simply create whatever custom villain they wish by distorting reality. As with hyperbole, there is the question of what distinguishes a straw man from a complete fabrication; the difference is that the Straw Man fallacy starts with some truth and then distorts it. To use the Cuphead example, if a person had never even played Cuphead or said anything about it, saying that they hated the game because they are incompetent would be a complete fabrication rather than a straw man.

Straw Man attacks tend to work because people generally do not bother to investigate the accuracy of claims they want to believe; and even if they are not already invested in the claim, checking a claim takes some effort. It is easier to just believe (or not) without checking. People also often expect others to be truthful, which is increasingly unwise.

The defense against a Straw Man is to check the facts. Ideally this would involve going to the original source or at least using a credible and objective source.

A third common fallacy used in fictional outrage is Hasty Generalization. This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough. It has the following form:

 

Premise 1. Sample S, which is too small, is taken from population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is drawn about Population P based on S.

 

The person committing fallacy is misusing the following type of reasoning, which is known as Inductive Generalization, Generalization, and Statistical Generalization:

 

Premise 1: X% of all observed A’s are B’s.

Premise : Therefore X% of all A’s are B’s.

 

The fallacy is committed when not enough A’s are observed to warrant the conclusion. If enough A’s are observed, then the reasoning is not fallacious. Since Hasty Generalization is committed when the sample (the observed instances) is too small, it is important to have samples that are large enough when making a generalization.

This fallacy is useful in creating fictional outrage because it enables a person to (fallaciously) claim that something is widespread based on a small sample. If the sample is extremely small and it is a matter of an anecdote, then a similar fallacy, Anecdotal Evidence, can be committed. This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. The fallacy is considered by some to be a variation of Hasty Generalization.  It has the following forms:

 

Form One

Premise 1: Anecdote A is told about a member (or small number of members) of Population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is made about Population P based on Anecdote A.

 

Form Two

  1. Reasonable statistical evidence S exists for general claim C.
  2. Anecdote A is presented that is an exception to or goes against general claim C.
  3. Conclusion: General claim C is rejected.

 

People often fall victim to this fallacy because stories and anecdotes have more psychological influence than statistical data. This leads people to infer that what is true in an anecdote must be true of the whole population or that an anecdote justifies rejecting statistical evidence. Not surprisingly, people usually accept this fallacy because they prefer that what is true in the anecdote be true in general. For example, if one game journalist is critical of a game because it has sexist content, then one might generate outrage by claiming that all game journalists are attacking all games for sexist content.

A person can also combine rhetorical tools and fallacies. For example, an outrage merchant could use hyperbole to create a straw man of an author who wrote a piece about whether video game characters should be more diverse and less stereotypical. The straw man could be something like this author wants to eliminate white men from video games and replace them with women and minorities. This straw man could then be used in the fallacy of Anecdotal Evidence to “support” the claim that “the left” wants to eliminate white men from video games and replace them with women and minorities.

The defense against Hasty Generalization and Anecdotal Evidence is to check to see if the sample size warrants the conclusion being drawn. One way that people try to protect their claims from such scrutiny is to use an anonymous enemy. This is done by not identifying their sample’s members but referring to a vague group such as “those people”, “the left”, “SJWs”, “soy boys”, “the woke mob”, or whatever. If pressed for specific examples that can be checked, a common tactic is to refer to someone who has been targeted by a straw man fallacy and just use Anecdotal Evidence again. Another common “defense” is to respond with anger and simply insist that there are many examples, while never providing them. Another tactic used here is Headlining.

In this context, Headlining occurs when someone looks at the headline of an article and then speculates or lies about the content. These misused headlines are often used as “evidence”, especially to “support” straw man claims. For example, an article might be entitled “Diversity and Inclusion in Video Games: A Noble Goal.” The article could be a reasoned and balanced piece on the merits and cons of diversity and inclusion in video games. But the person who “headlines” it (perhaps by linking to it in a video or including just a screen shot) could say that the piece is a hateful screed about eliminating white men from video games. This can be effective for the same reason that the standard Straw Man is effective; few people will bother to read the article. Those who already feel the outrage will almost certainly not bother to check; they will simply assume the content is as claimed (or perhaps not care).

There are many other ways to create fictional outrage at fiction, but I hope this is useful in increasing your defense against such tactics.

