Abstract
Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one can identify bad or invalid types of reasoning, abstracting away from the specific content and dialectical context. Such shortcuts for debunking arguments are tempting, but alas, the promise is hardly if ever fulfilled. Different strands of research on the pragmatics of argumentation, probabilistic reasoning and ecological rationality have shown that almost every known type of fallacy is a close neighbor to sound inferences or acceptable moves in a debate. Nonetheless, the kernel idea of a fallacy as an erroneous type of argument is still retained by most authors. We outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life (few actual instances). On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning. As we bring our schematic “fallacies” in touch with reality, we seem to lose grip on normative questions. Even approaches that do not rely on argumentation schemes to identify fallacies (e.g., pragma-dialectics) fail to escape the Fallacy Fork, and run up against their own version of it.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Incidentally, this misalignment between popular textbooks and argumentation theories in the treatment of fallacies should raise a red flag for the latter: it implies either lack of relevance in the broader scholarly community, or a difficulty in providing effective tools for critical thinking education. Both are extremely undesirable states of affairs, which we should all strive to remedy.
Moreover, the recourse to a more or less traditional list of fallacies (what Woods 2013 aptly named “the gang of eighteen”) is still very much in fashion, even in those textbooks that explicitly insist on the importance of the dialogical context in assessing fallacies, as in Tindale’s Fallacies and Argument Appraisal (2007; on this point, see Krabbe 2009).
This is probably a side-effect of a more general problem with argumentation textbooks, namely, their tendency to rely on artificial and simplified pseudo-examples of arguments, be they allegedly valid or not (on the implications of this practice for fallacy theory, see Walton 1989).
As the web comic xkcd once put it: “Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.”
Perhaps you would, if you are worried about other harmful side-effects. Given that hardly any active substance is free of side-effects, your decision would be reasonable. In medicine, it’s difficult to make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
Lest some readers take us as pessimists of the worst kind, this is a passage from the concluding chapter of John Woods’ recent lengthy monograph on fallacies: “Most of the work in the logic of reasoning has yet to be done. Most of what needs doing has yet to be formulated, let alone achieved” (2013: 521). Notice that here Woods refers to the treatment of fallacies in general, not just the few examples covered in this paper.
Indeed, when there is no canonical version of a doctrine, with clear definitions of its central concepts and propositions, we only have the behavior of its defenders to go by (Boudry and Braeckman 2011). For example, in the face of negative findings, some parapsychologists have argued that psi is an actively evasive force, manifesting itself only when there are no dissenters around (Kennedy 2003). Some have even speculated that skeptics may emit countervailing catapsi canceling out the original effect. What should we make of such moves?
Remember that any negative claim can be translated into a positive one: any existential claim can be translated into a negative universal, and vice versa (∃xAx is logically equivalent to ~∀x ~ Ax, and ~∃xAx is logically equivalent to ∀x ~ Ax).
While preparing this paper for publication, we discovered the excellent work by Hahn and Oaksford (2006, 2007) bearing out many of these points on the probabilistic factors underlying the varying strengths of so-called fallacies. With regard to the ad ignorantiam fallacy, Hahn and Oaksford develop a rigorous Bayesian framework accounting for the various types of negative argumentation, and the conditions under which they are acceptable (see also our earlier Pigliucci and Boudry 2013a).
Ufologists typically resort to invoking large-scale cover-ups—involving various governments, the Illuminati, the aliens themselves, or all of them together—to explain away this dearth of evidence, but such explanations are, of course, blatantly ad hoc (Boudry and Braeckman 2011).
In a recent paper, Jong and Visala (2014) argue that the evolutionary account of religion is irrelevant to the latter’s epistemic status: either we have independent grounds for belief in God’s existence, or we do not have any such grounds. In the former case, the genealogy of religion does not affect our evidence for God, and in the latter case, we should just point out that belief in God is unjustified, which is sufficient to undermine it. In a perfect world, the point is unassailable. If we really have a conclusive proof for God’s existence (or for ghosts or witches), it hardly matters how belief in the supernatural originated. But there are no such water-tight arguments, and religious belief is typically defended on the basis of spiritual experiences (encountering God), or intuitions about design, improbability and fine-tuning. Given that those arguments have no secure basis in logic or evidence, and we have a good evolutionary explanation for why they seem so compelling (even if totally wrong), the most parsimonious explanation is that no such supernatural beings exist. Again, bringing up the “fallacy” charge detracts from the real probative value of psychological accounts of belief.
