FOUR IRRITATING FALLACIES—MONTY PYTHON STYLE

As Demonstrated in a Witch Trial

Mistakes in reasoning are common in everyday life. From politics to commercials to serious business discussions, logical fallacies arise to derail our thinking and smash our arguments. But we often jump willingly to our conclusions. We don’t recognize our reasoning mistakes, and that’s a pity. So here is something that you can use, while Monty Python entertains.

To help you keep your own reasoning on track, here is a wonderful video clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail that illustrates at least four rather nasty but common logical fallacies: name-calling, undistributed middle term, false cause, and false authority. My explanations below will elaborate on the video’s fallacies so that you may follow the action and understand why others jump to conclusions. Your mission? That’s simple. Don’t follow the video’s example in your own life—where it really matters!

Here is the video clip link: Monty Python Witch Trial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xlQaimsGg

Fallacy 1: Name Calling (the Personal Attack)

Villagers bring to the Lord of the Manor (the knight who owns the land) a woman they believe to be a witch. To make her appear guilty, they dress her as a witch, even adding to her face a crooked carrot to simulate a deformed nose. The Lord of the Manor asks the villagers how they know that she is a witch. They point to her appearance, but they are forced to admit that they dressed her to look that way. To recover from this failed attempt, one villager claims that she turned him into a newt. Since he obviously isn’t a lizard now, the villager claims, with some embarrassment, that he simply got better.

These all qualify under the heading of the Fallacy of Name Calling (ad Hominem: to the man), a fallacy that attempts to undermine what another claims or argues by discrediting that person’s character or motives, typically by attributing charges of wrongdoing, immoral behavior, or untrustworthiness. This is a fallacy because a person’s character or motives are irrelevant to the truth of his or her statements. Even if a person has a reason to lie, the truth of what he or she says depends upon whether or not the statements accurately describe the real world, not the person’s virtue or lack of it. Even the most virtuous can have lousy observation skills or misinterpret what’s before them. The truth of a statement, what logicians call soundness, depends upon accuracy, not morality.

Fallacy 2: Undistributed Middle Term (Cf., Equivocation and False Analogy)

As the villagers push the accused before the Lord of the Manor, we get a lesson in faulty class inclusion. Proper class inclusion assumes that if one group is included in another, then the members of both will necessarily share common characteristics. We expect that because the included group is simply a subdivision within the same class. The shared characteristics are “universally distributed” within the class, so all members of any included class must also have them. That’s what logicians mean by a “distributed middle term.” For example, look at this logically valid argument:

“Reptiles are cold-blooded animals. This snake is a reptile. Consequently, it is a cold-blooded animal.” (Reptiles constitute a class characterized by being cold-blooded. The snake is included as a subclass of this larger class. Consequently, we logically conclude that it has the same characteristic)

The Fallacy of an Undistributed Middle Term occurs when the items we compare are not members of the same class but merely seem to share an incidental characteristic. The logical mistake occurs when the two classes are equated on the basis of the incidental, common characteristic. This is equivocal. For example, both rams and bulls have horns, but these animals belong to different classes. The horns are only an incidental similarity. Equating the two classes of animals would be a mistake. Though they both have horns, this fact does not put them in the same class, any more than a car and a horse sharing the same color could be classified as the same things. In fact, the horns of these two animals are not really the same, just similar. The Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle Term makes a shared, similar feature the illicit basis for equating two different classes of things. Like this:

“Rams have horns. Bulls have horns. Consequently, Rams are Bulls.”

Watch what happens as the Lord of the Manor tells the villagers that there are ways to determine if the accused is a witch. He explains that witches burn (a characteristic). Why do they burn? Well, wood also burns (the same characteristic), so witches are made of wood (that equates two classes of different items on the basis of an incidental but shared characteristic). This is the Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle Term. Following this form of reasoning would allow us to easily lose our way logically. (For example, Mr. Smith has two feet; Mrs. Smith has two feet. Consequently, Mr. Smith is Mrs. Smith).

