Philosophical Essays on Many Subjects
If you have been wondering about all the fallacy posts, they are because I have been revising and updating my fallacy book.
The upcoming book, 109 Fallacies, is the follow up to 76 Fallacies, 30 More Fallacies and the original 42 Fallacies.
The book is at 536 pages and undergoing the final edits; the Kindle version will be released next week, barring the apocalypse.
Description:
Whataboutism is an umbrella term for a collection of rhetorical tools and fallacies used to respond to a criticism with a counter accusation presented in the form of a question.
Ad Hominem fallacies are often used in a Whataboutism. The general tactic is to attempt to refute a criticism by attacking something about the person making the criticism. If a group is the target, the this would be the Genetic Fallacy. The general form of the Whataboutism Ad Hominem is:
Premise 1: Person/Group A makes critical claim X about Person/Group B doing or claiming Y.
Premise 2: B asks, “what about A doing, being, or claiming Z?”
Conclusion: Therefore, X is false.
This reasoning is flawed because attacking something about the source of a criticism does not refute the criticism.
Probably the most common Whataboutism fallacy is a version of the Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. Presented as a Whataboutism it has this form:
Premise 1: Person/Group A makes critical claim X about Person/Group B doing or claiming Y.
Premise 2: B asks, “what about A doing or claiming Y?”
Conclusion: Therefore, X is false.
Another variant has this form:
Premise 1: Person/Group A accuses Person/Group B of doing or claiming Y.
Premise 2: B asks, “what about the accusation that A did or claimed Y?”
Conclusion: Therefore, B did not do Y (or B was not wrong in doing Y).
This is fallacious because a person’s inconsistency in their claims or between their actions and claims does not prove any specific claim they make is false. This Whataboutism can have considerable psychological force especially when the target audience already dislikes the target of the fallacy. For example, Democrats might find the use of this Whataboutism on a hated Republican by a fellow Democrat very appealing.
The Common Practice fallacy can also be used in Whataboutism. Used in this manner, it has the following general form:
Premise 1: Person/Group A makes critical claim X about Person/Group B doing Y.
Premise 2: B asks, “what about A doing Y?”
Premise 3: Y is commonly done (both A and B do Y)
Conclusion: X is not wrong/correct/justified/etc.
This is fallacious for the same reason that the standard Appeal to Common practice is fallacious. Concisely put, it does not follow that a practice is correct just because it is commonly done.
False Equivalency is also commonly used in Whataboutism. If the target of the Whataboutism has not done or said anything equivalent, then a bad faith solution is to find something they have done or said and draw a False Equivalence. The use of a Straw Man or simple lying are also options that can replace a False Equivalence. One version is to use a False Equivalency and Common Practice together:
Premise 1: Person/Group A makes critical claim X about Person/Group B doing Y.
Premise 2: B asks, “what about A doing Z which is just as bad as Y?” (When Y and Z are not equivalent).
Premise 3: Y is commonly done (both A and B do Y).
Conclusion: X is not wrong/correct/justified/etc.
The False Equivalency can also be used in conjunction with the Two Bad variant of Two Wrongs:
Premise 1: Person/Group A makes critical claim X about Person/Group B doing Y.
Premise 2: B asks, “what about A doing Z which is just as bad as Y?” (When Y and Z are not equivalent).
Conclusion: X is not wrong/correct/justified/etc.
Two Bad can also be used on its own, without the False Equivalence. In this case, Y and Z would actually be equivalent.
Whataboutism can also use (or be) a Red Herring to distract attention from the original issue:
Premise 1: Person/Group A makes critical claim X about Person/Group B doing or claiming Y.
Premise 2: B asks, “what about A doing or claiming Y?” (When this is not relevant to the issue).
Conclusion: X has been refuted or X should be ignored.
As with a standard Red Herring, distracting attention from the original issue does not resolve it. This tactic can be very effective when the target audience dislikes or hates the target.
The above discussion is not exhaustive, there are other ways to engage in a Whataboutism.
While Whataboutism is fallacious, this does not entail that all comparisons that resemble Whataboutism are. When comparing two things (people, political parties, laws, whatever) then it is relevant to consider the flaws of both. For example, if the issue is whether to vote for candidate Joe or Don, then it is reasonable to consider the flaws of both Joe and Don in comparison.
However, the flaws of A do not show that B does not have flaws and vice versa. Also, if the issue being discussed is the bad action of A, then asking about B’s bad action does nothing to mitigate the badness of A’s action. Unless, of course, A had to take a seemingly bad action to protect themselves from B’s unwarranted bad action. For example, if Joe is accused of punching a person and it is shown that this was because Don tried to kill Joe, then that would be relevant to assessing the ethics of Joe’s action. But, if Joe assaulted women and Don assaulted women, asking about Joe in a Whataboutism to defend Don would be an error in logic.