In the last pandemic Americans were caught up in a political battle over masks. Those who opposed mask mandates tended to be on the right; those who accepted mask mandates (and wearing masks) tended to be on the left. One interesting approach to the mask debate by some on the right was to draw an analogy between the mask mandate and the restrictive voting laws that the Republicans have passed. The gist is that if the left opposed the voting laws, then they should have opposed mask mandates. Before getting into the details of the argument, let us look at the general form of the analogical argument.

An analogy will typically have two premises and a conclusion. The first premise establishes the analogy by showing that the things (X and Y) in question are similar in certain respects (properties P, Q, R, etc.).  The second premise establishes that X has an additional quality, Z. The conclusion asserts that Y has property or feature Z as well. The form of the argument looks like this:

 

           Premise 1: X and Y have properties P, Q, R.

           Premise 2: X has property Z.

           Conclusion: Y has property Z.

 

X and Y are variables that stand for whatever is being compared, such as chimpanzees and humans or apples and oranges. P, Q, R, and are also variables, but they stand for properties or features that X and Y are known to possess, such as having a heart. Z is also a variable, and it stands for the property or feature that X is known to possess. The use of P, Q, and R is just for the sake of illustration-the things being compared might have more properties in common.

One simplified way to present the anti-mask mandate analogy is as follows:

 

Premise 1: Mask mandates and restrictive voting laws are similar in many ways.

           Premise 2: Restrictive voting laws are opposed by the left.

           Conclusion: Mask mandates should also be opposed by the left.

 

While this analogy seems appealing to many anti-mask mandate folks, we must see if it is a strong argument. The strength of an analogical argument depends on three factors. To the extent that an analogical argument meets these standards it is a strong argument.

First, the more properties X and Y have in common, the better the argument. This standard is based on the notion that the more two things are alike in other ways, the more likely it is that they will be alike in some other way. Second, the more relevant the shared properties are to property Z, the stronger the argument. A specific property, for example P, is relevant to property Z if the presence or absence of P affects the likelihood that Z will be present. Third, it must be determined whether X and Y have relevant dissimilarities as well as similarities. The more dissimilarities and the more relevant they are, the weaker the argument. So, is the analogy between the restrictive voter laws and mask mandates strong? To avoid begging the question by making a straw man, I will endeavor to make the best analogy I can—within the limits of truth.

On the face of it, both the mask mandate and the restrictive voting laws are aimed at preventing harm. In the case of the mask mandate, the coercive power of the state was to be used to protect people from the pandemic. In the case of the restrictive voting laws, the coercive power of the state was supposed to protect people from voter fraud. This seems an essential and compelling similarity if the state has the right to use its coercive power to protect citizens from harm. As such, if the use of mask mandates was warranted to protect people from the danger of COVID, then the use of restrictive voting laws would be warranted to protect people from the danger of voter fraud. However, further consideration reveals that the analogy fails.

One critical relevant difference is that the number of COVID cases (and deaths) in the United States is huge, while the number of cases of voter (or election) fraud is vanishingly small. The last pandemic killed 1,193,165 people in the United Stated.  In contrast, there were about 16 charged cases of voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. In some cases, these charges stem from absurd efforts, such as a person who voted and asked if he could vote for his son. When told he could not, he returned and attempted to impersonate his son. . One could attempt to address this by providing evidence that fraud is widespread and pervasive enough to warrant the comparison to COVID. Alternatively, one could argue that few people actually died of COVID, so the number is small enough to warrant the comparison to voter fraud. But there is no evidence for either: COVID killed almost 2 million people in the United States and voter fraud barely exists.

The level of risk is also important in determining if the use of coercive power of the state is warranted. If an illness arose that only infected 16 people, then it would be absurd for the state to use its power to impose mask mandates. The level of threat would not warrant such an imposition. Naturally, if there were millions of cases of voter fraud, then the state would be warranted in acting as that would be a serious threat.

Another important difference is the severity of the harm. COVID killed almost 2 million people in the United States (and is still killing people). Voter fraud had no meaningful impact on the 2020 election and all efforts on the part of Trump and his supporters have failed repeatedly to reveal evidence to the contrary. Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Guy, exemplifies the bizarre absurdity of the conspiracy theory about voter/election fraud. One could attempt to address this by providing evidence that voter/election fraud is harmful enough to warrant the comparison to COVID. Alternatively, one could argue that the danger of COVID was grossly exaggerated and thus warrant the comparison to voter fraud. But there is no evidence for either: COVID killed millions and the 16 charged cases of voter fraud had no effect on the outcome of the election.

