More Logical Fallacies & Rhetorical Tricks

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

While I enjoyed my previous two blogs based upon the lecture series, Way with Words, what I really wanted to write about (so I don’t forget) is the list of rhetorical devices that the lecturer presents.

Here are common tricks made in persuasive arguments:

Asserting the Consequent
If X implies Y, then it is NOT necessarily true that Y implies X.
This can be very subtle and easy to miss. Suppose we agree that, “Witches must be burned.” By Asserting the Consequent one can justify burning anyone by saying “Since she was burnable, she must have been a witch.”

Denying the Antecedent
If X implies Y, then it is NOT necessarily true that NOT X implies NOT Y.
Example: We agree that if you play by rules you will succeed. However this does not mean that if you don’t play by the rules, you won’t succeed. It is possible to cheat and win.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
“It follows therefore it was caused” Politicians love this one. “Since I was elected four years ago, the crime rate has fallen, smog has gone away, and people are happier.” The politician may have done NOTHING about crime, smog or happiness. He was just lucky that these things improved while he was in office.

Petitio Principii (Begging the Question)
This trick causes your opponent to lose the debate with a seemingly innocent question. Take abortion for example. One could ask, “Wouldn’t you agree that people have a right to control what happens inside their own body?” If you say yes, the debate is over. On the flip side, anti-abortion advocates try to counter with “Wouldn’t you agree that killing is wrong?” This counter-rhetoric is less effective because you can be anti-murder but, by refusing to recognize a fetus as life, make the question moot.
Petitio Principii is also used when a politician makes an agreeable/popular statement that is meaningless. “I am opposed to wasteful spending”. (Is anyone in favor of wasteful spending?) The thing to ask the speaker is, “what do you consider wasteful”? Is volcano research wasteful? Is Military spending wasteful? NASA and space exploration? You might not agree with his/her interpretation of wasteful once the details are discovered.

Attacking the Messenger: ad Hominem
I discussed this a few weeks ago in Insults & Logical Fallacies
A popular modern variant of the ad Hominem attack is comparing the opponent to Hitler. (In the 19th century Napoleon was the villain of choice). According to Godwin’s Law, any debate on the Internet will eventually include a comparison to Hitler. A bylaw of Godwin says the first person to mention Hitler loses the debate. Ironically, I'll mention Hitler at the end of this blog posting (but I hope in a valid context).

Tu Quoque (the hypocrite fallacy)
Another variant of ad Hominem when the speaker is made to look like a hypocrite. We see this today used against Al Gore – “He can’t be serious about global warming, just look at the carbon footprint of his huge house!”

Red Herring (Ignoratio Elenchi – Irrelevant Thesis)
I'll shift your attention away from this one by mentioning that I covered it in my posting Insults & Logical Fallacies as the Strawman Attack.

Appeal to Popularity (Ad Populum) also called the Bandwagon effect
Very common in advertising – “Everybody loves Jiff!” (Implied, You will too!) Note that parents rarely fall for this, “But mom, everyone is doing it!”

Hasty Generalization
News media does this all the time by turning events into trends. By saying “The President’s falling popularity rating hit X% today…” one implies the rating will continue to fall. It is more honest to say the rate “fell” or “has fallen” to X% without predicting where it might go next. Lookout for “ing” participles in news copy, “the worsening economy”, “the rising deficit”, etc.

Sweeping Generalization
When you say, “Everyone agrees with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” you are making a broad categorical claim without merit. Just one counter example makes the statement false. It is more honest to say “Most everyone agrees…” or “Nearly everyone agrees …” (but even with this you are now using Ad Populum to sway opinion).

Hyperbole
Exaggerating your claim (often falsely) for effect. “This is the best weight loss diet ever!” “This is the worst recession in American history.”

Appeal to Ignorance
This is attempt by sway opinion by saying your point has NOT been disproved. “No one has proved that aliens don’t exist”

Plurium Interrogationum (Badgering the Witness)
When a debater attacks with a long list of questions, Isn’t is true that X and Y and Z and ..., this is a form of badgering your way to victory. Can the defender be expected to remember each question and will he/she be allowed sufficient time to respond to each? Afterwards an accuser might claim, I asked 20 damaging questions but my opponent had answers for only three.

Apophasis and Paralipsis
Making your point by claiming you are NOT saying it.
“Since I’m not a mudslinger, I won’t tell you about my opponent’s drinking problem.” “We haven’t the time (or it’s not relevant) to discuss rumors that my opponent is a wife-beater.”

Passive Voice
The passive voice can be used to avoid disclosing information. “Mistakes were made” is a nice example that avoids saying WHO made the mistake.

Bottom Line
When Plato and other philosophers wrote about government, they were very fearful of democracies. “The People” can be easily led by effective public speakers into voting for the noose that hangs them. Hitler (via amazing speeches) was democratically elected in Germany and, via legal means, transformed his role into dictator. Today Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is doing the same thing with legal changes to the constitution allowing him to be President for Life.
The cure for this is teaching “The People” the tricks of rhetoric so they won’t be fooled by silver-tongued politicians.