“Is God Hardwired into Your Brain?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0zD0bQbkwE.
Subjects were given the following scenario:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which is more probable?
(A) Linda is a bank teller.
(B) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
Seemingly in violation with the conjunction rule, the majority of subjects answered B. For a discussion of the conversational implicatures ignored by Kahneman and Tversky (in particular Grice’s maxim of relevance), see Hertwig and Gigerenzer (1999).
As Zarefsky notes: “It is difficult to evaluate strategic maneuvering in political argumentation … because the activity types dictate wide latitude for the arguers, so there are few cases of unquestionable derailment” (2008: 317).
Van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004: 175), however, are critical of expressions such as “appearance of validity”, which they deem “subjective and vague”. This is unfortunate, as we think this psychological component is essential in understanding the appeal of fallacies.
For example, Menuge (2004: 36) on ID critic Barbara Forrest: “[o]ne cannot show that ID is false or fruitless by pointing to the religious (or political) beliefs of its proponents”.
The whole standard list of fallacies, with more unusual examples, can be found on http://www.conservapedia.com/Logical_fallacy.
A similar conclusion is reached by Hahn and Oaksford (2006, 2007), following a partially different path, adopting the Bayesian approach to informal fallacies: as these authors emphasize, the value of this framework is not merely descriptive, but also (and mostly) normative. Their empirical findings suggest that people reliably discriminate between truly fallacious arguments and perfectly cogent “fallacies”, and they do so consistently with an underlying normative standard—that is, Bayesian conditionalization. Crucially, this standard provides normative grounds for argument validity without invoking any dialectical complication (thus it is arguably more parsimonious than other modern treatments of fallacies), but also without assigning any explanatory role to the notion of “fallacy”. Thus, as predicted, Bayesian argumentation walks out of the Fallacy Fork by ridding itself from the notion of fallacy altogether—which is precisely what we suggest all theories of argumentation should do.
References
Aikin, S.F., and John Casey. 2011. Straw men, weak men, and hollow men. Argumentation 25(1): 87–105.
Alcock, J. 2011. Back from the future: Parapsychology and the Bem affair. Skeptical Enquirer 35(2): 31–39.
Barrett, J.L. 2007. Cognitive science of religion: What is it and why is it? Religious Compass 1(6): 768–786.
Barth, E.M., and E.C.W. Krabbe. 1982. From axiom to dialogue: A philosophical study of logics and argumentation. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Bering, J. 2012. The belief instinct: The psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life. New York: WW Norton & Company.
Boone, D.N. 2002. The cogent reasoning model of informal fallacies revisited. Informal Logic 22(2): 93–111.
Boudry, M., and J. De Smedt. 2011. In mysterious ways: On the modus operandi of supernatural beings. Religion 41(3): 517–535.
Boudry, M., S. Blancke, and J. Braeckman. 2010. How not to attack intelligent design creationism: Philosophical misconceptions about methodological naturalism. Foundations of Science 15(3): 227–244.
Boudry, M., and J. Braeckman. 2011. Immunizing strategies & epistemic defense mechanisms. Philosophia 39(1): 145–161.
Boudry, M., M. Vlerick, and R.T. McKay. 2015. Can evolution get us off the hook? Evaluating the ecological defence of human rationality. Consciousness and Cognition, 33, 524–535. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2014.08.025.
Brinton, A. 1995. The ad hominem. In Fallacies: Classical and contemporary readings, ed. H.V. Hansen, and R.C. Pinto, 213–222. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Carroll, R.T. 2000. Becoming a critical thinker: A guide for the new millennium. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing.
Copi, I.M., and C. Cohen. 1998. Introduction to logic. New York: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Cummings, L. 2002. Reasoning under uncertainty: The role of two informal fallacies in an emerging scientific inquiry. Informal Logic 22(2): 113–136.
DiCarlo, C. 2011. How to become a really good pain in the ass: A critical thinker’s guide to asking the right questions. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Dennett, D.C. 1996. Darwin’s dangerous idea: Evolution and the meanings of life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Finocchiaro, M.A. 1981. Fallacies and the evaluation of reasoning. American Philosophical Quarterly 18(1): 13–22.
Fishman, Y. 2009. Can science test supernatural worldviews? Science & Education 18(6): 813–837.
Galperin, A., and M.G. Haselton. 2012. Error management and the evolution of cognitive bias. In Social thinking and interpersonal behavior, ed. J.P. Forgas, K. Fiedler, and C. Sedikedes, 45–64. New York: Psychology Press.