Defense: As a general defense, you should be on guard against the use of “what about” and similar phrases. While not always used in this fallacy, they are indicators. For the specific versions of Whataboutism, the defenses are the same as the more general fallacies. For example, if someone is using an Ad Hominem Tu Quoque, then you should remember that an inconsistency between a person’s actions and their claim does not show that their claim must be false.
You should also be on guard against mistaking something that merely looks like a Whataboutism for a Whataboutism. In some contexts, it can be relevant and non-fallacious to ask “what about X” when engaged in a comparison. For example, in an election in which you must choose between the Democrat and the Republican, then making good faith comparisons to determine which is worse would be reasonable.
Example #1
Deana: “The Russians were wrong to invade Ukraine. They have no moral justification for it.”
Tucker: “Yes, but what about when the United States invaded Mexico? Here in New Mexico we are living in what was, well, once just part of Mexico.”
Example #2
Bill: “Your Republican candidate, Smith, has numerous credible allegations of sexual assault, embezzlement, and bank fraud against her. She should be in jail and not in office.”
Tucker: “Buttery Males!”
Bill: “What?”
Tucker: “Sorry, habit. What I meant to say is what about your Democratic candidate, Jones? What about the allegations against them? People are saying they are groomers.”
Bill: “Yeah, you are saying that. Got any evidence?”
Tucker: “Lots of people are saying it. Look, I am just asking questions, like what about Jones being a pedophile?”
Example #3
Tucker: “Your Democratic candidate, Smith, has numerous credible allegations of sexual assault, embezzlement, and bank fraud against her. She should be in jail and not in office.”
Bill: “What about your Republican candidate, Jones? What about the allegations against them? People are saying they are racists.”
Tucker: “Yeah, you are saying that. Got any evidence?”
Bill: “Lots of people are saying it. Look, I am just asking questions, like what about Jones being a racist?”
Description:
Misleading Vividness is a fallacy in which a very small number of dramatic events are taken to outweigh significant statistical evidence. Somewhat more formally, this fallacy is committed when an estimation of the probability of an occurrence is based on the vividness of the occurrence and not on statistical evidence of how often it occurs. It has the following form:
Premise 1: A small number of dramatic/vivid events of type X occur (and the vividness is taken to outweigh significant statistical evidence).
Conclusion: Therefore, events of type X are likely to occur.
This is fallacious because vividness or drama does not make an event more likely to occur, especially in the face of significant statistical evidence.
This fallacy gets its psychological force from the fact that dramatic or vivid cases tend to make a strong impression on the mind. For example, if a person survives a dramatic plane crash, he might believe that air travel is dangerous. After all, an explosion and people dying will have a much stronger psychological impact than the dull statistics that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than killed in a plane crash.
This fallacy is often self-inflicted, even if you know better. For example, reading Jaws as a kid contributed to my fear of being killed by a shark, so I must struggle with this fallacy when I swim in the ocean. I know that I am much more likely to be killed in a crash on the way to the beach than be attacked by a shark, but I fear the shark more. The fallacy can also be inflicted on others, intentionally or not. For example, the odds of an American being killed by someone in the country illegally is incredibly low. But someone might use Misleading Vividness to try to scare people into believing this is something they should fear.
It should be kept in mind that considering that something dramatic or vivid might occur is not always fallacious. Assessing risk is not just a matter of statistics, but also a matter of values. For example, a person might decide to never go sky diving because an accident could kill them. If they know that, statistically, the chances of dying are very low, but they consider even that small risk unacceptable, they would not be committing this fallacy. The mistake in this fallacy is that the vividness or drama of an event is substituted for evidence that the event is likely to occur.
Defense: When statistical data is available, it can be used to defend against this fallacy. For example, if a politician is trying to scare people with rare but dramatic occurrences, then checking the statistics from a reliable source can help protect you from falling for this fallacy.
If statistical data is not readily available, then the defense would be to consider how often the vivid events have occurred based on the examples presented by the person who seems to be committing the fallacy. This puts a reasonable burden of proof on them to show that these occurrences are as likely to happen as they claim.
Addressing the psychological factors of this fallacy can be much more challenging. For example, while I know that flying is the safest way to travel, I am terrified of traveling this way. So, I force myself to fly and switch between feeling that I will surely die any second and knowing that I almost certainly will not. But I show no fear, because showing fear attracts gremlins at 20,000 feet.
Example #1:
Jane: “I’ve been thinking about getting a computer. I’m tired of having to wait in the library to write my papers.”
Bill: ‘What sort of computer do you want to get?”
Jane: “Well, it must be easy to use, have a low price and have decent processing power. I’ve been thinking about getting a Kiwi Fruit 2200. I read in that consumer magazine that they have been found to be very reliable in six independent industry studies.”