Another relevant difference is the effectiveness of the measures. Justifying the use of the coercive power of the state requires showing that this use is effective in addressing the harm. To compel people and produce no benefit would be a failure on the part of the state. While masks were not magical armor against COVID, they do provide a meaningful level of protection when used correctly. In contrast, the restrictive laws the Republicans passed do not seem to have any relevance to preventing fraud (which barely exists). For example, even Lindsey Graham admitted that the law preventing voters from receiving food and water while waiting in line does not make ‘a whole lot of sense.’ One could attempt to address this by providing evidence that the laws are effective at preventing fraud and so warrant the comparison to mask mandates. Alternatively, one could argue that the effectiveness of masks was grossly exaggerated and thus warrant the comparison. But there is no evidence for either: masks seemed moderately effective while the voter restrictions were not. Given this evaluation, the analogy is weak. Interestingly, the analogy would be a problem for people who are anti-mandate but pro voter restriction.

There are other relevant differences as well, such as voting being a foundational right that should be protected rather than restricted and being allowed to freely infect people during a pandemic is not a right and masks were barely an inconvenience.

If we do accept that mask mandates and voter restriction laws are analogous and it is assumed that the laws are warranted because they are aimed at addressing a harm that barely exists, then it would follow that mask-mandates were justified. After all, the mandates were aimed at addressing a disease that killed almost two million Americans. Alternatively, if one accepts that the mask mandate is unwarranted despite the harms of illness and death, then it would follow (by analogy) that the restrictive voting laws are utterly unwarranted since they impose great restrictions to (allegedly) address a harm that barely exists. But this assessment will have little impact: the comparison being made seemed to be mostly made in bad faith for rhetorical purposes rather than being a well-considered argument based on a theory of when the state should coerce its citizens. 

While Republican politicians in my adopted state of Florida profess to love freedom, they have been busy passing laws to restrict freedom. During the last pandemic Governor DeSantis opposed mask mandates and vaccine passports on the professed grounds of fighting “medical authoritarianism.” He also engaged in the usual Republican attacks on cancel culture, claiming to be a supporter of free speech. However, the Governor and the Republican dominated state legislature banned ‘critical race theory’ from public schools, mandated a survey of the political beliefs of faculty and students, and engaged in book banning. On the face of it, the freedom loving Republicans appear to be waging war on freedom. One could spend hours presenting examples of the apparent inconsistencies between Republican value claims and their actions, but my focus here is on value vagueness.

In my ethics class, I teach a section on moral methods which are argument templates for ethical reasoning. One method, which is useful beyond ethics, is Logical Consistency. Two claims are logically consistent with each other when both can be true at the same time. For example, the claim “restricting freedom is sometimes acceptable” is consistent with the claim “restricting freedom is sometimes unacceptable” since they can both be true.  Two claims are inconsistent when both cannot be true at the same time (but both could be false). For example, the claim “people should be free from government control” would seem to be inconsistent with the claim “the government should ban the teaching of critical race theory.”  This is because while these claims cannot both be true at the same time, they could both be false.

If someone makes inconsistent claims, then at least one of their claims must be false. The fact that two (or more) claims are inconsistent does not, however, show which is false. But you can know that a set of claims contains inconsistent claims without knowing which ones are false. Since logically inconsistent claims cannot be true at the same time, it is irrational to accept such claims when their inconsistency is known. But there is a way to respond, rationally, to a seemingly reasonable charge of inconsistency.

In some cases, it is possible to respond to the charge of inconsistency by dissolving the inconsistency. This can be done by showing that the inconsistency is merely apparent. This is achieved by arguing that the claims are consistent despite appearing inconsistent.

In the case of value claims, such as claims about political or moral matters, an inconsistency can seem to occur because of how the person making the charge defines a term or phrase. Their definition can be different from that used by the person making the claim. In some cases, this difference can be the result of bad faith, but people can disagree about definitions in good faith.  The concept of freedom is an excellent example of this: people have different definitions of this concept, and the definition is relevant to sorting out a charge of inconsistency about freedom.

