Crimes Against Logic Read online

  This reasoning is obviously flawed. How can the fact that racists enjoy hearing something show that it is false? Much of the literature on this topic is at pains to point out that the claim is racist or that those who make it are motivated by racism. But, again, how could this on its own show that whites’ average IQ is not really lower than Asians’?

  p. 151 Besides being logically flawed, the reasoning is also ill-motivated. The opinion in question may indeed be false, but why should an opponent of racism be especially concerned by it? He must accept the racists’ reasoning, that such differences would warrant all manner of depredations upon members of races with lower average IQs. That is a dangerous thing to accept, since these differences might turn out to be real.

  Those who refuse even to hear an opinion from which others draw unpleasant conclusions tacitly agree that it has the alleged implications. If the opinion turns out to be true, what defense will be left to these good ostriches?

  What’s Beneficial Is True

  In debates about the existence of God, the religious will often tell you that their faith is a source of comfort in moments of trouble. This is irrelevant. Belief in God would provide this comfort even if God did not exist.

  Benefits that a belief would deliver even if it were false are not evidence that it is true. Perhaps everyone who believes she is of above average good looks gains in confidence. This benefit cannot make the belief true of everyone who has it, since this is 90 percent of the population. Believing that he is protected by a guardian angel may make a soldier bolder in battle. But, again, that is no evidence that guardian angels really exist.

  This is an obvious point and, outside religion, you would expect the mistake to be extremely rare. But it isn’t. Here is Dr. Peter Kenway, the director of the New Policy Institute, defending the U.K. government’s discredited disposable income measure of poverty (see pp. 134-137):

  p. 152 It is a simple and reliable statistic, which has played a huge part in propelling poverty high up the political agenda.[12.2]

  Why does Dr. Kenway mention the fact that this statistic has propelled poverty high up the political agenda? How is this relevant in a debate about the measure’s accuracy? The statistic has propelled poverty up the political agenda not because it is accurate, but because it is high. A more accurate measure that gave lower numbers would have lesser powers of political agenda propulsion. Could Dr. Kenway be making the same mistake as the comforted Christian?

  If he accepts that this effect does not show the statistic to be true, then he must think that propelling poverty up the political agenda recommends the statistic even if it is inaccurate. That is a strange idea. If poverty is not really as big a problem as the statistic indicates then, surely, it should not be so high up the political agenda. The proper policy priorities depend on the facts. The idea that we should begin with the priorities and then tailor our view of the facts to suit them is absurd.

  Clare Short, the former International Development Secretary, accused the Prime Minister of doing just this when she described his claims about the military threat posed by Iraq as “an honorable deception.” He started with his policy of invading Iraq and then tailored his (and our) view of the facts to suit. Who knows if she was right. But, if she was, “honorable” is a peculiar description of the behavior. “Fevered” might have been better.

  p. 153 We all sometimes indulge in such shenanigans when defending a position we favor. But we know we shouldn’t, even when we think our position is righteous. If defending it requires misrepresenting the facts, then it cannot be correct after all. Righteousness isn’t above the truth.

  The Meek Shall Inherit the Truth

  In 1985, the New Zealand Rugby Union planned a tour of South Africa. Anti-apartheid organizations in New Zealand strongly opposed the plan. As part of his campaign to rally opposition to the tour, John Minto, the leader of HART (Halt All Racist Tours) spoke at Auckland University.

  After his speech, a student took issue with some of the stronger measures recommended for dissuading the national rugby team from going ahead with the tour. The civil liberties of rugby players was the topic of discussion, but the details do not matter. The interesting point in the debate came when Mr. Minto, having become impatient, made what he took to be the killer point. The blacks in South Africa were starving and did not want this tour to go ahead. He listened to them, and not to white, middle-class suburbanites.

  The WMCS student replied that the poverty of South African blacks hardly made them more likely to be right on the points of political philosophy under discussion. The cacophony of booing and jeering elicited by this remark ended the debate in Mr. Minto’s favor.

  But the student was right. However unjust apartheid, it didn’t bestow on its victims the power of infallible truth. Moral outrage p. 154 at someone’s mistreatment does not oblige you to agree with everything he says. Mr. Minto had morality fever.

  He was not unusual in exhibiting this symptom of it. In the academic humanities—anthropology, sociology, literary criticism, and the like—it is almost an orthodoxy that the opinions of those who have suffered from Western imperialism are immune from criticism. Say that the traditional beliefs of some such society are false, and you will soon be accused of intellectual or cultural imperialism.

  Whether or not it is a kind of imperialism to criticize the views of other cultures is a matter beyond the scope of this book. The important point here is only that this immunity from criticism cannot have the source many of its advocates allege it to: namely, that truth is culturally relative.

  Cultural relativism about truth, which is popular in the humanities, is the view that any belief widely held in a culture is automatically true in that culture. In Iran, it is generally agreed that there is only one god. So, in Iran, it is true that there is only one god. In Papua New Guinea, the people tend to believe in many gods. So, in Papua New Guinea, there are many gods. Every culture has the power to make its own truth. Disagree with the consensus and you must be wrong, by definition of truth.

