Crimes Against Logic Read online

  Yet, this moderate response rendered his objection to legal homosexuality groundless. If it is not generally true that what the Bible condemns should be illegal—if other men’s wives, 3 percent interest, lycra-cotton shorts, and lobster thermidor may all be enjoyed by law-abiding citizens—then why not homosexuality too? Far from successfully defending his objection to legalizing homosexuality, the evangelist had defeated himself. He admitted a counter-example to the generalization on which his argument depended.

  p. 89 You might think that contradicting yourself in public would make for successful rhetoric only when you are an evangelical preacher addressing your flock or someone enjoying similarly uncritical attention. Alas, no. Tony Blair is the acknowledged master of modern political rhetoric, and, if the appearance of moderation calls for it, he will not hesitate to contradict himself in public. His position on fox-hunting provides an example.

  In September 1999, the Prime Minister sought to reassure nervous blood-sports enthusiasts that he was not some kind of fanatic. He wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph insisting that, though he opposed fox-hunting and would vote for its criminalization, he was a stout defender of shooting and fishing:

  There will be no ban on the country pursuits of shooting and fishing. Let me make this perfectly clear. As long as I am Prime Minister, I guarantee that this Government will not allow any ban. We will not do it.

  Mr. Blair claimed in his article that fears of a legislative threat to shooting and fishing had been whipped up by members of the pro-fox-hunting lobby wishing to exaggerate the threat to the rural way of life. Perhaps. But the only slander against Mr. Blair required by their scaremongering was the accusation of consistency.

  Which principle makes fox-hunting an abomination but does not equally condemn shooting and fishing? Most anti-fox-hunting activists think that it should be banned because it is cruel. Yet are not fishing and shooting also cruel? Is a hook through the head or a bullet in the gut so much kinder than a hound at the p. 90 throat? What is the difference between fox-hunting and shooting that means that the former is impermissible but the latter to be defended at all costs?

  By supporting shooting and fishing, Mr. Blair tacitly agrees that cruelty to animals is not a sufficient ground for criminalization. But then, what is his objection to fox-hunting?

  Fox-hunting certainly differs from fishing and shooting in some respects. For example, it is practiced primarily by wealthy non-Labour voters on horseback and is hated by left-wing members of the Labour party who often feel Mr. Blair does too little for them. But these don’t seem relevant to the question of whether or not something should be illegal. Unless he articulates his position more clearly, giving a principle of jurisprudence that shows why fox-hunting should be illegal but not fishing or shooting, then it will appear that Mr. Blair’s position on blood sports, besides being moderate, is arbitrary and inconsistent.

  No, some will say, it is simply pragmatic. Pragmatism is a rightly vaunted quality in politicians but it does not require inconsistency. Suppose that Mr. Blair is not as inconsistent as it appears and really seeks a ban on all blood sports. He knows, however, that he cannot now get a ban on fishing and shooting, because they are too popular. Yet, he might get a ban on foxhunting, providing he promises to protect fishing and shooting. This, then, is what he should do, because some progress is made—foxes will be saved from the indignity of being killed by hounds (now they will be shot)—while none is made by insisting on an unachievable ban on all blood sports.

  Nowhere in this pragmatism is there any inconsistency. The position on blood sports is consistent and the legislative comp. 91promise perfectly sensible under the circumstances. Inconsistency arises only when Mr. Blair claims, not that he is willing to protect shooting and fishing as part of a bargain, but that he believes there is no ground for their criminalization. It is the attempt to conceal the pragmatism, if that is what was going on, that gives rise to the inconsistency. Of course, it may be pragmatic to conceal your pragmatism; that is a matter on which I must defer to experts, such as Mr. Blair. But if so, the price of pragmatic pragmatism is deception and incoherence, which seems too high.

  Weird Ideas

  Despite the decline of organized religion, weird ideas remain popular in the West. What do I mean by “weird,” you may ask. But even as you ask you will know the kind of thing I have in mind. All that new-age stuff: reincarnation, astrology, numerology, homeopathy, and the like. It’s all weird.

  Weird but true, the defenders of some slice of this fruitcake will tell you: they have evidence. Consider reincarnation. The evidence offered up is certain people’s knowledge of the past that, it is argued, could only be acquired by memory of experiences in a previous life. During a session of hypnosis aimed at putting her in touch with her former self, Jill remembers that Julius Caesar had a heart-shaped mole on his left buttock. Then a quick check of the historical sources and, lo! The conqueror of Egypt did indeed possess the alleged beauty spot. Yet Jill had never studied the matter, never seen the historical sources in question. Honest. So, you see, she is the reincarnation of Cleopatra.

  p. 92 The defenders of reincarnation are frustrated by the way this kind of evidence is dismissed by the scientific establishment. They are so wedded to their dogma, to their so-called scientific method, that they cannot see the truth before them.