Those who read my work know that I often accuse Republicans of being inconsistent. But they could be defended by showing that under their conception of freedom, they are consistent. For example, the same Republicans who rage against “cancel culture” and lost their minds over Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head are the same people who passed laws cancelling the teaching of (what they claim is) critical race theory. They are also the people who professed outrage when an athlete protested police violence during the national anthem. On the face of it, they seem to engage in inconsistent claims: people should be free to express their views, but people should be forbidden from teaching critical race theory and condemned for protesting police violence during the national anthem.  But there is an easy way to respond to this charge in a sensible manner.

The concept of freedom is vague and saying one supports freedom is to make a vague claim. Outside of a philosophical analysis of “freedom” this is a normal and sensible thing to do: if you spent the time precisely defining your concept of freedom during a speech or conversation, your audience would fall asleep if they could not flee. When a person is pressed on their view, then that is the time to be more precise about their concept. For example, I also say that I am for freedom of expression. But if I were asked if I thought Ted Cruz should be free to shout death threats at Mike Pence, I would say that he should not do that. If someone attacked me for this seeming inconsistency, I would contend that my account of freedom of expression does not make freedom absolute and there are limits to freedom. I would, as always, use the stock argument about the role of harm in limiting freedoms and point out Hobbes’ realization that a right to everything amounts to a right to nothing.

Republicans can do the same and argue that while people should be free to decline masks and vaccinations during a pandemic, they should not be free to discuss critical race theory in class or protest police violence during the national anthem. They would, however, need to show how these are consistent under their theory of freedom. On the face of it, this would be difficult. Take, for example, the usual use of the principle of harm: while this allows me to be against Cruz making death threats against Mike Pence, it would not seem to warrant the freedom to go unvaccinated during a pandemic. Yet it would seem to allow people to teach critical race theory and protest. So, they would need some other means of justifying the different applications. A plausible approach is to use the principle of relevant difference.

If there are relevant differences between the cases, then this warrants a difference in application of the concept of freedom. Common differences include who is taking the action, that nature of the action, and the consequences of the action. In my Cruz example, above, I can appeal to a relevant difference in terms of the harmful consequences of allowing people to make such threats. Republicans could contend that who is acting is relevant; when Republicans are accused of being racist and sexist, they could see freedom as something that belongs to white men. They could also focus on the action: kneeling in protest is different from going without a mask during a pandemic (the difference could be that one energizes their base and the other enrages their base). The challenge is showing how this is a relevant difference that warrants the difference in freedom.

It is also worth noting that while value concepts are vague (until clarified), this vagueness can be exploited for rhetorical purposes. The general strategy is to use a value term (or phrase) vaguely to make the target audience feel positive (or negative). Since audience members will generally use their own definition for a concept, this can be very effective: the audience will often assume that they all have the same view of the concept.

 Value concepts that are seen as positive can be very effective in this role. “Freedom” is very popular in the United States, so politicians talk endlessly about it. It is a vague concept, so it can be applied broadly and inconsistently. So, for example, Republicans in Florida talked about fighting mask mandates because they love freedom. They also pass laws restricting freedoms, counting on the fact that “freedom” is vague. The defense against being swayed by this rhetoric is to determine what the concept really seems to mean (if anything) to the person using it. In the case of Republicans in Florida, their conception of freedom has very strict limitations that seem to be defined by such factors as race, class, gender and religion. But, of course, this need not be a problem for them: if their base has a similar conception, they can seem to be speaking virtuously about freedom while acting against freedom.

As a philosopher, I annoy people in many ways. One is that I almost always qualify the claims I make. This is not to weasel (weakening a claim to protect it from criticism) but because I am aware of my epistemic limitations: as Socrates said, I know that I know nothing. People often prefer claims made with certainty and see expressions of doubt as signs of weakness. Another way I annoy people is by presenting alternatives to my views and providing reasons as to why they might be right. This has a downside of complicating things and can be confusing. Because of these, people often ask me “what do you really believe!?!” I then annoy the person more by noting what I think is probably true but also insisting I can always be wrong. This is for the obvious reason that I can always be wrong. I also annoy people by adjusting my views based on credible changes in available evidence. This really annoys people: one is supposed to stick to one view and adjust the evidence to suit the belief. The origin story of COVID-19 provides an excellent example for discussing this sort of thing.