  Cultural relativism is so absurd that it is hard to believe anyone can be so fevered as to assert it. If it were true, gods, planets, bacteria, and everything else would come into and go out of existence according to what people generally believe to exist. Which they obviously do not. And statements that contradict each other, such as “There is only one god” and “There is more than one god,” would both be true, since the beliefs common in different p. 155 cultures are often contradictory. But, it is impossible for contradictory statements both to be true. Don’t be fooled by the “in Iran,” “in Papua New Guinea,” “in nineteenth-century France,” and similar tags relativists place at the end of claims about what is true. Iranians believe there is only one god, not only in Iran, but everywhere. This belief cannot be true in Iran but false in Papua New Guinea. If it is false anywhere it is false everywhere. Many enjoy feeling guilty about misdeeds they didn’t do, such as colonizing Africa or denying women the vote. I have even seen undergraduates, who I was fairly certain were virgins, marching with placards declaring “I am a rapist.” Who would deny people such innocent pleasures? But, like all pleasures, faux guilt must be enjoyed responsibly. You mustn’t allow yourself to get so carried away with it that you contract the fever and start believing that your victims are infallible.

  Be Serious

  The fallacies discussed in this book have several reliable sources: Congress, talk radio, and newspaper editorials will give you all the material you need to hone your skill at spotting them. But, if you haven’t much time and seek a really condensed dose of muddle, I recommend you write to the BBC and ask them for recordings of their Radio Four panel discussion, “The Moral Maze.”

  The panelists on this program are intelligent, well-educated people—mainly academics, religious professionals, and politicians. They are quite capable of reasonable thought. Put a few of the day’s weightier moral topics in front of them, however, and they soon show all the signs of the fever. If you can bear to
listen p. 156 for long, it becomes clear that many are more interested in displaying their concern and sincerity than in arguing cogently. Indeed, they seem to believe that genuine concern licenses irrationality. “You can’t argue with his sincerity” is the reaction they seek. And in seeking this they resemble many of their listeners.

  The idea that you can’t argue with the morally sincere, that caring licenses irrationality, is as pernicious as it is popular. It displays a lack of moral seriousness. If the matter at hand is something you genuinely care about, then you should seek more than ever to believe the truth about it. And rationality is merely that way of thinking that gives your beliefs the greatest chance of being true. To dispense with it on the ground that you care is preposterous. As the moral temperature rises, so should our devotion to the truth and hence to proper reasoning.

  The idea that sincerity may substitute for reason is founded on an egocentric attitude toward belief: that what I believe is all about me, not about reality. What matters is not that the position I favor will have the best or the intended effects, or that the problems I worry about are real or grave, but only that I hold my position from the right sentiments, that I am good.

  A similar egocentric disdain for the truth underlies many of the more obvious fallacies discussed in the early chapters of this book. People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a “U-turn,” or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true, or . . .

  p. 157 Perhaps it is better to get on with your family and friends, to avoid embarrassment, or to comfort yourself with fantasies than to believe the truth. But those who approach matters in this way should give up any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. They are not genuinely interested in reality.

  Nor are they genuinely concerned about the welfare of others. For we all live in reality, even if we might wish it otherwise. To know what is in the best interests of those you care about you need to understand the world in which they live. If heaven does not really exist, for example, then those deprivations the religious recommend as the path to it are not really in their children’s best interests. If they are seriously concerned about their children, they should be serious about the existence of heaven. And if this is true for religion, it is even more obviously true for physics, biology, economics, psychology, medicine, and everything else on which people have opinions.

  Separating intellectual from moral seriousness is harder than those who are intellectually frivolous may care to admit.

  p. 159 Jamie Whyte is a former lecturer of philosophy at Cambridge University and winner of Analysis journal’s prestigious prize for the best article by a philosopher under thirty. He has published numerous articles—mainly on the subject of truth—in journals such as Analysis and the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. He is from New Zealand and now lives and works in London.

  Footnotes

  1.1 The right was confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights in October 2001. The court upheld the claim of people living in the flight path of Heathrow airport that early-morning flights violated this right to a good night’s sleep.

  1.2 In December 1990 a group of men who, for the sake of pleasure, volunteered to have each other cut their genitals were convicted of various crimes, including actual bodily harm.

  1.3 For those interested in a fuller discussion of the connection between rights and duties, see P. Jones, Rights (Basingstoke, McMillan, 1994).

  3.1 It is impossible simply to decide to believe something, even when someone menacing tells you to. You can test this for yourself. Try to believe something you now disbelieve, say, that you are heir to the throne of Croatia or that being hit by a car will not injure you. I’ll bet you can’t. To believe something, you normally need some reason to think it true.