Public Speaking

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” - Mark Twain

More concepts from the lecture series, Way with Words: the Medieval Sermon and the five-part essay. One of most tested forms of public speaking is the church sermon. Did you know that Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale were founded for the express purpose of training clergymen to give effective sermons? Over a thousand years of sermons, one pattern emerged as the “optimal” structure for addressing an audience and getting your message across. It contains six parts:

1. Theme (describe the topic of this talk)
2. Protheme (introduce the theme with a reference to scripture or other authoritative source)
3. Dilation (explain the reference you just cited)
4. Exemplum (provide an example or story)
5. Peroration (apply the story, what is the moral?)
6. Closing (request for action)

Here’s a brief example

1. Today I'd like to talk to you about Go-Kits.
2. According to the FEMA website, AreYouReady, “You may need to survive on your own after a disaster. This means having your own food, water, and other supplies in sufficient quantity to last for at least three days. Local officials and relief workers will be on the scene after a disaster, but they cannot reach everyone immediately.”
3. FEMA goes on to explain that, following a disaster, you might get help in hours or it might take days. This is NOT due to negligence or ill will on behalf of the government but rather this is just a fact of logistics. There could be millions of people in need of rescue and only a few hundred or at best thousands of emergency vehicles. It just takes time to clear the roads of debris and reach everyone.
4. During the great Kentucky Ice Storm of 2009, FEMA had "plenty of folks ready to go, but [were] are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions." In effect the roads were too dangerous for the Emergency Teams to use! According to newspaper reports, “Some in rural Kentucky ran short of food and bottled water, and resorted to dipping buckets in a creek. … Rural communities feared it could be days or even weeks before [power company] workers got to areas littered with downed power lines.
5. Someday this might happen to you! No power, no water, and no rescue. You have no choice but to be resilient and survive on your own for at least three days.
6. I urge each and everyone one of you to go home today and build a three-day cache of food, water, flashlights, blankets, medicine and anything else you think you’ll need to survive while waiting for disaster responders to knock on your door.

Bottom Line

Many people are frustated when asked to give a talk. Where do I start? The formula above is the answer to this question. Just fill in the blanks.

Today college English courses teach a simplified version of the six-part sermon. It’s called the five-part essay. You have an opening introduction and a closing conclusion. The meat of your talk fills a three-part body. Why three? Because the human mind likes the number three and starts to become confused when asked to remember four things. To turn the six-part sermon into a five-part essay try merging parts 1 and 2 as the introduction or merging parts 5 and 6 into the conclusion.

Speech-Act Theory

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny”

A few days ago I mentioned the lecture series, Way with Words, that I’ve been listening to during my commute. Today I’ll stretch the meaning of “preparedness” to include public speaking and list some of the interesting things I’ve learned.

Speech-Act Theory
Sometimes words are just words (You’re married!?) and sometimes words change the world (I now pronounce you man and wife). The difference is called non-performative vs performative speech. The difference in wording may be very slight, “I think the Yankees will lose” (an opinion) vs “I bet you the Yankees will lose” (an action). Sometimes the distinction is blurry, misunderstood or deliberately abused. King Henry II once said, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest” (i.e. Thomas Beckett). Henry's statement might have been a rhetorical question but, being the words of a King, his knights took this as a command and beheaded Beckett. A President might abuse this by saying, “If only Castro were dead” (opinion or command?) and then disclaim responsibility when the CIA tries to assassinate Castro.

I bet you’ve experienced the situation where someone misinterprets your words. “That’s not what I said!” or “That’s not what I meant!” Speech-Act breaks communication into three parts:

Locutionary – what you said
Illocutionary – what you are alluding to, the message your listener hears
Perlocutionary – what you hope to persuade your listener to do

Suppose you say, “There is a large rock on my foot!”

Locutionary – stating a fact (rock on foot)
Illocutionary – I’m uncomfortable, this hurts
Perlocutionary – Please move this rock off my foot.

Communication can break down when we pack our words with a lot of implied meaning and the Locutionary is very different from the Perlocutionary. When a parent says, “go to bed”, this is short hand for “brush your teeth, put on PJs, and go to sleep.” If the child jumps into bed fully clothed and reads a book they are following the Locutionary (literal meaning) while ignoring the Illocutionary and implied Perlocutionary.

Bottom Line

In emergency situations it is critical to say exactly what you mean and not assume that people will fill in any blanks. An example of this is, “Someone call 9-1-1!” People standing around understand your intent but most are unlikely or unwilling to apply it to themselves and make the call. The correct thing to do is point to a person at the scene and say, “You. Call 9-1-1!” Now the required action and actor are very clear – the words and the action match. The selected person might object in which case you pick another person until one agrees to make the call.