When COVID first appeared in China, speculation about its origin began and people often combined distinct claims without considering they need not be combined. One set of claims is the origin of COVID. Some claims are that it is either naturally occurring or was engineered in the lab. At this point, the best explanation is that the virus is naturally occurring. But since humans do engineer viruses, it is possible the virus was engineered. The obvious challenge is to provide proof and merely asserting it is not enough. So, at this point my annoying position is that the best evidence is that the virus is naturally occurring, but new evidence could change my position.

Other claims are about the origin of the infection. Some claim it entered the human population through a wet market. Some claim it arrived via some other human-bat interactions. There is also the claim that it originated from a lab. All of these are plausible. We know diseases can originate in markets and spread. We know that labs are run by people and people make mistakes and can be sloppy at work. We know humans interact with animals and disease can spread this way.

Back at the start of the last pandemic, I favored the wet market hypothesis because it seemed  best supported by the available evidence. Diseases do jump from livestock to humans, so this claim was plausible. However, the possibility that the virus leaked from the lab has gained credibility. While there is not yet decisive evidence, this hypothesis is credible enough to warrant serious investigation. I do not have a vested interest in backing any particular hypothesis.

There are also claims about whether it was intentional. Some it was an accident. Some claim the virus was intentionally introduced, and nefarious reasons vary between the hypotheses. Accidents are regular occurrences and things are always going wrong. But people intentionally do evil and have various reasons for doing so, ranging from making money, to getting more power, to seeking revenge, to all the other reasons people do bad things. As it now stands, there is little or no evidence that a malign actor intentionally introduced the virus into the population. But evidence could certainly arise. People have done worse things. The malign actor hypothesis is also an umbrella: one must select specific evildoers as the culprit, though there could be many. As always, evidence is needed to support any claims.

It is important to distinguish between the different claims and to keep in mind that evidence that supports one claim might not support another claim often associated with it.

A common mistake is confusing how conjunctions work with how disjunctions work. In logic, a disjunction is an “or” claim which is true when one or both disjuncts is/are true. For example, if I say that I will bring beer or tequila to the party, then my claim is true unless I show up with neither. Showing up with one or the other or both makes that disjunction true.

In the case of a conjunction, both conjuncts must be true for the statement to be true. So, If I say I will bring hot dogs and buns to the party, then I must show up with both for my claim to be true. While it might seem like an odd and obvious mistake, people can treat a conjunction like a disjunction when they want to claim the conjunction is true. In some cases, people will do this intentionally in bad faith. This has been done in the case of COVID.

As noted above, the lab leak hypothesis for COVID has gained credibility. Because of this, some might conclude the virus was also manufactured. The person could think that because there is reason to believe the virus leaked from a lab, then it is also true that it was manufactured. If it is true that the virus was leaked, then one part of the claim “the virus was manufactured and leaked” would be true, namely that it was manufactured. So, someone might be tempted to take the entire claim as true (or make the claim in bad faith). After all, if it were true that the virus was leaked, then it would be true that it was leaked or it was manufactured. But this would be a matter of logic; it would thus also be true that the virus was leaked, or unicorns exist. As always, it is important to determine which part of a conjunction is supported by the evidence. If both claims are not supported, then you do not have good reason to accept the conjunction as true. The last annoying thing I will look at is the fact that being right does not mean a person was justified.

Suppose tomorrow brings irrefutable proof the virus was leaked from a lab. Those devoted to this claim would probably take this as proof they were right all along. On the one hand, they would be correct: they were right all along, and other people were wrong. But since at least Plato philosophers have distinguished between having a true belief and having justification for this belief. After all, one can be right for bad reasons, such as guessing or from prejudice. For example, a person who likes horror-sci fi might believe the lab leak because they like that narrative. As another example, a racist might accept the lab leak hypothesis because of their prejudices. A nationalist might go with the lab leak because they think China is an inferior country. And so on. But believing on these grounds would not justify the belief; they would have just gotten lucky. As such, their being right would be just a matter of luck—they guessed right based on bad reasons.

