Events past and quite recent have gotten me thinking about logic. I’m not talking about funky symbols and math proof kind of logic. I’m talking about logic and argumentation that people use when they talk and write. And what I’ve been thinking about it is this: people have forgotten how to use logic, misuse logic, or choose not to use logic at all. We are in an age that relies so heavily on written communication. At the same time, we are in an age of informal text messaging, instant messaging, and college students who don’t know how to write an appropriate email to a professor, let alone pay attention in Freshman composition. People are forgetting how to use their words to effectively win friends and influence people.
The spoken word is no less vulnerable to bad logic. As our friends at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report like to point out, our politicians and public figures put their foot in their mouths all the time. And much to our amusement, the more newsreel archives they have to work with, the tastier the foot seems to be. Put reading and writing faux pas together, and I come to the following conclusion: assuming that we are a rational and educated bunch of homo sapiens is becoming more and more of a fallacy.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about logical fallacies. I think a misconception about logic is that you need to be a brain child to understand it. I disagree. To pursue logic and learn about logical fallacies, you don’t need a philosophy class, math class, or even a college degree. Ivory Tower not required. It’s OK if you didn’t take Latin or do debate in high school. I sure as hell didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, all you need is YouTube.
There are examples of bad logic all over the place. We can shake our head at them, get pissed off about them, ignore them, or even laugh about them. Perhaps more productively, though, if we document cases of bad logic in our day to day lives, we can learn from them.
To this end, I would like to start The Logical Fallacy Project. Here’s how it works:
- Find a logical fallacy you would like to give a visual representation to
- Give the definition of the fallacy (with some link to an internet reference)
- Give video title and video (or give link to video)
- Give brief description/background of the video and why it demonstrates (or does not demonstrate) this fallacy.
- Any other comments you want to make after the person has watched the video.
- Tell your friends and hope it catches on.
So here are the two I would like to start with:
The Fallacies:
Argumentum ad misericordiam: This is the Appeal to Pity, also known as Special Pleading. The fallacy is committed when someone appeals to pity for the sake of getting a conclusion accepted.
Argumentum ad nauseam: This is the incorrect belief that an assertion is more likely to be true, or is more likely to be accepted as true, the more often it is heard. So an Argumentum ad Nauseam is one that employs constant repetition in asserting something; saying the same thing over and over again until you’re sick of hearing it.
Video Title:
“We Both Reached for the Gun” aka “The Press Conference Rag” from the movie version of the musical Chicago (lyrics can be found here).
For those not familiar with the “Roxie Hart defense”, here is the background:
Girl is cheating on husband. Her lover tells her their affair is over, and in a fit of rage, she shoots him in the back and kills him. She is thrown in jail. Fact: Roxie shot him on purpose and they did not both reach for the gun. Defense lawyer gives a fabricated–yet plausible–story of the murder, and through arguments ad misericordiam and ad nauseam tries to persuade the press that girl is innocent.
Video:
Commentary:
Misericordiam: Let’s feel bad for poor Roxie. Commiserate with her:
- Her parents are dead
- She was orphaned
- She was rescued by the Nuns of the Sacred Heart
- That pushy Amos forced her to get married
- She knew she was doing wrong by meeting with her ex
- Poor her, her burly pistol-toting “ex-boyfriend” came at her with a gun
- She’s a girl, and therefore defenseless against such an attack
- She’s frightened in jail
- She went crazy from jazz and liquor
- She was taken advantage of by men who are out chasing tail.
- But she would give her right eye to undo her “mistake”
There’s no way she could have done something so heinous on purpose, right?
“are you kidding?”
When Miss Sunshine is not swayed by the misericordiam arguments, she starts asking questions about the murder. When the questions get a little too detailed for comfort, Billy goes for the ad nauseam:
They both reached for the gun…they both reached for the gun…you are getting sleepy…
The puppet-master motif in this scene is especially powerful in showing what an ad nauseam argument can do. If you can get people to stop asking questions and hypnotize them to believe your story by repetition, you can spin your story to front page news. As this video shows, with ad nauseam, not only can you get away with avoiding the real issues, you can get away with…
Well, murder.
Nod and Smile 