Logic and Evidence: What is the Interplay and What are Fallacies in Philosophical Arguments?
I am writing this area because it is an area which I have thought about for a while because it seems that in philosophy some appeal to evidence and some to logic. Previously, especially in science and psychology I was familiar with evidence based research, which is extremely important, but even then is subject to critical analysis, involving interpretation and examination of concepts and the aspects of evidence In a detailed in scrupulous way.
I am raising this topic after reading, 'Mastering Logical Fallacies' by Michael Withey(2016). He examines the idea of logic saying,
'Logic is a powerful tool; its power, however, has its limits. So it frequently loses out against emotion, not because emotion is more reliable than reasoning, but because emotion is more forceful'.
I wonder about this, in both the construction of logic and the interpretation of evidence, especially as both logic and evidence based research are meant to come from a perspective of rationality and neutrality. In his discussion of logical fallacies, Withey points to many assumptions which are logical fallacies in philosophy arguments, including ad hominem arguments, appeal to emotion, faith, fear, tradition and nature, as well as hasty generalisations, moralistic fallacy and magical thinking, as well as straw man thinking.
So, I am raising this topic as a way of exploring philosophy arguments as a way of clarity of thinking. This is also in relation to the empirical, in conjunction with the analysis of rational examination. What issues arise in trying to weigh up evidence and the various rational arguments in the various aspects of philosophy, ranging from the existence of God, qualia,science and social questions, including those about the future of humanity?
I am raising this topic after reading, 'Mastering Logical Fallacies' by Michael Withey(2016). He examines the idea of logic saying,
'Logic is a powerful tool; its power, however, has its limits. So it frequently loses out against emotion, not because emotion is more reliable than reasoning, but because emotion is more forceful'.
I wonder about this, in both the construction of logic and the interpretation of evidence, especially as both logic and evidence based research are meant to come from a perspective of rationality and neutrality. In his discussion of logical fallacies, Withey points to many assumptions which are logical fallacies in philosophy arguments, including ad hominem arguments, appeal to emotion, faith, fear, tradition and nature, as well as hasty generalisations, moralistic fallacy and magical thinking, as well as straw man thinking.
So, I am raising this topic as a way of exploring philosophy arguments as a way of clarity of thinking. This is also in relation to the empirical, in conjunction with the analysis of rational examination. What issues arise in trying to weigh up evidence and the various rational arguments in the various aspects of philosophy, ranging from the existence of God, qualia,science and social questions, including those about the future of humanity?
Comments (51)
Indeed - I also suspect that many people are drawn to logic because it is emotionally satisfying to them. :wink:
It might be interesting to get a postmodern view of logic and evidentialism.
The emotional satisfaction/comforts of logic may be appealing. I am not sure how this would stand in terms of reason and postmodern deconstruction may, alongside logical positivism, may have left a void of uncertainty. I am not sure exactly what a postmodern construction of logic would be.
However, it may involve the deconstruction of the core of assumptions about the rational. Subjective meaning may be important, as well as understanding the basis of logic and how it is constructed, especially in relation to the notion of rhetoric as the art of argument in the process of persuasion.
These old posts below (I know you don't care much for links to other posts but ...) suggest how I begin to clarify my thinking (à la Peirce, Dewey, Russell, Witty, Haack et al):
Quoting 180 Proof
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/594607
and, more broadly, struggle against stupidity (in and out of philosophy) ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/325726
Those are some heavy thoughts. Thanks
But that would end most of the discussion here... :joke: :cool:
Can you say a bit more about the 'context free' component of pseudo questions? I'm assuming you mean non-questions, which are incoherent? What are some of the best example of these?
Quoting 180 Proof
Forming questions is an important part of philosophy. I often remember a point which you made once which was that asking the wrong questions is like premature ejaculation. To a large extent I agree but, at the same time it may be that reframing common philosophy questions allows for thinking from new angles as a way of lateral thinking.