  In fact, rejecting the conclusion that reincarnation explains Jill’s uncanny knowledge of Caesar’s beauty spot is a simple matter of consistency. Reincarnation is inconsistent with much of what most scientists currently believe about the mind. It assumes, for example, that the mind (or, at least, the memory) survives bodily death, goes through a period of disembodied existence, and later reinhabits a new body. But we have good reason to believe that the mind depends on the functioning of the brain, so that it cannot survive bodily death. To accept reincarnation is to reject the view that the mind depends on the brain.

  Of course, this idea could be mistaken. But the evidence for it is formidable. Anecdotes about what people claim to remember under hypnosis, on the contrary, make poor evidence. They can be explained in many ways that do not require us to abandon our well-supported theories about the relationship between the mind and the brain. It is always more likely that Jill is lying about not having prior knowledge of Julius Caesar’s beauty spot, or that the hypnotist suggested it to her, or even that it was a lucky guess, than that modern neuropsychology is wrong and Jill really is the reincarnation of Cleopatra.

  Weird ideas are not intrinsically weird. They are weird because they are inconsistent with established views of the laws of nature. When you accept them, you reject the established view, or at least part of it. This is not something to be done lightly, because the established view has a mountain of evidence to support it. Those who reject it, by believing in reincarnation, astral p. 93 travel, or astrology, take a bold step. For the step to be rational, the evidence for their favored theory must be stronger than the evidence for the established view that it contradicts. Yet, it is rarely more than a collection of anecdotes about people with unlikely knowledge or who recover from a flu in double-quick time.

  Besides being intellectually frivolous, advocates of weird ideas also often contradict themselves—by continuing to believe in the laws of nature that their weird idea contradicts. Consider homeopathy.

  This is the idea that a disease can be treated by administering doses of a substance that, in a healthy person, would cause the disease. Because large doses of these substances cause unwanted side effects, the dose is made minute by a process of repeated dilution. Alas, the dilution of homeopathic medicines is so great that the resulting liquid is simply water, with not a trace of the originally added substance.

  Homeopathologists acknowledge this fact but insist that the prior addition of the active agent and process of dilution give it curative powers lacked by water without this history. They thereby contradict a principle that I have never heard anyone seriously call into question, and which I am sure
that even a homeopath would not directly deny, namely, that objects with the same properties have the same causal powers, regardless of how they came to have those properties. For example, if Jack and Jill both weigh 140 pounds, then by standing on properly functioning scales each will cause it to register “140 pounds.” It makes no difference if Jack has recently gained weight and Jill lost weight. The same goes for anything else, including samples of water. It makes no difference what used to be in the water. If p. 94 both samples are now purely water they will have the same effects on the health of those who drink them.

  If you believe that homeopathic medicines have effects lacked by water, then you put yourself in an unenviable position. You must either deny that homeopathic medicines are just water, despite the fact that their dilution makes the presence of the active agent impossible. Or, you must deny that objects with the same properties have the same effects. Unless you deny one of these plausible ideas, you contradict yourself by believing in the efficacy of homeopathic medicines.

  Real Contradictions

  Most are distressed to find that they have contradicted themselves. But not all. Some will declare that yes, their position is inconsistent, but is not the world itself full of contradiction?

  That all depends on what you mean by “contradiction.” I hate to say that because the meaning of “contradiction” is quite plain. So, there ought to be no question about what you mean by it or of the world being contradictory.

  Statements are contradictory when the truth of one entails the falsity of the other, when, if one is true, the other must be false. “Jack is fat” and “Jack is not fat” are thus contradictory. That is what “contradictory” means. And because that is what it means, there cannot be contradictory facts. Take any supposedly contradictory facts, such as A and B, to keep matters simple and to dodge the impossibility of producing a real example. If A is a fact then the statement of this fact, “A,” is true. And the same goes for B and “B.” But then the statements “A” and “B” are both true, p. 95 and so not contradictory after all. The very existence of contradictory facts would mean they weren’t really contradictory.

  The idea that there are contradictions in reality, and not merely in our beliefs about it, is possible only when “contradiction” is used to mean something other than contradiction. Misusing words may normally be dismissed as mere illiteracy. When it is done systematically by people regarded as great thinkers, however, the misuse is liable to gain some currency. And that is what happened with “contradiction” at the hands of the nineteenth-century philosopher Hegel and his Communist successors, Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse Tung.

  According to these Dialectical Materialists, real contradictions aren’t just common, they are essential to everything. Here is Mao Tse Tung on the matter:

  Engels said, “Motion itself is a contradiction.” Lenin defined the law of the unity of opposites as “the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society).” Are these ideas correct? Yes, they are. The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.[7.5]

  p. 96 This passage helps us to understand not only what Dialectical Materialists mean by “contradiction,” but also what it really means, by providing an example of the latter. Mao begins by agreeing with Lenin that what is contradictory is mutually exclusive. Then he claims that what is contradictory is interdependent. I suppose having a contradictory definition of “contradiction” is no less than you would expect of someone who thinks everything is essentially contradictory.

