"If he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been a child."1 "It is well known that most students are at a disadvantage in attacking any subject, because their minds are untrained.” 2 "The law was unconstitutional also, counsel averred, for the reason that it was class legislation." 3 "When it [the new German constitution] was first published, the London Times remarked, in all seriousness, that it was suffi ciently illogical to justify the hope that it would work well." Fallacies of deduction. The principal fallacies of deductive argument are begging the question, technically known as petitio principii, and arguing beside the point, technically known as ignoratio elenchi. To beg the question is to deduce a conclusion from an assumed premiss and then to use the conBegging the question. clusion so reached as proof of the proposition. originally assumed. The nature of this fallacy (often called "arguing in a circle") may be learned from the following anecdote: A woman, on seeing a very small porringer, said to a child, "That must have been the little wee bear's porringer, it is so small," and then added, "He must have been smaller than we thought, must n't he?" To assume that the bear was very small in order to prove that the porringer was his, and then from the fact that the porringer is small to infer that the bear must have been very small, is, manifestly, to beg the question. 1 R. L. Stevenson: Memories and Portraits; A Humble Remonstrance. 2 Charles Dudley Warner. Harper's Magazine, March, 1895, p. 645. 8 Report of W. D. Guthrie's argument before the United States Su preme Court in the income-tax cases: The Boston Herald, March 8, 1895. * The [New York] Nation, March 14, 1895, p. 205. 5 Nathaniel Cotton: Fables; The Bee, the Ant, and the Sparrow. 6 Literally, "ignoring the refutation." Another example is given by Stephen: "A ship is cast away under such circumstances that her loss may be accounted for either by fraud or by accident. The captain is tried for making away with her. A variety of circumstances exist which would indicate preparation and expectation on his part if the ship really was made away with, but which would justify no suspicion at all if she was not. It is manifestly illogical, first, to regard the antecedent circumstances as suspicious, because the loss of the ship is assumed to be fraudulent, and, next, to infer that the ship was fraudulently destroyed from the suspicious character of the antecedent circumstances." 1 begging A single word may involve a begging of the question. Disbelievers in Mr. Bellamy's view of the future beg the question when they speak of his QuestionUtopia;" for Utopia is understood to mean words. an unattainable ideal. An English journal declares that Mr. Leslie Stephen uses a "question-begging epithet" when he calls Tito Melema a "feminine" character. In the title of Mill's essay on "The Subjection of Women," the word "subjection" begs the question by assuming that the present condition of woman is one of subjection to man, a point to be proved. The title of Dr. Bushnell's work on woman suffrage "The Reform against Nature"-begs the question by assuming that the proposed reform is "against nature." Those who deem the game of foot-ball an important means of physical education maintain that those who call the game "brutal" beg the question by applying to the game itself an epithet deserved by some players. The following instance of question-begging is given by Bentham: - "Take, for example, improvement and innovation: under its own name, to pass censure on any improvement might be too bold: 1 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen: Introduction to the Indian Evidence Act, chap. ii. applied to such an object, any expressions of censure you could employ might lose their force; employing them, you would seem to be running on in the track of self-contradiction and nonsense. “But improvement means something new, and so does innovation. Happily for your purpose, innovation has contracted a bad sense; it means something which is new and bad at the same time. Improvement, it is true, in indicating something new, indicates something good at the same time; and therefore, if the thing in question be good as well as new, innovation is not a proper term for it. However, as the idea of novelty was the only idea originally attached to the term innovation, and the only one which is directly expressed in the etymology of it, you may still venture to employ the word innovation, since no man can readily and immediately convict your appellation of being an improper one upon the face of it. "With the appellation thus chosen for the purpose of passing condemnation on the measure, he by whom it has been brought to view in the character of an improvement, is not (it is true) very likely to be well satisfied: but of this you could not have had any expectation. What you want is a pretence which your own partisans can lay hold of, for the