Of course, when questions are asked it does vary as to how far they can be answered, especially in relation to evidence. For example, the issue of life after death cannot be answered completely with 'evidence' for or against. Similarly, the question as to whether the idea of belief for or against the idea of God being 'logical' is difficult to answer fully. Both logic and evidence are not complete in themselves, allowing for subjective interpretations in understanding. The issue of difficulty answering questions is what puts some people off philosophy, although taking that view is a rather restricted one. Also, questions in themselves can also be statements in themselves, as in the art of rhetoric.
Quoting Jack Cummins
That's true. Many think of philosophy as a time wasting with unanswerable questions. Philosophy seems to promise different things for different people. I lack confidence that humans can do much more than get to understand better their own prejudices and suppositions. The dreaded search to find a representation of a mind-independent external reality seems fraught.
In thinking about suppositions and prejudices, it is where philosophy and psychology come together in self-knowledge and critical thinking. In some ways, CBT is an angle which is a foundation for philosophy and it is comparable with the Stoic thinkers. For all the complex knowledge and models science some of the essential questions of philosophy are recurrent in human civilisations. I don't relate to people seeing philosophy as a waste of time and energy but it is also possible to go round and round in circles, and I am sure that I do this at times...
I guess that there is also a difference between the idea of philosophy as a basic set of ideas and assumptions for daily life and philosophy as an academic pursuit. They are not separate entirely though because the academic philosophy is not just as a form of mental gymnastics which looks and sounds good but is about fine-tuning of thinking. Independently of studying philosophy as such, it is likely that some have more of a questioning disposition than others. Also, some have more need to read and think about philosophy if common sense and various ideas encountered seem inadequate or contradictory.
Yes, and experiencing trauma and profound unhappiness may also propel one towards philosophy in the age old question to try to establish a 'why'.
~Martin Heidegger
Quoting Jack Cummins
I think, instead, it is the most important part. Just as science is, overall, reasoning to better, more probitive (parsimonious) explanations, philosophy is reasoning to better, more probative (unbegged) questions. An answer, especially a speculative one, is just a question's way of generating (i.e. usually re-formulating it into) a new, or different, question. Thus, 'the gadfly's' examined life. :fire:
If I understand your report of what Withey is saying, he is comparing different kinds of persuasion rather than presenting a self-evident truth revealed by our experience. Taken by themselves, the emotions are not an argument unless they are made one. I have to write a story to pit them against another narrative.
As much as trauma and suffering can have a detrimental effect on wellbeing, it does serve the purpose of making people go further in thinking and exploration. Of course, it doesn't necessarily mean that all who explore philosophy are suffering. But, at the same time, suffering does propel deeper thinking and may prevent some from complacency and lazy logic.
I wonder how much conventional thinking is about the wish for answers and certainty. The way in which questions keep arising shows how knowledge is static and evolving. The generation of questions may be part of the creative process in itself and the premature formulation of 'answers' in a clear, definitive way is what leads to dogma and rigidity.
Generally, I was impressed by Whitey's presentation of various logical fallacies. However, the only thing which did make me query it was the summary on the back cover which spoke of 'winning arguments'. This attitude does suggest attempts at persuasion as opposed to the genuine search for truth'. I am not suggesting 'Trutth' with a capital T as absolutism but as weighed understanding. The alternative of philosophy as a means of persuasion is based on one's own needs or possibly of some group interest or ideology. Philosophy as persuasion may be shallow as it is with another end in mind rather than an open approach to where the philosophy quest may lead.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Socratics (e.g. Plato et al) called these persuaders "sophists". Today, I suppose, we call them "lawyers, politicians, preachers, propagandists, public relations agents, advertisers, influencers, brokers, pundits, gurus, psycho-analysts / therapists, fortune tellers, conspiracy theorists ..."
In college, I encountered the acronym KABP (it was a template in socio-medical studies).
K - Knowledge
A - Attitude
B - Belief
P - Practice
I know smoking kills; My attitude is generally a don't-give-a-damn one; My belief is quitting should mean I get to see my grandchildren; My practice, chain smoker.
