XXIX—OF EQUIVOCATION AND MAL-OBSERVATION

Fallacies are counterfeit or sham arguments. They may fail to be arguments—(1) because their antecedents are false; (2) because the antecedents though true are not arranged dialectically, and do not suggest the right conclusion; (3) because the language is equivocal.

To take the last first. So many things are called by the same name, and so many different names may be applied to the same thing, that if we attempt to argue from words alone, without any personal knowledge of the things or judgments that are in question, we shall certainly make mistakes. The only security against this sort of fallacy is much experience, and the self-denial necessary to relinquish argument and the criticism of arguments, when we have no sufficient knowledge of the data.

The degree of imperfection in observation which should be considered to render the theorem fallacious, is no easy matter to determine. One class of logicians (the Formal) get over the difficulty by declaring that dialectic is not concerned with concrete knowledge at all,¹⁷ but only with its general properties (as conceived by Aristotle), and they have set up as a standard of logical truth the capability of being imagined. A centaur is to them as true a fact as a horse, and they would accept as valid such a theorem as this: 'All centaurs object to be shod with iron; Gryneus is a centaur; therefore we may conclude that he would resist being shod with iron.' No amount of conceivability or formal coherence can make this other than nonsense.

J. S. Mill and his followers go to the opposite extreme. They study all the sciences and endeavour to master their methods of reasoning—which is well; but they do so with the prepossession that there exists some absolute standard of knowledge to fail in attaining which involves fallacy. They thus condemn as false all theorems based on superseded notions of nature and man. Only modern thinkers can argue rationally—the ancients were all and habitually victims of fallacy,—and of the moderns only the few are rational who have mastered the latest theories on every subject. This is the principle of Mill's doctrine on the fallacies of observation; we can see that he regarded all beliefs as fallacious which he had himself outgrown or did not feel a need of. 'Truth' was simply the facts and judgments that happened to suit Mill's mental constitution.

From the Substantial point of view this is an untenable position.

No degree of observation is intrinsically defective if it serve the purpose of intellect, which is to protect the mind. There is no intellectual truth as a thing in itself. The thoughts of a sparrow or a child are as perfect as those of a man, if they afford the necessary defence to the individual's sentiment. As we change our inner mental character, new intellectual ideas have to be acquired and the old are discarded, perhaps completely forgotten. They appear now to be ignorances and fallacies—mal-observation and bad reasoning. The new seem to be so much truer—perhaps infallibly true. All that is illusion. We make another advance, and the thoughts that a week before were as stable as rocks are now cast aside as absurd. Perhaps the belief in the certainty of present judgments is a condition of our making the best use of them; if so they should not be shaken until we are ready to enter on the next stage of knowledge.

It is quite true that one man may know more than another, but the ground on which the more intellectual is generally considered to be superior to the latter is not the right one. He is not better for his intellectual acquirements, but he is better if his mind, being of a finer sort, required a superior intellect to defend it. At bottom, then, the general cause of mal-observation—there are particular causes which interfere with the general rule—is inferiority of sentimental character. We do not see what we do not need to see, and we see imperfectly what is not essential to our well-being. That we should be ignorant or reason badly about what does not concern us is not in itself a defect.

It is inconsistent with these views on the function of intellect to admit that any sort of non-observation or mal-observation can be always and for all alike fallacious. If there are things which we habitually ignore, the presumption is that they do not concern us—that the knowledge they would confer is not essential to our welfare and would be intellectual lumber.

I should therefore abstain from condemning as fallacies theorems drawn in good faith from facts believed to be true, and which serve as motives of conduct. They are sophisms only when the reasoners have not taken ordinary pains to verify their data, or, knowing the antecedents to be false, pretend to believe them for some immoral purpose.

XXX—OF PARALLEL ARRANGEMENT

There is no fault of perversion, mutilation, or entanglement in the statement of an argument that we do not meet with in actual reasoning. Even in the writings of educated and honest thinkers it is rare to meet with an argument the parts of which are clearly distinguished by the author himself, and expressed so as to show the precise degree of force they ought to carry. Reasoning is still only a semi-conscious process directed by rule-of-thumb. We make certain statements and find they have a power of moving others, so we continue to make them. But whether the result is due to the rationality of the discourse or merely to the docility of the hearers, we do not know, and—so long as the desired result follows—we do not care to inquire.