  Insofar as such muddles do not render their interpretation incomprehensible, Dialectical Materialists seem to use “contradictory” simply to mean opposed or conflicting. Only this interpretation makes sense of Lenin and Mao’s opinion that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are contradictory, along with the city and the country, + and −, and everything else besides.

  But then Dialectical Materialism provides no excuse for holding contradictory beliefs. Even if Dialectical Materialism were right, it would show only that oppositions or conflicts are rife, not that real contradictions are. You can’t show that reality is full of contradiction by calling conflicts “contradictions.” No more than you could show that goblins exist by calling birds “goblins.”

  The only sense in which the world is full of contradiction is that it is full of contradictory opinions and statements. And so it is also full of error. If opinions are contradictory then one of them is false. Contradict yourself and you are sure to be wrong. Not caring about contradiction is the same as not caring about the truth.

  8 – Equivocation

  p. 97 Are Christians good?

  You might think the tricky word in this question is “good.” After all, “good” is a topic of philosophical debate, and there can be no better indication that a word is tricky. But, in fact, the problem lies not with “good” but with “Christian.” However challenging it is to define “good,” most of us share a sufficiently common understanding of the word to agree in most of its applications. And, more importantly for the purpose of this chapter, it is not ambiguous. There are not two or more clear and distinctly different meanings of the word.

  “Christian,” however, is ambiguous. It can be used to refer to a person who holds certain beliefs, such as that God created the universe and that Jesus is His son (and also God Himself, if our Christian is a Trinitarian). If this is how “Christian” is understood, then the question “Are Christians good?” is an interesting p. 98 one. They might be or they might not. To find the answer we will have to look for evidence, such as a lower than average proportion of Christians in prison or higher than average donations to charity or some other such fact.

  There is another common use of “Christian,” however, on which our question is not in the least interesting, namely, the sense in which “Christian” just means “good.” This is employed when people describe immoral acts as “un-Christian,” or when Father Ted’s congregation responds to the revelation of his pederasty by declaring that he is not a “real Christian” after all. If someone qualifies as a Christian only if he is good, then of course Christians are good—it is true by definition. On this interpretation, it is an open question whether those who believe in the divinity of Jesus tend to be Christians.

  This ambiguity is harmless, provided we keep clear about which meaning we are using. Trouble comes when we slip between the two meanings, despite the validity of our argument requiring us to keep to just one meaning, that is, when we equivocate.

  Suppose, for example, that Jack recommends Christianity to Jill on the ground that it is the path to virtue. Jill expresses some doubt about this, pointing out that most mafia assassins are Christians. Jack responds that Guido cannot be counted a Christian; no Christian would have whacked the Don’s nephew.

  Jack has equivocated. He uses “Christian” in its first, belief-based sense when he recommends Christianity as a path to virtue. Then he employs its other sense, on which it is definitionally true that Christians are good, to eliminate an irritating counter-example. Properly, to eliminate Guido as a counter-example, Jack p. 99 would have to show that he did not believe in the divinity of Jesus—which is not entailed by the fact that he whacked the Don’s nephew.

  If Jill points this out, Jack is likely to protest that Christianity is more than mere belief in the divinity of Jesus. It also involves a moral code, the ten commandments and all that. Guido clearly broke the code, so it is no cheat to deny him the status of a Christian. Alas, Jack has again changed his definition of “Christian.” Now it requires believing in the divinity of Jesus and being virtuous (assuming the Christian moral code is correct). And this makes Jack’s advice worthless. On this interpretation of “Christian,” telling someone who seeks a path
to virtue that she should be a Christian is no better than telling someone who seeks a third leg that he should be a tripod.

  Jack cannot have it both ways. Either he is making an interesting claim about a means to an end or he is simply defining that end. If the former, then he will have to deliver evidence for his claim. If the latter, then, though he may have eliminated the possibility of wicked Christians, he will have rendered Christianity a badge of honor for those who attain virtue, not a path to it. Either way, Jack must pick one interpretation of “Christian” and stick to it.

  Poverty and Poverty

  Jack’s equivocation on “Christian” is a trick for evading refutation. But ambiguity can be used for other purposes as well. We all know that boys will be boys. This saying takes advantage of two senses of “boy” to make what superficially looks like a taup. 100tology into an informative statement. Boys (human males under a certain age) will be boys (unruly brats who cause endless trouble for everyone around them).

  More often, however, ambiguity is used to move, without the help of any supporting argument, from a plain factual claim to one laden with moral evaluation. Two examples—one from the British Labour government and another from their former guiding light Karl Marx—will illustrate the trick.

  Shortly after coming to power in 1997, the New Labour government announced the shocking fact that 35 percent of British children live in poverty. In a country as wealthy as Britain, how could this be? Something must be done! Economic policy must change!

  Some will believe anything bad, but this one really stretched credulity. The poorest in Britain are the unemployed. They receive free housing, free medical care, free education for their children, and small cash sums to pay for food, clothing, and transportation.[8.1] Most of the poorest in Britain own or rent telephones, television sets, refrigerators, ovens, stereos, and even cars. The idea that 35 percent of British children live in poverty was literally incredible.