Aristotle uses the term akrasia instead. I think foolery is more apt.
:up:
I would be interested to investigate what constitutes a fallacy. Fallacy is defined as reasoning which is invalid, and Wikipedia for example, gives a list of specific forms of fallacy. Each named form is a type of reasoning which has been designated as invalid, therefore an unacceptable part of the reasoning process. We could say that these are mistaken actions in the reasoning process.
Now the question is, what justifies each specific named type of fallacy as being called a mistake (invalid). Since reasoning is a human action one might think that "mistake" would be justified through reference to some moral principles (Plato implies this with his conception of "the good"), but this does not seem to be the case. It appears like the characteristic of "fallacy" is meant to be supported with evidence. That is, if a certain course of reasoning can be shown to give unfavourable results, it is designated as mistaken, and receives a name as a fallacy. But even if this is true there is still a matter of stipulating what constitutes a favourable result, and what constitutes an unfavourable result.
There are many named types of fallacies, but before creating divisions of types I think it would be preferable to determine exactly what constitutes a mistake. We'd also need to separate inductive reasoning from deductive reasoning, because they are so different that mistakes of the one would not be the same as mistakes of the other.
Your point is that it is difficult to follow the rational facts which appear. I struggle with this too, although I am not a smoker! Generally, I find it hard to follow the practical steps which would seem to be the 'best'. It is the reason why advice doesn't usually work, especially in health promotion. Evidence of what helps and the logical steps necessary on that basis doesn't seem to make that much difference.
It could be seen as a problem of lack of self discipline, or alternatively it may be that human action and choices are made in the immediate contexts of the situations in which we find ourselves. This often makes evidence and logic as redundant and abstract. Nevertheless, it may be that what is seen in retrospect is different from in the immediate, so time is significant. Also, the many variables may come into play. A person may give up smoking and still not get to see his grandchildren.
Let's see, this looks simple. Smoking kills, dying is not wanted, therefore do not smoke. It's very similar to: eating poison kills, and dying is not wanted, therefore do not eat poison. The latter rule is easy to obey, the former is not. Why? The issue is "habit". This is why Socrates and Plato argued that virtue is not a form of knowledge, contrary to the sophists who insisted that they were teaching virtue. The reality of "habit" makes us inclined to do things which we know are wrong. Therefore virtue consist of something more than just knowledge.
We can apply this principle to the process of reasoning. Even when it's been demonstrated to us, that a certain type of reasoning is fallacious, we will continue to do it, because reasoning is an habitual activity, and habits are not broken simply by recognizing them as undesirable.
Stay safe Jack! :up:
Talking is a cakewalk compared to doing! The expression "put yer money where yer mouth is" is on point. Walk the talk? :smile:
Self-discipline, never had it, probably never will! Remember we talked about destiny? I was, it appears, born to die. :death:
The hit rate of advice is dismal I agree, but it ain't zero and at some point one realizes that one hasta keep shooting until you hit something right in the apricot, but of course this is a different kinda slug - it saves, not kills.
Perhaps you should try vaping, with some CBD included as an alternative to conventional cigarette smoking. Nevertheless, there is probably not enough evidence at this stage to know whether it is safer than 'ordinary' tobacco cigarettes, or whether CBD and vaping are a mythic fad.
You are quite right to query the idea of a fallacy, with the idea going back to Plato. There is the idea of 'truth' as opposed to falsehood, and thinking about this on the basis of logic alone may lead to a presumption of duality. The introduction of the empirical and evidence may lead to questioning of this binary distinction because evidence can usually be found to support arguments for and against in most aspects of thinking about life and existence.
I too find fallacies curious. I have wanted to make a thread on these but never had the time.
There are a number formal fallacies that invalidate a logical argument as you mentioned. However there are many more informal fallacies that are not about the validity of the argument - there is a list of these in the same Wikipedia page you mentioned. I find the majority of common accusations of fallacies fall into this category - fallacies like straw man, begging the question, appeal to authority are not formal fallacies about logical structure.