Now what the duck’s weight has to do with it is anyone’s guess. Of course, this is an example of the same fallacy. Two different things may have the same weight, but that shared quality does not make them the same. Take a survey. What would people prefer: a pound of duck feathers or a pound of gold? If someone tells you that the two are the same, don’t go into business with that person. You’ll be sorry.

The Undistributed Middle Term can deflect any reasoning into pure silliness.

Fallacy 3: False Cause

In fact, this is what happens in the video. Wood floats, the Lord of the Manor says. He then asks what else floats? King Arthur, who has been observing in the background, confidently answers that it is a duck. The Lord of the Manor affirms that answer as the correct one. What does this mean? Drawing out answers from the villagers, the Lord of the Manor establishes that if the accused equates to a duck, then that equates to being wood, which equates to being a witch. This reasoning, however, is an example of the False Cause fallacy (Post Hoc, Ergo Proctor Hoc: after this, therefore because of this).

Why? Even if we take the humorous argument seriously, not all wooden items are witches. In fact, the Lord of the Manor says this explicitly, “And what do you burn other than witches.” The answer? “Wood,” says one of the villagers, to the Lord of the Manor’s approval. The video also admits that some bridges are made of wood, without directing the villagers to burn all wooden bridges on the charge of witchcraft. Clearly, the Lord of the Manor and the villagers know that not all wood comes from witches. Consequently, what the Lord of the Manor must be claiming is that when one becomes a witch, that “witchy” quality turns the person into wood.

But even taking this silly argument seriously, proving that the accused is wood does NOT demonstrate logically that she is a witch. This is a False Cause, for being wood is not necessarily the result of being a witch; otherwise, wooden bridges and all wooden things would be constructed of witches. In other words, a witch may be wood, but not all wood comes from witches. So even if the accused turns out to be wood, that might be the result of a cause quite different from what the villagers allege. In other words, demonstrating that something is wood does not prove a “witchy” origin. It simply suggests a woody one.

Fallacy 4: False Authority

The Lord of the Manor proposes a simple diagnostic test for the accused. If the accused weighs the same as a duck, that proves she is a witch. Why? Sharing the duck’s weight makes her equivalent to wood, for a duck is equivalent to wood. If she is wood, then she is a witch. So he proposes to use his weighing scales to test her. With a duck on one side and the accused on the other, the scales measure both to be identical. This proves, according to the Lord of the Manor, that the accused is a witch.

But accepting this conclusion requires one to assume that the Lord of the Manor knows what he is talking about. Nothing in evidence confirms such expertise. In fact, quite the opposite. His logic has already proven quite faulty. Moreover, his rank in society and personal land holdings don’t offer him insight into the paranormal. He is, consequently, a False Authority (the fallacy Ad Verecundiam: to authority). Moreover, using the results of the measurement as evidence assumes the authority of the scales. Even if one accepts the silly premise of the test, this will not permit assuming that the scales are accurate. Consequently, what the measurement means is uncertain. Relying upon the unchecked scales, therefore, is also an example of False Authority.

So there you have some fallacies committed on purpose–for your viewing pleasure–by Monty Python. To follow up on other logical fallacies that can get you into trouble, you might find the link below useful.

Logical Fallacies Handlist: https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html

Neither Victims nor Executioners—A Christian Meditation on Albert Camus

“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

Several collections of quotations on the web attribute the words cited above to the French writer and existentialist, Albert Camus.  It’s a powerful quote that arrests the imagination of the perceptive reader; a reader who has followed with shock and revulsion the chronicles of mindless assassins who have roamed the earth these past forty years to harvest the fruit of massacre.  Though the quote is striking, Camus did not write it.  It comes from A People’s History of the United States, written by the historian and playwright, Howard Zinn.

Doubtless, this was Zinn’s summary of Camus’ concluding words from an article entitled, “Toward Dialogue: Neither Victims nor Executioners.”  It appeared as the last of eight chapters in a collection of his essays, published as Camus at Combat: Articles and Editorials (1944-1947).  These essays conveyed his experiences and reflections as a partisan in the French Underground resisting Nazi occupation.

