Critical Thinking: Fallacies 3

all right so we're looking at some more fallacies and like you remember last class I divided fallacies up into a bunch of different families the things that we're looking at today don't actually fit into any families of fallacies that are kind of standalone and so we're tied a couple big events one of the ones that really get first two wrongs make a right you could see as connected with the ad hominem or genetic fallacy you know and that's where the family that you're trying to disqualify somebody and then they're by this wall by the claim but it's kind of a particular structure to it and that's why and then your book treats it as something separate so let's start with that you guys have all heard two wrongs don't make a right right well why do we have a fallacy that well because people do to make these kind of arguments all the time and I think you're going to find as we go through this that you've made those sort of arguments I know I've made those four arguments they're just not good arguments because they're bringing up things that are actually you're relevant to the point that's being discussed so let's think for example of some political a lot of arguments and politics maybe like this somebody will say well they did it to us first so it's okay do it for example I considered it a very bad sign in the Bush years when I saw hardly Senate Democrats border blocking a lot of friends they were doing was called filibuster I started as a bad sign not because they had anything against the Democrats but because if one side starts to do something like that what do you think the other side is going to do there in the opposition they're going to do the same thing once you open up the door that's what other thing the way it works in politics once you sort of raise the bar it raised the level of antagonism there both sides are going to do the same thing and they're both going to appeal to this principle so Senate Republicans when they were being criticized for filibustering some of Obama's what they're talking about defunding his health care the Democrats had talked about defunding something a while back when Bush was president they were going to defund the war right if it's a good policy to do it it should be able to stand on its own you don't want to justify your policy by just saying hey the other guy does it so therefore it's okay that's a little bit like the common practice fallacy right that we saw last class but in this case you're actually referring to somebody else in action and you're saying well because they do something wrong it's okay for me to do something or you say here's my justification for doing it they get it too that's not a very good justification if you actually do have some sort of reason for what you're doing a little thing about the argument the way that they're actually saying they're saying X is right and they mean like a meteor like for somebody that I'd like and what is their reasoning someone else did acts that might be one way to do it or somebody else did something worse than an axe or somebody else did something that justifies X does that actually did you hear no so again what's going to be going on it's got to be some sort of implicit premise right what would be the thing that they're assuming something a lot of the lines say yeah exactly if somehow it's okay for me to do that or it is right yes so that's an implicit promise now is that a is it a true promise is that mold in every case you just say yes of what those kept surprising yeah this just can't hold events I mean there are something where somebody comes to happen and it's good that they do it is it's good that we do it is it is it good just because this is a good for Austin to it just because they did it no we should be if it's really good we should have some reasons and if you're justified in saying defunding a president's pet project whether it's the Iraq war or health care or anything like that if you're right in doing that you should have some arguments you should independent claims not just hey the other guys do that too so that's that's a way in which people try to disqualify other people head and your your book gives you some some good examples talks about let's say you get to higher than the people upstairs stomping around late at night probably condition some of you invented enough to be upstairs and with your neighbors you might be playing music so to retaliate you rent a tow truck and deposit their car in the river I don't like that example it's pretty excessive doesn't it and then you know you when the cops come I don't know why you did that you said well they really ticked me off yeah yeah your book your book talks about the issue punishment and you do want to draw a distinction this is that's a good is a good question you do have to draw a distinction between legitimate posture and just going out and doing something right if you have some sort of process in place like we do where you know you have access to to the trial really to think about it at least in in most states the states that have executions I'm not talking necessary about taxes were they they do a lot of them generally not too many people are being executed and it's the after very long processes of Appeals right so you have to prove that the person really was guilty did all these these things that the death penalty is actually merited and they go you know definitely throw the Supreme Court and any sort of procedural error that's gonna that's going to kick that out so I wouldn't consider that too much of a problem in our case because we have all of these processes in place there is one problem with it which is that in past cases reporters and actual students are going back and then found you know evidence that somebody who's who's accused of capital crimes is about to be executed didn't didn't do it sometimes they find DNA evidence see them but I think we're going to see less and less of those you know the system screwed up cases and a lot of times those were those you know those had something to do with a mafia now that could be a problem for I could get problem for answered with unjust political regime they don't have those sort of procedures in place and so what do people who argue against the death penalty will bring up these sorts of arguments and say hey hey being inconsistent for example when I worked at Indiana State Prison this has come up in classes and actually the prisoners were about half split and that was actually a prison where they did executions so they were you know quite familiar with it the whole prison would go on lockdown we wouldn't be allowed to teach sometimes the prisoners were yes the person being executed sometimes they're actually for it and one of the guys who ruined work-release for for indiana prisoners they wanted him executed because he screwed up my going-out for