One thing people often find confusing about critical thinking and science is that a person can initially be justified in a belief that ultimately turns out false. This is because initial evidence can sometimes warrant belief in claims that are later disproved. In such cases, a person would be wrong but would have all the right reasons to believe. Some of this is because of the problem of induction (with inductive reasoning, the conclusion can always turn out to be false) and some of it is because humans have limited and flawed epistemic abilities.

People who do not understand this will tend to think these good methods are defective because they do not always get the truth immediately and they do not grasp that a person can be reasoning well but still end up being wrong. Such people often embrace methods of belief formation that are incredibly unreliable, such as following authoritarian leaders or unqualified celebrities.  If the evidence does turn out to eventually support these initially unjustified beliefs, they do not seem to get that this is how the process works: false claims, one hopes, eventually get shown to be false and better supported claims replace them. As such, those who rejected the lab hypothesis earlier because of the lack of evidence but are now considering it based on the new evidence are doing things right. They are adjusting based on the evidence. I suspect that some approach belief in claims like they might see belief in religion: you pick one and stick with it and if you luck out, then you win. But that is not how rational belief formation works.

What, then, about someone who believed in the lab hypothesis early on and was rational about it? Well, to the degree they had good evidence for their claim, then they deserve credit. However, if they believed without adequate justification, then their being correct was a matter of chance and not the result of some special clarity of reason. To close, people should keep advancing plausible alternatives as this is an important function in seeking the truth. So those who kept the lab hypothesis going because they rationally considered it a possible explanation do deserve their due credit.

Long ago, when I was a student, student loans were mostly manageable. Over the years, the cost of college has increased dramatically, and student loans have become increasingly burdensome. There is also the issue of predatorial for-profit schools. Because of this debt burden, there have been proposals to address the student loan problem. Some have even proposed forgiving or cancelling student loans. This proposal has generated hostile responses, although Roxane Gay has advanced some well-reasoned arguments in its defense. I paid my relatively modest loans long ago, so my concern with is a matter of ethics rather than self-interest. In this essay and those to follow I will consider the ethics of student loan forgiveness and provide some logical assessment of various relevant arguments.

As Gay noted in the New York Times, Damon Linker tweeted that “I think Dems are wildly underestimating the intensity of anger college loan cancellation is going to provoke. Those with college debt will be thrilled, of course. But lots and lots of people who didn’t go to college or who worked to pay off their debts? Gonna be bad.” Linker was right. Even if there was not genuine grassroots anger at student loan forgiveness, Republicans and the right-wing media  generated rage against it. But is there any merit to the anger argument?

Put a bit simply, the anger argument against student loan forgiveness is that because federal student loan forgiveness would make many people angry, then it would be incorrect to do it. This is obviously the appeal to anger fallacy; a fallacy in which anger is substituted for evidence when making an argument. Formally, this version of the fallacy looks like this:

 

Premise 1: X would make people angry.

Conclusion: X is wrong or incorrect.

 

This is bad logic because the fact that something makes people angry has no connection to whether it is true or correct. People can be angry about claims that are true and enraged about things that are good. They can, of course, also be angry about claims that are false and enraged about things that are evil. But the anger people feel does not prove (or disprove) falseness or wrongness. A silly example illustrates this:

 

Premise 1: The triangle haters get angry when it is claimed that triangles have three sides.

Conclusion: Triangles do not have three sides. 

 

Somewhat less silly examples are as follows:

 

Premise 1: Some people got angry about the American colonies rebelling. 

Conclusion: The colonies were wrong to rebel.  

 

Premise 1: Some people are angry about evolution. 

Conclusion: Evolution does not occur.

 

Premise 1: Atheists would be angry if God exists.

Conclusion: God does not exist.

 

As these examples show, drawing a conclusion about the truth of a claim or the morality of something from people being angry is bad reasoning. As such, the anger people might feel about student loan forgiveness is irrelevant to whether it is the right thing to do. But perhaps there is a way to make a non-fallacious argument from anger. One way to do this is to switch from concerns about truth and morality to pragmatism. That is, perhaps it could be argued that the anger of some people would provide a practical reason to not have student loan forgiveness.

While this greatly oversimplifies things, pragmatic arguments are aimed at establishing what would be the most prudent or advantageous thing. This is an argument from consequences. The idea is that the correct choice is the one that generates the best consequences for those who matter. While people tend to think the correct choice is the one they think is best for them, working out an appeal to consequences requires arguing to establish who matters and how to assess the value of the consequences. Laying aside all these concerns, pragmatic arguments from anger can easily be made.