Gardner, M. 1957. Fads and fallacies in the name of science. New York: Dover Publications.
Gigerenzer, G. 2008. Rationality for mortals: How people cope with uncertainty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., R. Hertwig, and T. Pachur. 2011. Heuristics: The foundations of adaptive behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grünbaum, A. 1979. Is Freudian psychoanalytic theory pseudo-scientific by Karl Popper’s criterion of demarcation? American Philosophical Quarterly 16(2): 131–141.
Hahn, U., and M. Oaksford. 2006. A Bayesian approach to informal argument fallacies. Synthese 152(2): 207–236.
Hahn, U., and M. Oaksford. 2007. The rationality of informal argumentation: A Bayesian approach to reasoning fallacies. Psychological Review 114(3): 704–732.
Hamblin, C.L. 1970. Fallacies. London: Methuen.
Hansen, H.V., and R.C. Pinto. 1995. Fallacies: Classical and contemporary readings. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Hart, D.B. 2013. The experience of god: Being, consciousness, bliss. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hertwig, R., and G. Gigerenzer. 1999. The conjunction fallacy revisited: How intelligent inferences look like reasoning errors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 12: 275–306.
Jacobs, D.M. 1998. The threat: The secret agenda—What the aliens really want … and how they plan to get it. New York: Simon & Schuster.
James, W. 2008. The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. Rockville: ARC Manor.
Johnson, P.E. 1997. Defeating Darwinism by opening minds. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.
Johnson, R.H. 1987. The blaze of her splendors: Suggestions about revitalizing fallacy theory. Argumentation 1(3): 239–253.
Jong, J., and A. Visala. 2014. Evolutionary debunking arguments against theism, reconsidered. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76(3): 243–258.
Kahane, G. 2010. Evolutionary debunking arguments. Noûs 45(1): 103–125.
Kahneman, D., P. Slovic, and A. Tversky. 1982. Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kennedy, J.E. 2003. The capricious, actively evasive, unsustainable nature of psi: A summary and hypotheses. The Journal of Parapsychology 67(1): 53–75.
Krabbe, Erik C.W. 2009. Book review of Christopher W Tindale, ‘Fallacies and argument appraisal’. Argumentation 23(1): 127–131.
Laudan, L. 1982. Commentary: Science at the bar-causes for concern. Science, Technology and Human Values 7(41): 16–19.
Lewiński, M. 2011. Towards a critique-friendly approach to the straw man fallacy evaluation. Argumentation 25(4): 469–497.
Macagno, F. 2013. Strategies of character attack. Argumentation 27(4): 369–401. doi:10.1007/s10503-013-9291-1.
Mack, J.E. 1995. Abduction: Human encounters with aliens. London: Simon and Schuster.
Massey, G.J. 1981. The fallacy behind fallacies. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6(1): 489–500.
Menuge, A. 2004. Who’s afraid of ID? A survey of the intelligent design movement. In Debating design, ed. W. Dembski, and M. Ruse, 32–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mercier, H., and D. Sperber. 2011. Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34(2): 57–74.
Mill, J.S.S. 2009. System of logic ratiocinative and inductive. New York: Cosimo.
Nieminen, P., and A. Mustonen. 2014. Argumentation and fallacies in creationist writings against evolutionary theory. Evolution: Education and Outreach 7(1): 11.
Paglieri, F. 2014. Trust, argumentation and technology. Argument and Computation 5(2–3): 119–122.
Pigliucci, M., and M. Boudry. 2013a. Prove it! The burden of proof game in science vs. pseudoscience disputes. Philosophia 42(2): 487–502.
Pigliucci, M., and M. Boudry (eds.). 2013b. Philosophy of pseudoscience: Reconsidering the demarcation project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pinto, R.C. 1995. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. In Fallacies: Classical and contemporary readings, ed. Hans V. Hansen, and Robert C. Pinto, 302–311. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Ritchie, S.J., W. Richard, and C.C. French. 2012. Failing the future: Three unsuccessful attempts to replicate Bem’s ‘retroactive facilitation of recall’ effect. PLoS ONE 7(3): e33423.
Sagan, C. 1996. The demon-haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark. New York: Random House.
Salmon, W.C. 1984. Logic, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Shermer, M. 1997. Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time. New York, NY: Freeman.
Sterelny, K. 2006. Escaping illusion? American Scientist 94(5): 461–463.