Bill: “I wouldn’t get the Kiwi Fruit. A friend of mine bought one a month ago to finish his master’s thesis. He was halfway through it when smoke started pouring out of the CPU. He didn’t get his thesis done on time and he lost his financial aid. Now he’s working over at the Biggest Boy Burger Warehouse.”
Jane: “I guess I won’t go with the Kiwi!”
Example #2:
Joe: “When I was flying back to school, the pilot came on the intercom and told us that the plane was having engine trouble. I looked out the window and I saw smoke billowing out of the engine nearest me. We had to make an emergency landing and there were fire trucks everywhere. I had to spend the next six hours sitting in the airport waiting for a flight. I was lucky I didn’t die! I’m never flying again.”
Drew: “So how are you going to get home over Christmas break?”
Joe: “I’m going to drive. That will be a lot safer than flying.”
Drew: “I don’t think so. You are much more likely to get injured or killed driving than flying.”
Joe: “I don’t buy that! You should have seen the smoke pouring out of that engine! I’m never getting on one of those death traps again!”
Example #3:
Jane: “Did you hear about that woman who was attacked in Tuttle Park?”
Sarah: “Yes. It was terrible.”
Jane: “Don’t you run there every day?”
Sarah: “Yes.”
Jane: ‘How can you do that? I’d never be able to run there!”
Sarah: “Well, as callous as this might sound, that attack was out of the ordinary. I’ve been running there for three years, and this has been the only attack. Sure, I worry about being attacked, but I’m not going give up my running just because there is some slight chance I’ll be attacked.”
Sarah: “That is stupid! I’d stay away from that park if I was you! That woman was badly hurt, so you know it is going to happen again. If you don’t stay out of that park, it will happen to you!”
While the Leave It fallacy can be seen as a type of Ad Hominem because it involves rejecting a person’s claim based on an irrelevant attack on the person, it has two distinguishing features.
First, the person is attacked because they are being critical of something. This attack often involves asserting the critic is motivated by a secret association or agreement with a disliked group. Second, rather than refuting the criticism, the attacker only tells the target to “leave.” There is, however, the implied conclusion that the person told to leave is thus wrong in their criticism. The fallacy has the following general form:
Premise 1. Person A makes critical claim X about Y.
Premise 2. Person B attacks A (usually for an alleged association/agreement with a disliked group G) and says that if A does not like X about Y, then they should leave Y (usually for G).
Conclusion: Therefore, X is false.
This argument is a fallacy because attacking a person and telling them to leave does not prove their criticism is false. The fallacy draws much of its psychological power from the cognitive bias of groupthink and ingroup bias. Groupthink is the tendency to try to minimize conflict and form a consensus by suppressing dissent and avoiding outside influences. Ingroup bias is the tendency to see one’s own group as superior and outsiders as inferior. Someone who is critical of a group can easily be presented as a threat and people in that group can be motivated to reject that criticism out of anger and dislike. These biases do not, of course, have any logical weight.
Care should be taken to not confuse the Leave It fallacy with the False Dilemma “love it or leave it.” The idea in this False Dilemma is that one has just two options: to love something (typically a country) utterly and never criticize it or leave it. There are obviously many other options. The difference between the two is that the Leave It fallacy involves using an attack on the person to “argue” that their criticism is false while the False Dilemma “love it or leave it” is intended to silence criticism by wrongly asserting that one has only the two choices. It can often be hard to distinguish the two because people often combine them and those attempting these fallacies often do not know what they are doing themselves.
Defense: The defense against this fallacy is to try to reason through any negative feelings one might have and ask if any relevant refutation of the criticism has been offered. If it has not, then the “argument” gives no reason to reject that criticism. This does not mean that the criticism is therefore true—it just means the fallacy does not provide any reason to reject it.
Example #1
“These woke liberals claim that America still has systematic racism. But their brains have been corrupted by the foreign philosophies of the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism. If they hate America so much, they should just leave!”
Example #2
“These conservatives claim that America has Marxist elements. But their brains have been corrupted by the foreign philosophies of fascism and Nazism. If they hate America so much, they should just leave!”
Also Known as: Ad Misericordiam
Description:
An Appeal to Pity is a fallacy in which a person substitutes something intended to create pity for evidence in an argument. The form of the reasoning is as follows:
Premise 1: P is presented, with the intent to create pity.
Conclusion: Therefore, claim C is true.
This is fallacious because pity does not serve as evidence for a claim. To use a melodramatic example: “You must accept that 1+1=46, after all, I’m dying…” While you may pity me because I am dying, it would not make my claim true.
This fallacy differs from the Appeal to the Consequences of a Belief. In that fallacy, the effects of a belief are used as a substitute for evidence. In the Appeal to Pity, it is the feelings of pity or sympathy that are substituted for evidence.