To illustrate, imagine that a politician sees the polls show that most voters are angry about student loan forgiveness and this anger is strong enough to influence their vote. From a pragmatic standpoint, the anger of their voters does give them a practical reason to oppose forgiveness: if they want to increase their chances of being re-elected, then they should oppose it. While this could be for selfish reasons (the politician might want to stay in office to keep cashing in on insider trading) it could also be for benevolent reasons (the politician might want to stay in office to try to improve the lives of their constituents). From a pragmatic standpoint responding to the anger could be the prudent or advantageous thing to do. While these pragmatic reasons can be strong motivating factors, they do not prove (or disprove) anything about the rightness or wrongness of student loan forgiveness. But there is still an option for using anger in a non-fallacious moral argument.

Utilitarianism, a view argued for by the likes of Bentham and Mill, is the moral view that the morality of an action depends on the consequences for those who are morally relevant. Put in simple terms, an action that creates more good for those who count would be better than an action that creates less good (or causes harm). Since utilitarian arguments deal with consequences, it is often possible to re-tool a pragmatic consequentialist argument into a moral argument. Here is how it could be done.

Suppose that there is good reason to believe that Linker is right and anger at any student loan cancellation “gonna be bad.” If the harms generated by this anger outweighs the benefit of the loan cancellation when considering all Americans, then the loan cancellation would be wrong. Thus, it would seem that the right sort of appeal to anger can work. But there is an obvious concern about the role of the anger in generating the harms.

If cancelling the loans itself resulted in greater harms than not doing so (such as pulling money from critical social programs), then it would seem right to not cancel them. But the anger argument rests on how people respond to the cancellation, not the harm done by the cancelling itself. That is, the harms in question would arise because of what people do because they are angry in response to the cancellation. This leads to an old ethical debate about how to factor in responses when doing the utilitarian calculation. On the one hand, it does seem reasonable to consider how people will respond when sorting out consequences. On the other hand, there is the obvious problem that people could force a change in the moral calculation by responding in ways that would create harms. That is, they could “rig” the moral argument by threatening to respond with terrible actions.

To use a fictional example, imagine a debate over raising minimum wage in which businesses said they would kill their minimum wage employees, their pets, and their loved ones if the wage was increased. In terms of consequences, this would make increasing the minimum wage extremely harmful and so it would be wrong to increase it. As an alternative fictional example, imagine the much-feared radical leftists threatened to kill business owners, their pets, and their loved ones if the minimum wage is not increased. This would make not increasing it wrong. But there is clearly a problem with assessing the morality of an action based on what the worst people might do in response to that action since this would make morality hostage to the worst people. One fix is to consider the action apart from such efforts to prevent the action by intentionally increasing the harms while also, obviously enough, assessing the ethics of these efforts. So, when considering student loan cancellation there is the moral issue of the consequences of the cancellation itself and there is the distinct moral issue of whether the responses to it would be morally appropriate or not. That is, we need to see if the anger against loan cancellation is morally warranted. If it is not, then the anger might have negative consequences but yielding to that anger would be wrong. In the next essay I will consider the fairness argument, free of anger.

 

On the face of it, the notion of skill transference in education sounds reasonable: if a student learns one skill, such a Latin or geometry, that requires logical thinking, then this skill should transfer to other areas involving logical thinking, such as categorical logic. Surprisingly, it seems these skills do not transfer. There have also been ill-fated attempts to find skills that would boost general intelligence, such as the idea that learning to play an instrument or chess would also make you smarter. So far, this has not worked out. While learning to play chess makes a person better at chess, it does not seem to boost general intelligence.

Because of its perceived value, there have been efforts to teach students critical thinking. At my university this is one of the competencies we assess as part of our assessment of the General Education curriculum. These is, as would be imagined, an assumption that various and diverse general education classes can teach the general skill of critical thinking. My Philosophy and Religion program also has critical thinking as a competency we assess as part of our assessment and there is, once again, an assumption that there is a general skill being taught. Interestingly, the national data and the data from my university shows that students generally do not transfer critical thinking skills. What is extremely interesting is that these skills do not seem to transfer well even within a specific discipline. For example, one might think that taking Critical Inquiry (a critical thinking class) or Logic would confer general critical thinking skills that would be retained an applied in other philosophy classes. But this is generally not the case.