Tindale, C.W. 2007. Fallacies and argument appraisal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tomic, T. 2013. False dilemma: A systematic exposition. Argumentation 27(4): 347–368. doi:10.1007/s10503-013-9292-0.
Van Bendegem, J. 2013. Argumentation and pseudoscience. The case for an ethics of argumentation. In Philosophy of pseudoscience: Reconsidering the demarcation problem, ed. M. Pigliucci, and M. Boudry, 287–304. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
van Eemeren, F.H. 2001. Fallacies. In Critical concepts in argumentation theory, ed. Frans H. van Eemeren, 135–164. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
van Eemeren, F.H., and P. Houtlosser. 2002. Strategic maneuvering: Maintaining a delicate balance. In Dialectic and rhetoric: The warp and woof of argumentation analysis, ed. F.H. van Eemeren, and P. Houtlosser, 131–159. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
van Eemeren, F.H., and Peter Houtlosser. 2006. Strategic maneuvering: A synthetic recapitulation. Argumentation 20(4): 381–392.
van Eemeren, F.H., and R. Grootendorst. 1984. Speech acts in argumentative discussions. A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Berlin/Dordrecht: de Gruyter/Foris.
van Eemeren, F.H., and R. Grootendorst. 1987. Fallacies in pragma-dialectical perspective. Argumentation 1(3): 283–301.
van Eemeren, F.H., and R. Grootendorst. 1992. Argumentation, communication, and fallacies. A pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
van Eemeren, F.H., and R. Grootendorst. 1995. The pragma-dialectical approach to fallacies. In Fallacies: Classical and contemporary readings, ed. H.V. Hansen, and R.C. Pinto, 130–144. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
van Eemeren, F.H., and R. Grootendorst. 2004. A systematic theory of argumentation: The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van Eemeren, F.H., Bart Garssen, E.C.W. Krabbe, A.F.Snoeck Henkemans, B. Verheij, and J.H.M. Wagemans. 2014. Handbook of argumentation theory. Berlin: Springer.
Wagemans, J.H.M. 2011. The assessment of argumentation from expert opinion. Argumentation 25(3): 329–339.
Wagenmakers, E.-J., R. Wetzels, D. Borsboom, and H.L.J. Van Der Maas. 2011. Why psychologists must change the way they analyze their data: The case of psi: Comment on Bem (2011). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100(3): 426–432.
Walton, D.N. 1988. Burden of proof. Argumentation 2(2): 233–254.
Walton, D.N. 1989. Dialogue theory for critical thinking. Argumentation 3: 169–184.
Walton, D.N. 1992. Nonfallacious arguments from ignorance. American Philosophical Quarterly 29(4): 381–387.
Walton, D.N. 1995. A pragmatic theory of fallacy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Walton, D.N. 1999. The appeal to ignorance, or argumentum ad ignorantiam. Argumentation 13(4): 367–377.
Walton, D.N. 2010a. Formalization of the ad hominem argumentation scheme. Journal of Applied Logic 8(1): 1–21. doi:10.1016/j.jal.2008.07.002.
Walton, D.N. 2010b. Why fallacies appear to be better arguments than they are. Informal Logic 30(2): 159–184.
Ward, Andrew C. 2010. The value of genetic fallacies. Informal Logic 30(1): 1–33.
Woods, J., and D. Walton. 1977. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The Review of Metaphysics 30(4): 569–593.
Woods, J., and D. Walton. 1982. Argument: The logic of the fallacies. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Woods, J., and D. Walton. 1989. Fallacies. Selected papers 1972–1982. Berlin-Dordrecht-Providence: de Gruyter/Foris.
Woods, J. 2004. The death of argument. Fallacies in agent based reasoning. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Woods, J. 2013. Errors of reasoning. Naturalizing the logic of inference. London: College Publications.
Yap, A. 2012. Ad hominem fallacies, bias, and testimony. Argumentation 27(2): 97–109.
Zarefky, D. 2008. Strategic maneuvering in political argumentation. Argumentation 22(3): 317–330.
Acknowledgments
The research of the first author was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). The second author’s work was supported by the project PRISMA—Interoperable Cloud Platforms for Smart-Government, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR-PON). The third author was supported by the K.D. Irani fund for Philosophy of Science at the City College of New York. We would like to thank Jan Verplaetse, Danny Praet and John Teehan for useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Boudry, M., Paglieri, F. & Pigliucci, M. The Fake, the Flimsy, and the Fallacious: Demarcating Arguments in Real Life. Argumentation 29, 431–456 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-015-9359-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-015-9359-1