Though Zinn’s summary is eloquently concise, the words Camus actually wrote also make the point powerfully, but they are far more uncomfortable, as we will see a little later.  Camus had seen the carnage of combat, political betrayal, the murder of innocents, and the near triumph of a brutal and irrational ideology.  He had seen France trampled by German jackboots, the French army nearly destroyed, and the nation’s legitimate government replaced by the Nazi Vichy regime.  With tears, he had witnessed the resultant brutality and injustice inflicted upon the people of France by collaborating countrymen, who offered themselves as tightly fitting gloves to embrace Hitler’s iron fist.  Before Camus’ eyes, centuries of civilization had easily crumbled before an irrational barbarism, giving the young writer a brutal intellectual shock—one that forged his notion of existential absurdity.

I do not hold to Camus’ existentialist philosophy, though I respect the man and appreciate the experiences that forged his thinking.  Some of his moral views, I believe, made even Camus uncomfortable.  In 1942, he wrote The Stranger, a story of death, revenge, and murder, told blandly by one who awaited a prison execution.  Critics note the moral and emotional indifference in that story, a coldness that seems to conflict with Camus’ 1947 novel, The Plague. That tale depicts how different inhabitants of a city manage the realities of a deadly pestilence, as each personally experiences the very real threat of death.  Are the two stories in conflict?  Camus would reject the claim, saying that both novels are simply case studies in the absurd.  Moreover, if the critic found this answer unacceptable, he might then add that the absurdity of life makes even that OK.

Of the two, The Plague is a much more satisfying story to me, because it is more human, more real, and more poignant.  The account of a city’s battle with plague captures that sense of helplessness to which catastrophic events often reduce our minds and emotions.  Camus brutally describes how such events force us to choose and to act even when we are powerless.  The possibility of such overpowering events ever lurks just below our consciousness, but society and technology successfully conspire to conceal the possibility from our awareness, and so it is repressed.  But such events do occur, and the survivor of a crushing, overpowering catastrophe will remain forever changed, never again feeling perfectly secure or in control.

Therefore, though pushed socially from our awareness, we still know how weakly we grasp onto what is dearest to us and how easily some force might forever rip from our presence the ones we love, valued possessions, and even our dreams.  We don’t like to think about this, but we still know it.  Consequently, a reader will quickly identify with the vulnerabilities of Camus’ characters, as well as their losses as the The Plague’s story unfolds.  The very act of living–no matter the station in life, abilities, or weaknesses–necessarily implies both loss and its threat.  We mourn when the former occurs, but some may live in constant fear of the latter.  So what we love is always at risk, and there is no escape.

With a remorseless hand, Camus shows us in The Plague the human condition that we each share.  With a gentler stroke, however, he delivers this human message for those who will understand.  Let me do my best to summarize it.  Life is uncertain and overwhelming, and there are no “happy endings.”  But the choices we make, even when we feel helpless, are the very things that make us what we are, that define us as human beings.  So events are not so important; neither are outcomes of ultimate consequence.  Our power to choose makes us intrinsically valuable, not the events or outcomes of our lives.  Of such intrinsic value, the things we measure by the ticks of a clock can know nothing.  Our choices, consequently, are far too valuable to sacrifice upon the altar of what happens to us.  That would be like sacrificing ourselves to rough-hewn idols of stone.  For our choices transform us in the face of life’s events and outcomes.  That transformation makes us human, and that is our ultimate value.

I do not share Camus’ philosophy.  I am a Christian, and Camus considered religious faith intellectual suicide.  Nonetheless, I feel a sense of kinship with the author of The Plague, and I resonate to its message.  But unlike Camus, I believe that God has made each of us the bearer of his image and invites us by his grace to touch the lives of others with justice, love, and truth.  That we do in this world through our choices, following Christ’s example.  That is what gives meaning and purpose to our lives.  It is our ultimate source of value, not the events and outcomes of life itself.