For this state of things logicians are to a great extent responsible. They are uncritical imitators of the Greek philosophers, whose notions on dialectic were quite wrong. The Greeks and their medieval and modern followers have squandered attention on a mental process which is not reason, mistaking it for reason, so that practically there has never been a science of dialectic. However much reasoners may have wished to present their thoughts coherently, they have not been provided with a method or notation adapted to the purpose. With an instinctive sense of the futility of the Syllogism, they have ignored it completely. I cannot call to mind a single controversial work that has been presented in syllogistic form, nor do even trained logicians use it overtly in argument.¹⁸ Yet if it were what it professes to be, it would be as natural and convenient to express our arguments in syllogism as it is to put down on paper a sum in arithmetic. We are, as regards the expression of reasoning, in the position of numerical thinkers before the invention of figures and the elaboration of arithmetical rules. We have to do all our arguments 'in our head,' and so we do them badly. We can seldom be sure of the correctness of our own reasonings, and we are constantly being misled by sophistry. Nothing indeed will enable us to reason well or to detect false reasoning on a subject of which we are entirely ignorant, but a large measure of protection would be afforded by the adoption of a uniform system of presenting arguments, by which all the assumptions they involve are rendered explicit.

One of the commonest omissions in argumentation is to take the precedent for granted. This is allowable when it is a fact universally known or believed. 'If you let the glass fall it will be broken,'—the omitted precedent is the known consequences of letting brittle things fall to the ground. 'Caius is a liar, therefore he is a coward'—presupposes that every liar is a coward.

This liberty of suppression is sometimes used sophistically. The tacit precedent is not universally known or accepted, but if it is questioned the sophist is ready with an exclamation of surprise or contempt at our supposed ignorance. Persons who are afraid of appearing singular in their beliefs are liable to be deceived by this trick.

'It frequently happens,' says Whately, 'in the case of a fallacy [of omitted precedent] that the hearers are left to the alternative of supplying either a premiss which is not true, or else one which does not prove the conclusion: e.g. if a man expatiates on the distress of the country, and thence argues that the government is tyrannical, we must suppose him to assume either that "every distressed country is under a tyranny," which is a manifest falsehood, or merely that "every country under a tyranny is distressed," which, however true, proves nothing, the Middle Term being undistributed.... Which are we to suppose the speaker meant us to understand? Surely just whichever each of his hearers might happen to prefer: some might assent to the false premiss; others allow the unsound syllogism; to the sophist himself it is indifferent, as long as they can be brought to admit the conclusion.'

We sometimes attempt to reason from Contrast instead of resemblance, with a confused notion that things which differ in some respects must differ also in others. 'Who spareth the rod hateth the child; the parent who loveth his child must therefore spare not the rod.' The fallacy of this becomes apparent when we complete the theorem in the parallel form.

VI.
The hating parent	spares the rod
Thelovingparentdiffersfrom the hating parent	[No Conclusion]

The following has often been presented as a valid argument—'What is universally believed must be true; the belief in God's existence is not universal; it is therefore not true.'

I.
Whatisuniversallybelieved	is true
The existence of God is not universally believed	N. C.

To establish the conclusion aimed at, it would be necessary to lay down as precedent—'What is not universally believed is not true.'

These theorems from contrast are on a par with the following—

I.
Cows	are four-footed
Sheeparenotcows	sheep are not four-footed

This is the fallacy called in the quaint language of the syllogists 'Illicit Process of the Major Term.'

In False Analogy the resemblance is so slight that the application is untrustworthy, or a conclusion is drawn in excess of the resemblance. If from the habit of calling a deep bay or salt-water loch an 'arm' of the sea from its analogy to a human arm, we conclude that the sea has elbows and wrists, we commit this fallacy. The earth is like an orange, but we must not think that it is pulpy inside.

Akin to this is the fallacy of False Generality or Doubtful Precedent. It consists in carelessly or perversely using bad antecedents when better are available. This applies to such current prejudices as that all Frenchmen are frivolous, all Germans mystical, all Jews dishonest, all Carthaginians faithless, all rich people purseproud, all nobles haughty, and so on. Even if all the Carthaginians we personally knew had proved faithless, our general knowledge of mankind should keep us from inferring that a whole nation should be faithless. The most we should conclude is that some Carthaginians are faithless, but we are free to exercise caution in future dealings with members of that race. All these generalities are grounded on this prior argument: 'when a known portion of a class exhibits certain qualities, we are justified in inferring that the whole class possess these qualities'—which is only occasionally true.

