Dissection of a Contemporary Fallacy

I doubt I'm the first person to observe that the public discourse has become markedly more discordant, shrill, and even malicious in the past year. This is a bad trend, and it has destructive consequences for everyone.

One particular style of argument marks this discursive shift toward viciousness. In the proper sense of the word it is not really an 'argument' at all, but a kind of rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Unfortunately, this rhetorical trick has been shrewdly put to use by a number of influential and extremely unscrupulous individuals in order to foment discord in the general public, and to ultimately create a very harmful and wholly unnecessary cultural schism in American life. I won't speculate on the motives of these individuals, but I will say a few words to deflate the shock and awe that makes their dangerous verbal stage-act so effective.

"The President likes to set things on fire. He's a known arsonist. He's planning to burn down your house while you sleep."

Is this assertion ridiculous? Is it paranoid? Well, let's look at the facts. ABC news reports that Barack Obama, the sitting President of the United States, is a known smoker. It's a known fact that in order to smoke a cigarette, you must cause it to combust. An arsonist is someone who purposefully sets fire to things. Smoking is a habit so difficult to quit that it might be termed compulsive. The President is a compulsive arsonist. It's only a matter of time until he burns down your house, or the house of someone in your community.

Have I convinced you that it's only a matter of time before our cities are in flames at the hand of a pyromaniac national executive? In the current climate of the political discourse, a few people might actually say "yes", or others might at least assent to my assertion but not necessarily my argument, being content to ride the rhetorical effect of suggesting that the President will burn down America's cities. Be that as it may, go back and read the preceding paragraph and really try to convince yourself that it is sound, factually scrupulous, and makes sense. Take your time, think about each step in my deduction, and really try to prove to yourself that it leads to a valid conclusion. Can you honestly do it?

(If you remain convinced that the President is going to burn down your house, or if you see no problem with the argument as such, go back through and replace "Barack Obama" with "your car", and "smoking habit" with "internal combustion engine", and then ask yourself if you also believe that your personal automobile is going to burn down your dwelling because it is powered by an involuntary mechanical process of burning petroleum.)

All politics aside, I hope we can agree that the argument I've made above is patently silly. It's supposed to be. At the same time, don't underestimate its persuasive power. The argument "works" on a certain level if you read over it quickly, and if you're willing to place a little more trust that average in my expertise as the author. Maybe I know something that you don't, and maybe it just happens to be that my refined intellect and masterful command of the facts allows me to glibly and easily spring past an argument that might otherwise be difficult and tedious. (This has a parallel in advanced mathematics texts, wherein many authors have the bad habit of writing "proofs" to the effect of "it's just obvious", to the great vexation of students struggling to learn the material.) In fact, if you're willing to trust me as the speaker or author, simply seeing that I've presented you with an argument may be more than enough for you to accept my claim at face-value. This is normal in many kinds of casual discourse; if I see you come in from outside and I ask, "Has it started raining?", I don't then press you for a rigorous justification of your reply. What's more, the argument I've presented concludes with a statement that demands your immediate attention. After all, it would seem that a prominent figure with all the collected power of the government wants to destroy your home and possibly burn you to death in the process. Something has to be done!

My contrived argument is deliberately absurd, but don't presume that you're somehow "too smart" to be taken in by it. There has been much backlash against certain media figures guilty of the kind of fallacy I outline here, and much of it has wrongly attacked the intelligence of the offenders' collective audience. Besides being high-handed and contributing to the unhealthy atmosphere of hostility on both sides, such objections ignore the fact that some of their own favorite causes have been and still often are advanced using similar discursive tactics. There are no enemies; this is a problem of bad thought and bad speech. This is important. Remember it.

If you rejected my contrived assertion ("The President is going to burn down your house!") out of hand, it is quite likely that you correctly read my intent to construct an invalid argument with a false conclusion, and this reading influenced your interpretation of my statements. Remember, context plays a very important role in the meaning of words. It may also be that you took my statement to be plainly outrageous and thus rejected it as too bizarre to possibly be true. Remember also, though, that the apparent strangeness of a claim may weigh against its truth but is not sufficient to invalidate it. If you don't believe that these cautions are warranted, imagine your favorite and most trusted commentator accusing your least favorite and least trusted public figure of material involvement in what you consider to be the most serious (and real) problem in the world today. Go on, try it. You may not even have to imagine: just visit your favorite blog or switch on the television. (Do you believe what is being said? On what basis?) Finally, consider what the consequences would be if my claim that the President is out to get you turned out actually to be true, and you ignored my warning. Of course it sounds highly implausible, but in the event that my outlandish claim turned out true you would be the target of a very powerful man with a small army of trained killers at his side and the resources of a whole nation at his disposal. That sounds like a dire situation if there ever was one, and my advance warning might be your only edge in finding a way out. Remember that we all have to make timely decisions based on incomplete information, with some of the most difficult being those in which there is little information but much at stake.