As Christians, however, we often focus on what happens to us, rather than on the choices we make in response to life’s challenges and uncertainties.  These choices, however, either give our faith its substance or betray it.  Nonetheless, we find our focus attracted to events and outcomes, not the authentic choices that build our faith.  We want charitable programs to work as planned, church attendance to grow, faith events to run smoothly, illness to end in health, and life crises to resolve in satisfactory ways.   We also count ourselves successful when we achieve our educational, career, and personal goals.  We measure our lives by the tick-tock of events and outcomes and judge our personal value by how impressively we adorn the face of the clock.

God does not measure in this way; consequently, Camus’ message from The Plague speaks to us with the authority of an apostle’s letter.  He admonishes us to examine how our choices define us in the midst of life’s pressures.  He also cautions that life’s challenges often defy our ability to overcome them.  Even the most fortunate and sheltered among us will face that unpleasant truth at least one time in life.  Consequently, when we face the loss of all that seems valuable to us, the choices we then make will disclose who we truly are.  Camus ends his sermon with a question, “Will we face that storm as human beings, or will we sacrifice ourselves to pointless idols?”

Though Camus rejected religious faith, this sermon message surpasses most homilies that I have heard from pulpits.  The Plague offers Christians of all stripes serious food for moral reflection.  Moreover, I would venture that Camus, himself, found the human face he portrays in that novel more encouraging and more consistent with his own character.  The Stranger, on the other hand, was more like his nightmare, a fear of what humankind might become should the race sacrifice itself to idols.

How can I be sure?  Camus’ last paragraph in “Toward Dialogue: Neither Victims nor Executioners” provides the proof—the words that Howard Zinn summarized.  (Remember?  I told you we would get to Camus actual quote.)  In many ways, Camus’ words are more powerful than Zinn’s clever summary.  For he speaks as a prophet who warns of a judgment to come that will require each of us to choose a side.

Camus challenges us in an uncomfortable way to elect a future—a future that will divide the world into two warring groups, each with a different method of warfare.  One might be termed a “culture of death,” which revels in the humiliation and blood of the vulnerable and celebrates their death.  The other is a “culture of life,” which refuses to stand on the necks of the weak and preaches a message of peace throughout the earth.  The former culture arms itself with formidable weapons; the latter, with words.  Who will win the struggle?  Again, it’s not the outcome that is important.  It is the choice.  There is only one honorable one, Camus says, and he has no question which one it is.

“Now I can end.  What I think needs to be done at the present time is simply this:  in the midst of a murderous world, we must decide to reflect on murder and choose.  If we can do this, then we will divide ourselves into two groups: those who, if need be, would be willing to commit murder or become accomplices to murder, and those who would refuse to do so with every fiber of their being.  Since this awful division exists, we would be making some progress, at least, if we were clear about it.  Across five continents, an endless struggle between violence and preaching will rage in the years to come.  And it is true that the former is a thousand times more likely to succeed than the latter.  But I have always believed that if people who placed their hope in the human condition were mad, those who despaired of events were cowards.  Henceforth there will be only one honorable choice: to wager everything on the belief that in the end words will prove stronger than bullets.”

 –Albert Camus, “Toward Dialogue:  Neither Victims Nor Executioners” (Arthur Goldhammer’s Translation)

That quote, I think, identifies where Camus personally stands between The Stranger and The Plague.  He is by no means cold and morally indifferent.  He is passionate about redeeming the future.  He would fight plagues.

Moreover, the prophecy he fervently offers in these words has proved remarkably accurate.  The violence he predicted then today defiles the world, its marching jackboots spilling blood across five continents.  Soldiers of clashing armies kill one another with ever more powerful weapons and make victims of mothers and children, of the old and the sick.  They poison new generations with a legacy of hatred and hold the future hostage.