Then there are common accusations of fallacies that I find are very often not fallacies. Take the slippery slope - I think that is a useful line of inductive reasoning that is rarely a fallacy. If a step is taken in a direction, it makes it easier to take another step in that direction. That is how human progression (or even regression depending on your view) happens. Sure sometimes it is a fallacy, very often it is how the world works.
Your post is important because while the concept of 'fallacy' is important in relation to the idea of falsehood, there are specific logical errors which make so much difference in the basic assumptions of human thinking. It is probably not so much as 'truth' being 'out there' in an objective realm, beyond all else. The subjective construction, as well as the intersubjective, are important in understanding of the objective. This comes into play in the whole approach to understanding, including inductive reasoning.
Even the idea of 'progress' seems to signify an ongoing progressive understanding and the nature of this does lead to the question of to what extent can this be sought objectively. Science may involve the empirical, but how this is constructed, subjectively, in human understanding is a different matter. It may lead to the question of is there is any essential value-free objective logic or evidence?
One aspect which you raise which may be important is the idea of authority, especially in regard to objectivity. Sometimes, this may be missed as a subtle subtext of how both logic and evidence are valued and critiqued. There is bias on the foundation of politics and underlying ideas of objectivity based on the way in which 'expert' knowledge and authority are conceived as the foundation for philosophy. So, the basic question may be about how is authoritative, or 'expert' opinion constructed?
We could start with the basic fallacy, non sequitur, which means that the conclusion does not follow from the premises, or that the reasoning is not valid. I believe that what is meant by "valid", is that the truth of the premises necessitates the truth of the conclusion. Validity is based in this idea of necessity, that if the premises are true, it is impossible that the conclusion not be true. So the fallacy of non sequitur would be to misjudge this necessity, to attribute necessity when its not warranted, to say that a conclusion is necessary when it is not.
I am not convinced that a 'valid' proposition excludes the possibility of error. That suggests an environment where arguments would be true if made clean of attempts to make them look better than they actually are. One can make a valid argument, free of sophistical persuasion, and still be wrong.
Sure, but we need to differentiate between being valid and being sound. From what I understand, valid logic means that the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. This does not mean that the conclusion is necessarily correct, because the premises might not be correct. The truth or falsity of the premises affects the soundness of the conclusion. A sound conclusion requires both valid logic and sound premises.
I think that is a very big question. Here are my thoughts.
There may be an external objective reality. I go further - I operate on the basis that there is an objective external reality, which requires some axioms and assumptions on my part. But those assumptions are required to move knowing I am and nothing else.
However just because there is an external objective reality does not necessarily mean I can directly access that reality. My access to that reality is based on a lot of intermediary factors and assumptions what I sense is how the world is, the sources I trust publish accurate information, my interpretations are accurate, my instruments are measuring what i think they are measuring, etc. And in these I can see many potential reasons why my access to reality may be influenced by who I am, where I am, which time period I was born, what culture I am in, what I want to do. Here values seep into my thinking.
To give a simple instance of value in logic, in order to avoid fallacies I must value truth. If I dont value truth, then fallacies are of no concern to me.
Thus it is difficult for me to conceive a value-free objective logic or evidence through the lens of my mind (which is all I have got!), even though I accept that value free objective reality might exist out there.
But actually it is a complicated question and I have more to say, but the above would do for now.
To some extent the interpretation of evidence is the issue of subjectivity, objectivity and intersubjectivity. On the other hand, it comes down to qualia of mental states, and how such experiences are understood. There is the question of how the 'real' is considered, especially in relation to 'truth'. Facts appear on those validated and shared by others. The basic aspects of evidence is about shared ideas and assumptions. It may be how hallucinations and delusions are established.