  3.2 This is precisely the direction modern politics is taking. But it is not, I suspect, because politicians genuinely believe public opinion to be infallible. Rather, it is a consequence of the professionalization of politics. Letting public opinion guide your policies, though not much increasing your chance of being right, greatly increases your chance of being elected.

  4.1 Along with Papal infallibility, the notion of the strict mystery and its application to the Unity of the Trinity was settled upon at the Vatican Council of 1869-1870.

  4.2 L. Watson, Supernature (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), p. ix.

  4.3 Many readers may find it fascinating. The topic is extremely difficult, and properly to engage with it requires a good understanding of statistics. For readers with determination, I recommend Michael Redhead, Incompleteness, Non-locality and Realism: A Prolegomenon to the Philosophy of Quantum Physics (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987).

  5.1 The Guardian, February 4, 2003.

  6.1 I discovered this example—which is by no means unusual in certain academic circles—in the “Pseuds Corner” section of Private Eye, April 4-11, 2003.

  6.2 Professor Henry introduces no new evidence regarding the health effects of cannabis. (See his editorial in the British Medical Journal, Vol. 326, May 2003, pp. 942-943.) Rather, he arrives at his 30,000 figure by assuming that cannabis and tobacco smoking increase the probability of death equally. Then he applies the annual tobacco-smoking death rate of 0.9 percent to the 3.5 million cannabis-smoking population to arrive at his 30,000 figure. His reasoning has two problems. First, the figure of 3.5 million cannabis users is based on poor data, as you would expect where a criminal activity is involved. Second, no account is taken of the different smoking habits of tobacco and cannabis users. Cannabis smokers typically smoke less each day and maintain the habit for a shorter period of their lives. Professor Henry was wise to say that 30,000 is only a possible number of deaths caused by cannabis.

  6.3 The credit rating of the U.S. government is AAA. Credit ratings give a rough measure of the probability that the rated institution will default on its financial obligations in a given time period (usually one year). AAA rated institutions have a 0.01 percent (1 in 10,000) chance of defaulting. This is close enough to risk free to be so-called in the financial world: the rate of interest received on loans to the U.S. government is called the risk-free rate.

  6.4 I. Lakatos, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes” in Lakatos and Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 164, note 12. I owe the reference to David Stove’s Popper and After: Four Irrationalists of Science (New York, Pergamon Press, 1982), Part I of which provides a hilarious exposé of the linguistic obscurantism of four prominent philosophers of science.

  7.1 It is worth noting the difference between two ways of being inconsistent. Statements can be contrary, so that at least one of them is false and possibly both. Or they can be contradictory, so that one must be false and the other true. “Jack was born in Jamaica” and “Jack was born in Barbados” are thus contrary, while “Jack was born in Jamaica” and “Jack was not born in Jamaica” are contradictory.

  7.2 There have been many attempts to show that the existence of evil is consistent with the existence of an all-good and all-powerful god. For a survey, please see J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982).

  7.3 These statements are not directly inconsistent, since the government has two sources of funds other than tax: profits from state-owned businesses and borrowing. However, few recommend a return to the days of widespread state ownership of business, because such businesses usually contribute losses rather than profits. And borrowing to fund spending, though advisable during a recession, is not sustainable over the long run, at least if the rate of borrowing exceeds the rate of economic growth. In the long run, spending must be funded by tax revenues. It is this view, held by most voters, combined with the beliefs that the government should cut taxation and that it should increase spend
ing that makes an inconsistent threesome.

  7.4 These biblical prohibitions are to be found, respectively, in Leviticus 18:20, Deuteronomy 23:19, Deuteronomy 22:11, and Leviticus 11:9.

  7.5 Mao Tse Tung, “On Contradiction,” Selected Works (Peking, Foreign Language Press, 1967), p. 313.

  8.1 Housing, health care, and education are never really free. Builders, nurses, and teachers must all be paid, equipment purchased, and someone has to come up with the money. This is often forgotten by those who insist that, for example, education “should be free to everybody.” This is simply impossible. Someone must pay, the question is only who. “Not me” is a popular answer, but not everyone can be indulged.

  8.2 The government’s measure of relative poverty is discussed in more detail on pp. 134-137.

  9.1 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, reprinted in Utilitarianism (Glasgow, Fount, 1978), pp. 126-250.

  10.1 The idea that causation is probabilistic is now widely accepted by scientists and philosophers. Though not essential to the case for probabilistic causation, the probabilistic nature of quantum physics has convinced many.

  10.2 Jacques Benveniste and colleagues published a paper in Nature, 1988 reporting experimental results supporting homeopathy. However, these results have not been replicable in subsequent experiments (see Forbes et al. in Nature, 1993). The standard of proof for homeopathy should be especially high, since it asks us to believe something incredible: that the effects of water depend not on what is in it, but on what used to be. (See pp. 93-94.)

  10.3 George Schlesinger, New Perspectives On Old Time Religion (Oxford University Press, 1988|, pp. 130, 133.