While it is not surprising that very specific skills would not transfer well (for example, learning about metaphysics might not help a student much in ethics) it does seem odd that general critical skills do not transfer very well. Daniel Willingham provides an excellent analysis of this problem.

Willingham presents two excellent examples. One involves the difficultly people have with transferring an understanding of the law of large numbers in the context of randomness (such as dice) to cases such as judging academic performance. That is, a person who gets that rolling a set of dice twice will not tell you whether they are loaded or not might uncritically accept that a person who gets two bad math exam grades must be bad at math. Both scenarios involve the same sort of reasoning (inductive generalizations) but the skill does not seem to transfer between the different applications. If it did, a person who understood the dice situation would also get that a sample of two math tests is too small to support an inference about math skill.

His second example, a classic experiment, involved analogical reasoning. In this example, subjects were asked how a tumor could be treated with a ray that would cause extensive collateral damage. Before being given this problem, the subjects read a story about rebels attacking a fortress that presented an analogy to the tumor situation. Despite having the solution right in front of them, the subjects could not solve the medical problem. The researchers found that telling the subjects that the story might help solve the problem resulted in almost all the subjects being able to apply the analogy. The researchers concluded that the problem was getting the subjects to use the analogy since the analogy itself was easy to use.

Willingham draws the conclusion that, “The problem is that previous critical thinking successes seem encapsulated in memory. We know that a student has understood an idea like the law of large numbers. But understanding it offers no guarantee that the student will recognize new situations in which that idea will be useful.” So how could this connect to the ability of people to hold to inconsistent beliefs?

As noted in my previous essays on inconsistent beliefs, people are good at believing inconsistent claims. Two claims are inconsistent when they both cannot be true, but both could be false. This is different from two claims being contradictory: if one claims contradicts another, one must be true and the other false. As also noted in previous essays, my inspiration for these essays was seeing social media posts by Trump supporters presenting and professing belief in inconsistent (and sometimes contradictory claims). To illustrate, Trump supporters tended to believe Trump’s claims that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu and that it was also a hoax.  When Bob Woodward released tapes proving that Trump acknowledged the danger of the virus  many Trump supporters accepted Trump’s claim that he wanted to play down the virus to avoid a panic. His supporters defended him, claiming great leaders lie to keep morale up in the face of terrible danger (something Plato might accept, given his noble lie). They also claimed he was right to do this in order to prevent panic in the face of a deadly virus. Laying aside all the moral issues here, there is an obvious logical problem: if Trump was right to lie to play down the virus because it is a terrible danger, then this is inconsistent with the claim that it is like the flu (or a hoax). So, if he had to lie because of the danger, then it is not like the flu (or a hoax). But if it is like the flu (or a hoax) then he did not need to lie about the danger. There was a bit of unpleasant fun had in getting a Trump supporter to profess belief in these inconsistent claims in the space of a short Facebook interaction; but almost anyone can easily be caught in holding inconsistent beliefs. The transference problem can help explain some of this.

As Willingham has shown, people are generally bad at transferring critical thinking skills between different situations. Differences in content, as he noted, can prevent people from seeing what can become obvious with the right context. Because of this, a person might be very good at discerning inconsistency in specific cases but fail in other cases. As an example, consider a Trump supporter who is very good at finding inconsistencies in claims made by liberals they disagree with. They are motivated to find such problems and continued practice can make them good at finding inconsistencies in this context. But if the context is switched to their own beliefs, the change can prevent skill transference. That is, they can readily see the inconsistencies of a liberal in one context but are unable to see their own inconsistencies. This is analogous to the subjects in the analogy experiment: they had the answer right in front of them but were blind to it until it was pointed out to them.

Put in general terms, people with strong political views can practice attacking and criticizing views they disagree with and develop critical thinking skills they can apply in very specific contexts. But people rarely subject their own beliefs to intense logical scrutiny. People almost never carefully compare their core beliefs to check for logical inconsistencies and so have little practice doing so. Hence, they will tend to be bad at noticing obvious inconsistencies. This, of course, assumes that people are being honest, they hold to the beliefs they are professing and are not lying as a strategy. It is to this that I will turn in my next essay.