The fallacy of Accident occurs when the precedent is so defined as not to exclude exceptions, and the case happens to be one of the exceptions. 'What gives pain should be abstained from; surgical operations give pain; they should therefore be abstained from.' The painful things that should be universally abstained from are those which give needless or useless pain, not the sort that give less pain than they remove. Falstaff committed this fallacy when he supposed that the King would be a boon companion like the Prince. So did the colonists who introduced rabbits and water-cress into Australia, on the supposition that they would there have the same function or value as in Great Britain. In consequence of the Accidental change the rabbits have developed into a pest, and the water-cress obstructs navigation.

If the applicate is a property of the subject only when the latter is taken collectively, it will not yield a true conclusion when the parts or individuals of the subject are taken separately. All the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, but it does not follow that one of them—though it resembles the triangle to some extent—is equal to two right angles. In this instance we should render the meaning clear by saying 'collectively equal,' when no argument follows and no mistake is made. This is called the fallacy of Division.

The fallacy of Composition is the converse of this. What is true of several singulars may not be true of all of them taken together. Because each of the witnesses in a law case is liable to error, it does not follow that the concurrent testimony of many is not to be credited. (Jevons.)

Circular or Tautological theorems (Petitio Principii Begging the Question) are a breach of rule 2, section xviii. This fallacy often consists in proposing as a precedent the case, or information drawn from the case and stated in other words. 'To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech must always be, on the whole, advantageous to the State; for it is highly conducive to the interests of the Community that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited of expressing his sentiments.' (Whately.)

It is conducive	thateachindividualshouldenjoy
It is advantageous	to allow

There may be tautology in a single word—the 'question-begging epithet.' We undertake to prove something, but get no further than the use of metaphors implying the point in dispute. For example, some scientific writers are anxious to promote the belief that animal life is a combination of natural forces—that there is no individual life distinct from cosmic life,—but all their proof consists in calling a man or beast a 'machine,' and calling machines 'creatures.' This might be mistaken for the Substantialist doctrine on the same subject, but the two are radically different. Substantialism asserts that man and nature have similar lives—materialism teaches that they have only one life in common, and that the coarse, mindless life of the cosmos as conceived realistically.

Conclusions may be used as precedents before verification, but it is not lawful to assume a hypothetical precedent on the understanding that it is to be proved in the course of the argument, and then use the conclusion so obtained to prove its own precedent. This is also dialectical tautology, but the circle includes two or more theorems. When naturalists tell us that in the struggle for life the fittest only survive, and when asked how we know which are the fittest they reply that the fittest are known by the fact of their surviving, we have a tautological argument.

Animalsthatsurvive	are the fittest	Fittest animals	survive
Aparticularanimal has survived	henceitisthe fittestofits species	This animal is the fittest of its species.	whichisthe reasonithas survived

Survival under competitive conditions is first assumed, and from it is deduced the superiority of the existing type of animal; then this inferential superiority is offered to justify the previously imagined competitive survival. The two hypotheses waltz round each other without making any rational advance.

When a book is quoted to prove its own authenticity we have this fallacy; or when the precedent is as unknown as the conclusion,—'Paradise was in Armenia, therefore Gihon is an Asiatic river.'

The academical syllogism as defined—not always as presented—contains two fallacies, one of which is tautology. 'All Europeans are white; Caius is a European; therefore he is white.' If, as logicians say, the 'all' is absolute and includes Caius even before he is mentioned, then it is clear that the theorem amounts to saying, 'All Europeans are white, and one of them is Caius.' 'Both the twins are fair-haired; Caius is one of the twins; therefore he is fair-haired':—the pretended conclusion is merely a naming of a part of the precedent. The first of these theorems may be interpreted so as to give a valid conclusion. We are informed that an unknown person called Caius is a European; we are not told, and we do not know, what is the colour of his skin; but because all the Europeans we have known have been white, we infer—pending actual knowledge—that Caius is white. Logicians interpret the syllogism otherwise, for they have a notion that reason should give infallible certainty.

After the precedent has been divided into subject and applicate, the former is sometimes used as applicate and so generates a wrong conclusion. This may be called Cross Reasoning or Diagonal Reasoning—the fallacy termed by logicians 'Undistributed Middle.'

Manx cats	have no tails
Thiscathasnotail	it must be a Manx cat

De Morgan has this example—'His imbecility of character might have been inferred from his proneness to favourites; for all weak princes have this failing.'