purpose of deducing from it a colourable warrant for passing upon the improvement that censure which you are determined, and they, if not determined, are disposed and intend to pass on it. "Of this instrument of deception, the potency is most deplor able."1 Not only should we avoid the question-begging fallacy in our own arguments, but we should be on the watch for it in the arguments of those whose conclusions we oppose. If we can show that a so-called argument is mere assumption, it in syllogistic form, for its refutation. and this we can often do by stating we have done all that is necessary To argue beside the point is to try to prove something which is not the proposition in dispute, but which 1 Jeremy Bentham: The Book of Fallacies, part iv. chap. i. 2 See page 344. beside the reasoner either mistakes for it or wishes others to mistake for it. To prove a man's cleverness Arguing as a writer when the question is whether the point. he has business ability, to prove a man's success as a soldier when the question is whether he has ability in civil affairs, to prove a man's gift for extemporaneous speaking when the question is whether he is a statesman, is to argue beside the point. The variety of this fallacy known as argumentum ad hominem and that known as argumentum ad populum are thus explained by Professor Jevons: "An attorney for the defendant in a lawsuit is said to have handed to the barrister his brief marked 'No case; abuse the plaintiff's attorney.' Whoever thus uses what is known as argumentum ad hominem, that is, an argument which rests, not upon the merit of the case, but the character or position of those engaged in it, commits this fallacy [that of arguing beside the point]. If a man is accused of a crime it is no answer to say that the prosecutor is as bad. If a great change in the law is proposed in Parliament, it is an Irrelevant Conclusion to argue that the proposer is not the right man to bring it forward. Every one who gives advice lays himself open to the retort that he who preaches ought to prac-tise, or that those who live in glass houses ought not to throw stones. Nevertheless there is no necessary connection between the character of the person giving advice and the goodness of the advice. "The argumentum ad populum is another form of Irrelevant Conclusion, and consists in addressing arguments1 to a body of people calculated to excite their feelings and prevent them from forming a dispassionate judgment upon the matter in hand. It is the great weapon of rhetoricians and demagogues." 2 A subtle form of arguing beside the point is the 30-called "fallacy of confusion," which consists in using a term in one sense in one part of the argu 1 Query as to the position of this word. 2 W. S. Jevons: Elementary Lessons in Logic, lesson xxi. ment and in another sense in another part. Some fallacies of this sort are nothing but verbal puzzles, which, however useful in sharpening the wits of students of logic, have no place in a treatise on rhetoric. Others are too dangerous to be passed by without notice. Such are those mentioned by Mill in the following passage: "The mercantile public are frequently led into this fallacy by the phrase 'scarcity of money.' In the language of commerce, 'money' has two meanings: currency, or the circulating medium; and capital seeking investment, especially investment on loan. In this last sense, the word is used when the money market' is spoken of, and when the 'value of money' is said to be high or low, the rate of interest being meant. The consequence of this ambiguity is, that as soon as scarcity of money in the latter of these senses begins to be felt, as soon as there is difficulty of obtaining loans, and the rate of interest is high, it is concluded that this must arise from causes acting upon the quantity of money in the other and more popular sense; that the circulating medium must have diminished in quantity, or ought to be increased. I am aware that, independently of the double meaning of the term, there are in the facts themselves some peculiarities, giving an apparent support to this error; but the ambiguity of the language stands on the very threshold of the subject, and intercepts all attempts to throw light upon it. 1 - "Another word which is often turned into an instrument of the fallacy of ambiguity is theory. In its most 1 proper acceptation, theory means the completed result of philosophical induction from experience. In that sense, there are erroneous as well as true theories, for induction may be incorrectly performed; but theory of some sort is the necessary result of knowing any thing of a subject, and having put one's knowledge into the form of general propositions for the guidance of practice. In this, the proper sense of the word, theory is the explanation of practice. In another and a more vulgar sense, theory means any mere fic tion of the imagination, endeavouring to conceive how a thing 1 See pages 158, 159. |