killing his wife now in classes these were mostly ethics classes or religious sites classes they would say I don't understand how somebody against abortion must be for the death penalty and what I would actually do is then sit back and thought my students hash that out and what was interesting what was interesting and some of the students would point out to the other ones distinctions that we can make all right could you can you think of vital distinctions between the case of abortion and the case of both they're both going right so they have something in common but are there glial differences what are what are the differences but yeah that haven't changed so making choices for themselves where there's a personal maybe yeah so there we actually have two different distinctions one has to do with the agency right the person on death row like mr. stone is putting out had some sort of agency they had some sort of choice and then at least in this this state in Indiana where somebody kills somebody in self-defense or you know you don't execute them know some states they might and in the past we you know we did that so there's one thing the person who is being you know why she was on death row they're in a different condition that fetus and that the fetus doesn't have a moral agency or as we say the other thing is there's been some sort of legal procedure you know they've been found guilty of a crime there's nothing like that for abortion right it's not like you know the mother goes to the court of the law says you know I want to have an abortion I need to find this this this fetus guilty so I can you know I mean this sounds absurd doesn't so these are very different about the the culpability is very different and the interesting thing is I would sit back my students figure that out and hash it out with each other and they could do it because I think the differences games cases are pretty to see I never had to break up any fights this is kind of digression I think about you know think about its kind of interesting app balls at the any Indiana State Prison Ball State had been there for 25 years and they never had a professor in any physical danger if inmate ever threatened a professor they the program and if anybody would harm the professor Ball State would have pulled out and then you'd have had about 300 guys who wouldn't have that was one moment to go after the guy who took away their education but also we would form bonds with the students I still write to some of mine and there are there you know there was a case for example in Indiana there was one person that was privatised and that's not it are going to get to do with especially with darts it's all to trouble even worse they they took a bunch of Arizona prisoners and they put them in that prison they rented out space to them and the Arizona prisoners were a lot of different privileges so that Indiana prisoners they were actually a lot more widely Arizona prisoners right they are they weren't happy with you know their circumstances and so there's an actual prison riot going on right and this is what classes were going out so there's man and there's the safe zone the riot zone and then there's where the professor's are some of these professors are 60 year old ladies you know well the prisoners they actually escorted the Indiana prisoners they actually escorted the professor's through the riot zone where all the crazy stones grab to the safe zone so that gives you an idea about you know what was going on I think there was a very strong appreciation of the value of education actually that could be a good example you know if you if you have a prison education program in place right Indiana had a very good one they've changed it a bit now North Carolina I've actually taught in the North Carolina prison system I haven't been very impressed either with the DLC or with the education because it's not very coordinated let's say you wanted to take away because there's access to education well you could say hey you know they're a bunch of scumbags they did terrible things therefore we should take this away from them well you know if you if you've been letting people get an education before that's not a very good argument is that because in order to be consistent we would have had to apply that in the past that was a good reason then you would have used it before that could be an example well it really depends on where you are the prison is a nice idea very few luxuries at all and the prison the prisons allow the ones that they have in part because it's a way of controlling the prisoners like it for instance if you want to get the TV you have to buy the TV yourself and you can get a TV about this big and pay about 250 bucks for it well here's a body here's why the administration allows them they have TV because it keeps them passive if somebody's in there so watching TV they're not they're not causing any trouble TV by itself makes people passive the administration tends to like that and it gives them one more thing they can take away from the prisoners because the prisoners so you know it's one way of enforcing good behavior and keep in mind too that it costs a lot of money on the economy of scale to buy TV if you're making thirty five cents an hour some jobs get you and you don't have somebody to send me money from the outside plus you also have to pay for your own health care while you're in prison you've to cold pay for medicine and they said Indiana getting that TV there could be like a couple years wages so you know it gives them something to work well you can but you know well you know if if you feel strongly about that then you should get involved in in your interests in prison system ed ahead again has to do with your state I mean you as a citizen of North Carolina you had nothing to say about India or now the federal prison system if anyone wanted me to say anything you want about that cuz we're all paying for that actually I would suggest any of you that you know do you have an interest in this do right you know to the North Carolina prison system I would not highly impressed I walked in and out of a medium-security prison without being searched except for one day an entire semester I could have brought in a gun I could have brought in drugs yeah trafficking is a huge problem in prison now that would not have happened in Indiana Indiana I went through several different checkpoints and searched at every single checkpoint sometimes I actually this aside and more quite strip-searched but pretty close every once in a while they pull you out but we were searching every day we'd go through an x-ray of machines sometimes drug sniffers things like that and you feel safer if that's the case because you know no there's not a lot of stuff going on back to this it was kind of like an aggression what's another case of two wrongs make a right think about the