More logical fallacies
Well, it’s hard to pin down the fault on this one… but it’s probably both Christine Yamashita and Abigail Rouse who are to blame.
Christine wrote this letter to the editor in the Exponent (which appeared Feb 10th). In it, she makes the horrible, poorly thought-out argument:
I mean, think of how the world would be if Hitler’s, Osama bin Laden’s and Timothy McVeigh’s mothers had gotten an abortion. The entire world would have been spared from their evil and corrupted minds.
Yeah, that’s a beauty, isn’t it. I mean … that’s just one of those things that totally doesn’t follow from the premises. Bin Laden came from the harem of a wealthy Saudi businessman. His parents wouldn’t have even CONSIDERED abortion (partly because they’re muslims, partly because they’re wealthy, and partly because there were already somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 of his siblings running around the house — what’s five or six more? And McVeigh? Well, his parents were married when they had him, but divorced when he was 10. And Hitler was the fourth of six. You’d have to be a horrible person to get 4 abortions in a row! But the point is, the argument is crap, and defies logic to try to explain it.
Anyway, Abigail Rouse starts out on the highroad in her reply:
That makes so much sense! What profound, forthright logic! Kill one unborn baby because it might grow up to be evil!
but then degenerates to this mess, which I think may be a classic case Straw Man:
But let’s just take Ms. Yamashita’s advice and kill whatever surprise comes along because it could grow up to be a supervillain.
Of course, the best is just before that, but maybe not so much a fallacy as just wrong: presentation of contradictory ideas as concurrent.
With today’s children being geared towards abstinence and birth control being cheaper and more accessible than ever, promiscuous, unprotected sex is irresponsible;
I’m impressed. I mean …. abstinence-only sex ed is a big part of the problem, and conservatives who promote it are, in general, against the idea of contraception as well. That’s not what the abortion argument is about though. It’s not that you’re pro-life, it’s that you’re anti-sex, and you’re pushing the pro-life cart as a way to promote your anti-sex agenda. But you can’t do that, because EVERYBODY LOVES SEX.
It’s amazing, the duplicity of people though. I mean … it’s one thing to say “I don’t like the idea of killing unborn babies.” It’s another thing entirely to say “I don’t like young people having sex, so let’s make them stop” — y’know?
June 13th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Hey,
I’m happy to see you were amused enough by my writing to put it in your blog. I think if you had read it more in depth, you would have realized I made some credible points and maybe they weren’t worded in the best way, but the paper only gives you 300 words with which to work. Maybe you should consider how to frame your own opinions clearly, scientifically, and concisely before disecting someone else’s valid opinion.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Wow … that was ages ago! Googled yourself and found that?
You’re right, both that I’m horrible at writing concisely and that your opinions are perfectly valid. I never meant to imply they weren’t. Heck, I even started out by casting you in the light of “taking the highroad” … you pointed out the logical flaw in Christine’s argument.
What I was trying to express was that both sides of the debate resorted to logical fallacies (both formal and informal) very early on. I believe that the use of what amounts to illogical argument on any side of a discussion renders the entire discussion pointless (or at least endless), because there’s no way to use logic to fight illogic. It’s like bringing a gun to a knife-fight… the person who does it can walk away feeling like they won, but they won by rewriting the rules in their favor.
Which isn’t to say that you or Christine even don’t have perfectly reasonable (ie: logically valid) justifications for your positions, just that when you (or anyone else) resort to fallacy or simply unreasonable assumption as an argumentative strategy, you ultimately undermine the reasonableness of your own position. It’s sort of natural, though, to counter blatant illogical statements with the same sort of thing … people try to match the level of the discourse, whether that means bandying sophistries or hurling feces.
As for the actual position you express … I don’t (and didn’t) have a big problem with it. I just found it funny to see abstinence and contraception in the same sentence, because the abstinence-only sex-ed crowd (aka neo-conservatives, aka “The Christian Right”) would immediately decry that as completely incompatible — that is, they would say (over and over again, if necessary) that contraception isn’t a valid option and shouldn’t be taught or made available.
I certainly understand the problem with space limitations… for a wordy guy like me the 300-word threshold is pretty insufficient. It can be really hard to cut down a thought to that sort of length! Even here, I’m already about 50 over!
I probably could have put the last paragraph of that post (among other things) quite a bit better, it sort of seems to imply that I think you’re being deceptive about your beliefs. You’re not, you seemed to be pretty straightforward about them. The duplicity is from the neo-cons who try to equate the grisly, horrible thing that abortion is with sex, in order to put a stop to both. At least, that’s what I was trying to say.
November 16th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Yes, I google my name on occasion. Do you want to know why? I have published a book and have been trying to promote it and I google to the name to see if it is paired with the book title. But even if I didn’t have an excuse, I think everyone’s googled their own name at least once.
So I’ve done it again and I’m surprised this is still here, on page 1 in fact! Okay, I see your point with most of the stuff, but 1.) it is an opinion column which thankfully does not require all the masterful debating actual fact-based articles need, and 2.) abstinence and contraception can be used in the same sentence because they both provide ways to avoid pregnancy. It just depends on the route one chooses, and both are still often-talked-about topics in schools, so I thought that was valid.
Anyway, you seem like a decent person and I appreciate the time you took to comment back on my defensive comment. Enjoy your blog and please visit my website.