However, there is still the way in which evidence can be constructed to support a viewpoint rather than necessarily the other way round. With evidence based there is substantiated evidence but there while one study shows one point there may be studies that show the opposite. Evidence may be more clear in the interpretations of the real, but even then people may perceive on the biases of their own ideas and psychological motivations.
Isn't this is dependent on the time you live, where you live, the culture around you? What is shared and validated today is not necessarily what was shared and validated 100 years ago, nor what will be shared and validated 100 years in the future. And hence my difficulty in seeing this as objectivity. I can only think as a person living where I am in the culture I am in the year I am - I cannot escape the subject.
Now you talk about inter-subjectivity limited to culture and time - and that is perhaps what is happening here. There is the subjective - me. There is the culture and time specific inter-subjective - common agreed knowledge at the moment in my culture. That is still a step away from objective, at least in my books.
On the subject of time and place, I read a book looking at the way in which cultural biases and interpretations come into how historical facts are viewed, by Richard Rudley, 'Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age'. He explores the idea of 'progress' critically and how people view ideas with a bias of linear progression, in relation to the understanding of civilisation, culture and knowledge. In this, he is not arguing that important developments haven't been made but that there is often a sense of cultural superiority in interpretation of facts. This is the problem of the lack of objective, and how so much is constructed intersubjectively in the way history and culture are constructed and passed on.
I find history is also useful when I want to better understand what I mean by objective and subjective. The subjective is what I perceive to be what happened in history. The inter-subjective of my culture, time and place is what is commonly agreed to have happened in history. The objective is what actually happened in history. But I do not have direct access to this objective at all. I can only build a picture based on the best my own subjective view, and inter-subjective views today in my cultural surroundings.
It is likely that the mistake is where people take the subjective as if it were objective, unable to make the clear distinction. Indeed, it may be that people see history and whatever descriptive lens through which they view reality as the ultimate way of thinking. This can happen when a religious or any worldview is regarded as literal without an awareness of other positions and their validity.
It also can be that the psychological and emotional aspects of beliefs are regarded as the 'truth'. In this, the underlying premises and assumptions are not put under examination. This may be the route source of many philosophical mistakes and fallacies, as an an antiphilosophy approach, of being unable to stand back and analyse the nature of ways of seeing and forming judgements.
Now when now get to science, I have a view that may look at first contradictory with the above, but I don't think it is. I think science should strive for a value free ideal, even though it would be impossible to achieve that. In other words, it should (and in the hard sciences does) take on a set of axioms and assumptions that what our instruments tell us is actually how the world is objectively. Now I have problems with that, but also it is the most powerful and useful system of analysis we have. And so I am of the view that it is correct for science to strive for this value free ideal.
I'd agree with this. It is actually quite common to have beliefs without logic or evidence to support them.
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
You do realize that mathematics works with values, don't you? Do you think it's possible to have science which is free from mathematics?
I mean value in the moral and ethical way - what is good, desirable and worthwhile. Science should strive for a moral free idea in this sense, though it can never achieve this as the scientists doing the science have their interpretations of what is good, desirable and worthwhile. As does the institutions that fund them. Nevertheless that ideal should be the goal.
I thought it was obvious that I was not referring to numerical value, but maybe I needed to make that clear.
The way I see it, numerical values are values just like ethical values are values. So there is a broad meaning of "value", which is roughly speaking, the worth of something. We might attribute a numerical "worth" or we might attribute a moral "worth", along with other forms of "worth", like monetary, or any type of measurement which employs a scale.
A succinct and general way to describe inferential link is that the truth of the premises means the conclusion is also true to varying degrees of certainty depending on whether the argument is deductive, inductive or abductive. To elaborate, inferential links are determine by, as Aristotle and Chyrsippus found out, certain argument forms which seem to either guarantee or increase the likelihood of the conclusion being true given the premises are.
All fallacies can be put under the rubric of the most general description of reasoning gone wrong which is non sequitur (it does not follow). That is to say the proffered evidence doesn't support the conclusion. There are sundry ways this can happen - they've been named and classified by logicians since antiquity.