accusations of the inconsistency that kids make to parents all right you've all done this I know I have and any of you who have kids if when your kids get old enough they do these to you if you tell your kids you can't do this but you've done it yourself what's their response yeah either you do it there's still vinegar or you you did it - when you were my age so how would you tell me not to do it and one-third they're actually saying they're not actually saying if it was okay for you to do it it's okay for me they're actually saying something like what you got to do something wrong so I get to do something wrong - it's sort of like a like a trade honor right when I was a kid it was smoking well thanks to my mom and dad and Grampa all smoked at the dinner table there's like a cloud of smoke and my sister and I lived with that for years and you know that time and people knew that smoking wasn't good for you but they didn't have they didn't really know how bad it was for you write about secondhand this is before all those studies about yeah we just didn't like it because you know it stank and it burned our eyes they didn't seem particularly happy with them and then eventually my mom my dad quit they didn't actually totally quit my dad ago squeak cigarettes outside surprised and my mom actually she continued smoking off and on through the rest of her life usually other people's cigarettes she would bum cigarettes she would they actually called her two puffs because she would go out this is you know by that by that time they'd cordoned off the smoking areas you know smoker did you have to go outside so she'd go out and she would say to these people I had one cigarette kind of can I have a dragon ears and she'd take two puffs and she'd give it back that she'd go back inside she never water on cigarettes they're brought her own cigarettes and yeah yeah at our funeral some of her friends came up to me and said yeah we used to call you Bob - PO yeah my mom got on my sister and I for smoking many many times and we made this exact argument there you know by the time I was 18 I was smoking I think my sister started earlier and then I went the argument that I was really hooked because you know everyone was smoking back then and there were no taxes on cigarettes we could buy them very cheaply well we would always say we were report this you smoked how can you tell us - well you did right is that any is that a good argument to make no I mean smoking is bad for you we all know that right and to quit smoking and you probably shouldn't smoke I can't think of any good reason why you should smoke can any of you I mean you can think of reasons why people do they enjoy yeah I understand that because I really liked it to smoke you know I love the taste I love it feeling you know you get addicted to the mega team but that's not a good reason is that say that you justify your reason but that doesn't make it right that's a good that's a good point and in that case are you you're not really justifying your reason are you this is a good example of that somebody comes up with a reason they did it they did it to me they did it to somebody else the same thing also goes for when something bad happens to a bad person for instance when a thief has something stolen from them do you say well you got it coming to you and therefore it also even though well no because that's again saying two wrongs make a right you know if somebody is a let's say somebody's a chronic thief right that's how they make their living but so many steals from them you should still do the investigation and still prosecute the other person just you know go after the thief to write the original thief you want to be consistent across the board you don't want to say well somebody was a drug dealer so it's okay that they got killed or somebody where are other cases well you know there's very little prosecution and investigation of crimes that involve prostitutes just sort of in the job well that would be that would be saying two wrongs make a right wouldn't it they deserve that to happen to know if something is wrong it's wrong if it's okay then again you have to make a separate case for it if you want to say yeah it's okay to kill people every once in a while if they're the right kind of people you've got to be able to make that's a hard case to make is you've got to be able to say why that's okay that's okay for me that you don't mind my taxes because because this other guy did it Wow you know not a very good reason I think I'm either another good example would be think about when people betray each other you know someone so betrayed meaning therefore is okay if it means enough betrayed that this happens a lot on relationships that's well you cheated on me that's why it was okay for me to cheat well you know if cheating is wrong then presumably it's not just wrong for that person it's also wrong for me and the fact that somebody else did it first doesn't make it okay for me to do you notice something that what's going on here people make exceptions for themselves don't they have a tendency to do this when it comes to moral reason so think that's probably enough about two wrongs make a right now we're going to totally shift gears there's another fallacy and this one I think students they grasp what they mix up with other things very easily and the traditional name for it is a red herring I think it could be useful to sort of sketch out for you the metaphor does involve let's say you are being pursued by by what house you escape tourism you're you're on the run and they brought the dogs out and there you know sniffing you about there following your trip well the gluttons are eventually gonna catch you oh you know you can go through water or any of these sorts of things let's say there's no creeks that you can even sneak through there's one other thing you could do that I could ever say that would be cool him Luke now let's have that did I ever see that movie that that if you get a chance Paul Newman classic prison movie he's being pursued by dogs he actually goes into a little grocery store he gets out I think cayenne and mustard and some other vehicles oh yeah well it's not just a strong smell you know cayenne pepper burger driving on your hands you imagine that the dogs nose the dogs you know go go they're just totally out of commission if you don't have something like that you'd want to get them off the trail somehow so some other way imagine that you take something that don't like stinky things right this is white dog food too disgusting things like roll around on a dead squirrels for dead birds you all see them right so imagine you take a and you're really stinking thing like it read here the herring is a kind of fish and you drag that across your trail going somewhere else the dog solving it up to this boil and now it goes off in the wrong direction and