As Christians, we can join with Camus to preach a message of peace against the violence, against the guns and bullets.  But in Christ, we have a promise, an unfailing hope.  Thus we enjoy a confidence that Camus did not possess.  For our Lord teaches us that his Word created the heavens and the earth.  It is that very Word that he has instructed us to take to the nations, the Gospel of peace.  He also has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church, the bearers of his Word.  The violent, therefore, may fill their armories to the brim with bullets.  No matter.  Even should they take our lives, their weaponry doesn’t stand a chance.  Christ’s Word will prevail, and earth will one day be at peace.  That is the promise, and all of Christ’s people will share in that victory.

In Christ, therefore, we confidently choose to side with the victims, encouraging them with our faith.  Their cause will be heard, and God’s justice will be done.  We may then freely turn with hope to face the executioner’s bullets, a hymn of praise and a prayer of forgiveness on our lips.  Though the events and outcomes of life may come to an end, we will yet see victory.  For our choices have kept the faith.  We know who we are and in whom we have believed.  We have nothing to fear.

 

 

Are “Vouchers” and “Parental Choice” the Real Issues in Education?

Senator Elizabeth Warren has apparently changed her mind on vouchers. In a book she co-authored in 2003, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke, she supported them. In her challenge to Betsy DeVoss’ nomination as Secretary of the Department of Education, she has changed her mind.

Her views on Trump’s nominees don’t concern me. I would expect her to be critical. She is, after all, a Democratic senator. That’s her job, so to speak. Moreover, I don’t mind a politician, or any thinking person, changing a position on an important issue. That should be the result, however, of a logical process that says, “I was mistaken in my assessment, and here are the reasons that have forced me to change my mind.” But we don’t see anything approaching an explanation here. Instead, we see pure partisan outrage. It’s comic and irrelevant.

Switching views for partisan reasons or to gain a supposed political advantage suggests a thought process motivated by short-term considerations, not long-term solutions. Though a professor who presumably cares about education, Senator Warren insists on missing the point totally. Her shrill irrelevancy should entertain her detractors and disappoint her constituency. The issue of education deserves better, for it affects the future workforce, crime statistics, the census in state and federal prison systems, international business competitiveness, and a host of other topics. Senator Warren may not like DeVoss, but I have another question for her–and for other senators on either side of the aisle.

The real issue with school vouchers is not public versus private education. Even parental choice doesn’t quite capture the problem. The real issue is education that prepares students for their futures or education that condemns young people to restricted opportunities in a world economy where they will be unable to compete with better educated young people–nationally or globally. Those on the Left and the Right had better decide where the future is going to take place–with their political base or with young people now entering school.

America’s educational system is not working–especially for minorities and the poor. That is not a matter for debate. It is the truth and constitutes a real and present danger to the republic. We entrust elected officials to address threats such as this. When they fail to do so, whether they come from the Left or the Right, they betray the nation’s trust. Citizens should not reward that betrayal in future elections with their votes.

Despite emergency legislation (e.g., “No Child Left Behind), America’s educational decline has been going on for decades. U.S. business now spends billions of dollars annually on the remedial training of its workers. As foreign nations make impressive gains, American children fall behind in both literacy and math. America is now failing to prepare a new generation of young Americans. Many of the unprepared from the last generation we now house in the nation’s prisons. Mass incarceration is a scandal. Now experts tell us that this next generation will be less educated and less skilled than their parents. That’s also a scandal–and a tragedy. Is the solution building more prisons? That’s no way to maintain a world-class economy.

So here is my question, Senator Warren. Please share it with other senators–Republicans and Democrats. Compared to the rest of the world, U.S. education is expensive and mediocre. What are you and your colleagues going to do about it?

SOURCES:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/american-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/#main-content

https://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/category/education/

The U.S. ranks 1st in prisoners

http://whotv.com/2013/12/03/lagging-behind-us-education-ranks-36th-worldwide/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/illiteracy-rate_n_3880355.html

http://www.statisticbrain.com/number-of-american-adults-who-cant-read/

http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/u-s-students-compare/

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/02/u-s-students-improving-slowly-in-math-and-science-but-still-lagging-internationally/