We now have the tools we need to analyze my strange argument that the President is going to burn down your house, and to reach some useful conclusions about how and why arguments like it often succeed. (Remember, "Everyone else is stupid," is not an explanation and says nothing useful about the problem or its solution.) Here's a breakdown of how the argument proceeds: (1) The argument starts with a reasonable-sounding and (probably, mostly) factual statement. This sets the stage for something seemingly serious to be said, and gives the initial appearance that what is to come is a sequence of equally factual statements. ("Sure, the President's a smoker. Everybody who reads the news knows that.") (2) The argument proceeds quickly through a number of very large deductive leaps. These also tend to be (probably, mostly, but with some variation) factual statements or reasonable-sounding claims. However, they are for the most part only loosely related to one another and in general do not represent a chain a sound logical inferences. Oftentimes, they don't represent any sort of inference at all, so much as a sort of pre-conceptual complex of disjoint thoughts on loosely related subjects. (" It's a known fact that in order to smoke a cigarette, you must cause it to combust. An arsonist is someone who purposefully sets fire to things.") (3) The sequence of deductions abruptly entrains some claims or statements that are less plausible or perhaps even bizarre. This is where particular techniques of speaking are put to extremely good use by certain television and radio personalities. Many popular commentators rapidly fire off a succession of strange and outrageous statements with such apparent fervor and emotional affect that their seeming conviction effectively drowns out any murmurs of doubt that might otherwise surround the meanings and consequences of what they are actually saying. ("Smoking is a habit so difficult to quit that it might be termed compulsive. The President is a compulsive arsonist." Say this very quickly to yourself, and with fervent conviction that it's true. What does it sound like?) (4) The argument reaches a very sudden and very evocative (often provocative) conclusion. In general, this conclusion does not follow from the argument at all, and sometimes may not even be related. However, because the conclusion entails strong and emotionally charged associations, the mind of the rapt listener naturally switches stance from listening to formulating a course of action in response to a disturbing idea. This effectively short-circuits any reflection on the argument or its premises, which allows the spurious chain of reasoning to slip by unnoticed. ("It's only a matter of time before the President burns your house down! Something must be done!") Essentially, this sort of argument is nothing but a trick with words. An explosively rapid exposition hides numerous logical and factual errors, and an abrupt, shocking conclusion effectively redirects attentions that might otherwise uncover these.

We might call the genre of argument under discussion strongly connotative. Such arguments utterly ignore the meanings of their own statements. Instead, the assertion holds itself together with a hastily formed network of strongly emotional cues and associations, and often gains much of its strength from the charisma, expertise or authority attributed to the speaker. Surprising or not, this strategy is incredibly effective: statements that would otherwise seem ridiculous suddenly "just make sense" when buoyed up on a tide of powerful feeling and apparent urgency. Connotation is an essential part of human communication; intonation, volume of speech, choice of words and all sorts of non-verbal cues influence the meaning of statements as much as their basic meaning. (Imagine a nervous air traveler asking a stewardess, "Is there a problem?" on hearing an unsettling noise from deep in the mechanical bowels of the airplane. Now imagine Chuck Norris or Robocop uttering the same words to a gang of thugs caught in the act of robbing a quaint little mom-and-pop store. Notice the difference?) What makes this style of argument especially dangerous is the plasticity of association, which allows connections to be arbitrarily drawn between ideas and then strongly reinforced through persistent repetition. As a result, spurious connections made in the course of very short but often-reproduced "arguments" seem progressively more "obvious" each time they are repeated. This connotative manner of arguing allows bad ideas to slip past better judgements and to enter that mysterious place occupied by "common knowledge", where they can propagate unchecked.

A number of commentators have used this strategy to produce some extremely virulent and extremely divisive cultural associations in the past twelve months. I don't wish to catalog or even mention any of them here; they are not topics of serious debate but merely outlets of frustration that offer no hope for a resolution on either side. In essence, this is just what they are designed to be: a mechanism for stirring up deep-rooted cultural resentments and at the same time effectively stopping all discussion of the underlying problems. This is a very powerful tactic, but it has a very serious weakness: such arguments utterly collapse when you "try them at home." The analogy to a magic trick is a particularly strong one here. When you see a magician seem to make the Statue of Liberty disappear, or apparently allow himself to be buried alive in a straight-jacket only to escape, you are forced to conclude either that (1) there's something he's not showing or telling you, and that something allows him to produce a convincing illusion or (2) he has super-powers. Without weighing the relative merits of (1) and (2), consider that the matter would be largely settled if you discovered some ordinary and decidedly un-magical way to produce an illusion similar to that produced by the magician. (One could try to argue that, even though your buried-alive spectacle uses boring old non-paranormal tricks and gizmos, it could still be that Criss Angel is wielding some unearthly powers to achieve his own dazzling, albeit identical, feats. If that were the case, one would be inclined to ask, "What's the point of supernormal powers with strictly normal effects?" or "Why wouldn't you want to use your powers for something that can't be done with a matchbook, a box of baking soda, and an ordinary household toothbrush?") Seeing a way to reproduce the illusion, you could safely assure yourself that it was possible to comprehend what you saw. Similarly, really sound and truthful argument should not depend solely upon your willingness to accept that a verbal spectacle is exactly what it appears to be. Many of today's commentators are skilled showmen and manipulators of appearance. That's not to say that every word they speak is categorically wrong, only that the listener should take special care to watch their hands and to remain undistracted by sparklers and smoke-bombs. Remember, some people make their living by fabricating dramatic and captivating illusions.

When you're presented with an argument, don't just sit there and be passively convinced. Collect all of the information that the speaker gives you, and make an honest effort to reproduce his argument as a series of reasonable conclusions. Take your time. If a step doesn't seem utterly transparent, then take special pains to convince yourself that it makes sense. It is amazingly difficult to discover something new about the world. Don't just assume that what you hear is "news" just because you haven't heard it before.

Most importantly, don't be discouraged if the world seems like a huge and deeply confusing place. This is a very human fear. Instead of driving us apart into bitter factions, it can bring us together in a collective search for the truth.