you get away you can do something like that with arguments you're changing the subject yes but you're also kind of sticking to the same general subject you look at an interesting example where was that photo it's not in this text but it's in another textbook and I've used that when discussing let's say you want to argue about Portia let's say you want to argue why abortion should be legal so that's for the legal right now you should be talking about about working right not about stocks not about you know guinea pigs not about the price of oil or anything like that you should be talking about that subject not other thing that you say on that subject is necessarily going to be on target though let's say your your reason that you give there something like that just that's about abortion said it relevance in any way nobody that might sway some people if you're not paying close attention and you hear something like that yeah they do say mean things you know I don't like that they're for abortion should be legal that's not a reason by itself to support abortion right or let's switch the portion should be yeah the membership there's some truth to that for some people that they get abortions you can pick any given thing some people are yourself centered right and a lot of people are would have no position on abortion or right well sometimes they're actually against abortion until suddenly their their facial the pregnancy crisis now subway oh yeah that might be the thing to do well you know again it has to do with the subject in one way but is it relevant no I mean you can pick more innocuous and it doesn't necessarily have to be all that connected to the subject like let's say you wanted to make a case for why I should give you extra Credit Opportunities what would be some some reasons that you could get all right look better yeah let's pick something not class-related we should lower your tuition can you come up with any good reasons for that besides you know okay so two good examples one is it is very relevant if you lower tuition then you would open up my education to more students and presumably that would be a good thing right so that would be irrelevant there you'd actually be smaller than one so students could go on more but vacations right or a bar out of fancier vacations right they staying and the crappy hotel on spring break they could stay in a luxury hotel okay something like that although usually they're the students on spring break are piled in like five six - oh right okay so would that be would that be relevant at all to the issue of whether your situation should be involved no it was probably being reasoning that some students right though right they'd go along it would be because they're not really paying attention to what's being said they're not being critical thinkers there's another variation of this and your book talks about it as a smokescreen and what is a smokescreen well that doesn't have to do so much with the technique that you're using it has to do with the quantity your book calls a smokescreen when a person just throws a whole bunch of things out here and some of them may be you know connected I mean you know some people argue like that's right you ask them why do you think this is the case and they just they just keep talking and after a while you have to say hey shut up I want to think about this you know and then you start thinking about the things that they're saying are they actually connected sometimes some of them may actually be relevant but the technique of smoke streams just to throw a whole bunch of different considerations that you can't generally relate to the subject some of them may in fact be relevant but you won't know that until you sift through them and they're not offering you the chance to sift through them they're just hitting it with a lot of verbiage that's a particular technique as a matter of fact people do this deliberately they sometimes say telemarketers that's a good example I have the bottom when you get a telemarketer and that's good after their job they're not just the person whom you can tell us was just reading the script and hasn't done it very much but they're a good salesperson they're able to hit you with a patter you find yourself having a hard time as we say getting over it in edgewise you're familiar you've all had that sort of experience with telemarketers or were with other salespeople they're probably doing this this technique of smoke screen where there's a saying a lot of things some of which may be relevant most of which probably isn't and it's all just jumbled up together like it says generally speaking red herrings distract by putting one's attention away from one topic and toward another north one the aspect towards another smoke screens tend to pile of issues on or make them extremely complicated until the original gets lost the purple smoke I think you guys have had experiences of that as well sometimes somebody says so much that you you forget what the point was they were trying to make in the first place and then if they really want to get you you know they do at the end of it let's say so all of this goes to show but here's here's a point right quality the whole barn in then but it sounds reasonable they gave a whole bunch of reasons and facts you know another reason people get taken in by this if you throw a lot of complicated verbiage at somebody and they are not able to follow it it could be because it's so tangled it's illogical that nobody could follow it right but how would we ordinary people feel about that sort of thing how do they feel about their capacity to understand arguments most people don't want to come on and say I didn't understand what you said do they because of what do they feel stupid or ashamed or well yeah and then people don't want to admit that we talked about this before wasn't with emotions Monday right so if you know that people are already prone to going along with things get you through a lot of stuff happen and that's not necessarily connected if you know that people will probably not question you because they don't want to appear stupid then you can manipulate them and there's there's people out there who do this so that is where we're going to leave off you notice that we're done with channeling sex we're moving into chapter 7 and chapter 7 is full of more fallacies some of these are organized like the other ones we talked about in the families other areas are going to be less connected with each other and all let me have some sort of structure is a point to say this is what makes this fallacy what it is so I'll see all of you Monday

Channel: Fayetteville State University

Views: 10,827

Rating: 4.9230771 out of 5

Keywords: Two Wrongs Make a Right, Red Herring, Smoke Screen

Id: eqiZkVCeZxQ

Length: 36min 36sec (2196 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2011