There can be cases in which claims that serve as evidence also evoke a feeling of pity. In such cases, the feeling of pity is still not evidence. For example:
Professor: “You missed the midterm, Bill.”
Bill: “I know. I think you should let me take the makeup.”
Professor: “Why?”
Bill: “I was hit by a truck on the way to the midterm. Since I had to go to the emergency room with a broken leg, I think I am entitled to a makeup.”
Professor: “I’m sorry about the leg, Bill. Of course, you can make it up.”
The above example does not involve a fallacy. While the professor does feel sorry for Bill, she is justified in accepting Bill’s claim. Getting run over by a truck would be a legitimate excuse for missing a test.
As with other emotions, the feeling of pity is not itself a fallacy. Whether one should feel pity and act on it is a matter for ethics rather than logic. In the context of ethics, acting out of pity can sometimes be morally justified. One can also choose to be kind, which would not be a fallacy.
Defense: While being without pity would make you immune to this fallacy, the usual defense is to be on guard against attempts to substitute pity for evidence. While the fallacy can be self-inflicted, it is most often used against a target.
The most pernicious use of this fallacy is when a person targets something they know will strongly influence a person, often because of something they (or someone they care about) suffered. This can be the hardest version to defend against because you will usually have a stronger emotional reaction. If the situation warrants suspicion, you should be on guard against such appeals—especially if the person knows something about you, they can exploit.
For example, my graduate school roommate died of cancer during my first year of teaching and I told my classes I had to miss class to go to his funeral. Later that semester a student who had not been doing any work told me they had cancer, but they did not have any documentation from the school to prove this. Having just seen a friend buried, I just accepted their claim without proof and arranged make-up work. I would have been none the wiser, but they used the same tactic on a friend of mine. He had been in a bad automobile accident which cost him a piece of a finger. So, the student told him that they had been in a bad car wreck. That worked perfectly on him. The student did not know that we knew each other and would have gotten away with this Appeal to Pity had we not happened to talk about the “awful thing” that had happened to our mutual student. While I obviously knew all about the Appeal to Pity as a fallacy, I had not yet fully developed the professional emotional distance essential to avoiding becoming a victim of such appeals. I also learned that some people would lie about anything even for but a small gain.
Example #1:
Jill: “He’d be a terrible coach for the team.”
Bill: “He had his heart set on the job, and it would break if he didn’t get it.”
Jill: “Well, I guess he’ll do an adequate job…”
Example #2:
“I’m positive that my work will meet your requirements. I really need the job since my grandmother is sick”
Example #3:
“I should receive an ‘A’ in this class. After all, if I don’t get an ‘A’ I won’t get the fellowship that I want.”
During a raging pandemic, Americans are caught up in a political battle over masks. Those who oppose mask mandates (and simply wearing masks voluntarily) tend to be on the right; those who accept mask mandates (and wearing masks) tend to be on the left. There are certainly exceptions. One interesting approach to the mask debate by some on the right is to draw an analogy between the mask mandate and the restrictive voting laws that the Republicans have been busy passing. The gist is that if the left opposes the voting laws, then they should oppose 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 the 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, a key issue is whether it is a strong argument. The strength of an analogical argument depends on three factors. To the degree 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 is supposed to be used to protect people from the pandemic. In the case of the restrictive voting laws, the coercive power of the state is supposed to protect people from voter fraud. This seems to be 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 is 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. As this is being written, my adopted state of Florida has had 3.25 million COVID cases and 44,561 deaths. The United States has had an estimated 40,257,145 cases of COVID and 659,533 deaths. In contrast, there have been about 16 charged cases of voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. In some cases, these charges arise 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. This effort was thwarted and he now faces felony charges. One could attempt to address this by providing evidence that voter/election fraud is widespread and pervasive enough to warrant the comparison to COVID. Alternatively, one could argue that COVID cases are massively overblown and hence the number is small enough to warrant the comparison to voter fraud. But there is no evidence for either: COVID is widespread and voter fraud barely exists.
The level of risk is important in determining if the use of coercive power 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: that would be a serious threat.
Another important difference is the severity of the harm. COVID has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. 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 is grossly exaggerated and thus warrant the comparison to voter fraud. But there is no evidence for either: COVID is filling the hospitals again 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 are 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 prevent fraud and so warrant the comparison to mask mandates. Alternatively, one could argue that the effectiveness of masks is grossly exaggerated and thus warrant the comparison. But there is no evidence for either: masks seem effective while the voter restrictions are not. Given this evaluation, the analogy is weak and thus does not help the anti-mask mandate case. 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 are barely an inconvenience.
If we do accept that mask mandates and voter restricting 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 are utterly justified. After all, the mandates are aimed at addressing a disease that has infected millions and killed hundreds of thousands in the United States alone. 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 seems to be mostly made in bad faith for rhetorical purposes rather than being a well-considered argument based on a theory of state coercion.