Allweakprinces	are prone
He was prone	he must have been weak

Statements are sometimes put forward as reasoning which contain no case, either expressed or understood. This will seem hardly credible seeing that the illustration of a case is the purpose of argumentation. Not only does it occur, but a certain form of it is regarded by some logicians as valid reasoning. It is the 'particular' syllogism of the Third Figure.

From these premises no conclusion can be extracted, unless it be the verbal summary—'Socrates was both poor and wise.' But logicians draw from it the dialectic conclusion—

Both these conclusions are inadmissible. It is because they are empirically true that we are apt to think their truth depends on the antecedent information. If we wish to extend the qualities of Socrates to 'some men' we must make them a case with 'Socrates is poor and wise' for a precedent, but I fail to see how it is to be done. If we add to the premises, 'One man was Socrates, therefore one man was poor and wise,' we have a tautological fallacy.

J. S. Mill notices a fallacy which amounts to an Inversion of the Parallel: the conclusion is known or believed and the truth of the antecedents is inferred backwards.

'People continually think and express themselves as if they believed that the premises cannot be false if the conclusion is true. The truth, or supposed truth, of the inferences which follow from a doctrine, often enables it to find acceptance in spite of gross absurdities in it. How many philosophical systems which had scarcely any intrinsic recommendation have been received by thoughtful men because they were supposed to lend additional support to religion, morality, some favourite view of politics, or some other cherished persuasion; not merely because their wishes were thereby enlisted on its side, but because its leading to what they deemed sound conclusions appeared to them a strong presumption in favour of its truth, though the presumption, when viewed in its true light, amounted only to the absence of that particular evidence of falsehood which would have resulted from its leading by correct inference to something already known to be false.'¹⁹

The conclusion of an argument may sometimes be left unexpressed. If the antecedents are strong and the conclusion obvious it weakens the argument to state the conclusion in full, besides reflecting on the capacity of the reader or hearer to draw the conclusion for himself. Hence we find at the end of controversial and indignant writings such expressions as—'Comment is superfluous'—'We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions,'—or simply a point of exclamation is appended.

Sophistical insinuations are suggested in this manner. A train of ideas is laid that generates a conclusion which the speaker is afraid or ashamed to put into words.

The second fault of the syllogism as defined may be called the fallacy of No Application. It consists in arranging propositions so as to end in a classification, but no applicate is detached and no rational conclusion is drawn. 'Jones is a Welshman; all Welshmen are Britons; therefore Jones is a Briton.' If in actual thinking it were ever desired to establish by argument that Jones is a Briton, it would be with the object of applying to him some quality connoted by Briton, but the presence of which in Jones is a matter of doubt. This would be a conclusion—but not the mere classification.

Irrelevant Conclusion—the fallacy called by Aristotelians Ignoratio elenchi—is an attempt to substitute a better argument for the one proposed, but which proves something which has not been denied, or stigmatises something that has not been asserted. It frequently arises from honest ignorance of the question at issue, as in the objections usually made to the Berkeleyan Substantialism. It can also be used as a weapon of sophistry, by confusing the matter in dispute or diverting attention to side issues. It is irrelevant to the truth of a conclusion to point out that he who now supports it formerly opposed it, or that his conduct is inconsistent with a belief in it. Appeals to passion—to reverence for authority—to popular belief—are instances of this fallacy.

The best protection against Fallacy—next to a thorough knowledge of the matter—is a clear notion of the properties of a valid argument; it is useful however to be able to distinguish and name the faulty theorems one constantly meets in controversial speeches and writings.

17: One fault of observation is noticed by formal logicians; it is that of assigning an improper cause, Non causa pro caus or Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It is evident that defects in every other category have an equal light to be noticed.

18: Whately complains of the disinclination shown by logicians to put their rules into practice. 'Whenever they have to treat of anything that is beyond the mere elements of Logic, they totally lay aside all reference to the principles they have been occupied in establishing and explaining, and have recourse to a loose, vague, and popular kind of language; such as would be best suited indeed to an exoterical discourse but seems strangely incongruous in a professed logical treatise.... Surely it affords but too much plausibility to the cavils of those who scoff at Logic altogether, that the very writers who profess to teach it should never themselves make any application of, or reference to, its principles, when, and when only, such application and reference are to be expected.' Logic, Book III. Introd. The fact here admitted proves that even logicians do not find their method of any practical use. But what is the meaning of the emphatic 'when only'? Why should a logical method be unsuitable for every sort of subject except those matters of logic that are beyond the mere elements?

19: Logic, 'Fallacies,' c. 6.