"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means exactly what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
From the time of the Greeks until the last century or so, the most important study for a citizen was Rhetoric: The science of persuading others, using language and gesture. Rhetoric is central to political discourse. In no small part because a rhetorical statement can be both logical and a lie, and so be very powerful. We are persuaded by the logical structure, but assume the speaker is using the words to mean what we would mean. Sometimes we're right. Sometimes we're not. Most of the time we can't tell, even if we're nodding our heads because it sounds right. The problem is that something can sound logical and not be Logical. Logic should be solid, like a building. But it's a house made of words and grammar, squishy things than can change shape in a flash. Math may be solid; language not at all. Humpty's master is the one who uses the disconnect of language from logic to advance his (or her) own purposes. Tyrants large and small know that. As an individual, our only defense against such a master is to know enough about logic and rhetoric to call "bullshit." As a community, the best defense is to foster an open critique of ALL political speech and to hold speakers accountable (not necessarily punishable). Fallacies come in many forms. A Formal Fallacy is a breakdown in the logical form of the argument: the conclusion does not follow from the premises. An education in formal logic is useful in identifying these fallacies (or a visit to Wikipedia). Informal Fallacies involve the content--the words--of the argument, and are probably what we should be mostly aware of. These include:Arguing from ignorance (if I don't know then it must not be important), Begging the question (stating the desired conclusion as a premise), Correlation proving causation, Ecological fallacies (a member of a group must be just like the group), Ad hominem arguments, False equivalences, Fallacies of the single cause, Etc., etc.
While watching the news tonight, see how many logical fallacies you can identify, not by the formal name of the fallacy, but by the way words are used to divert us from what is really going on. For example, from a blog post I saw today:Senator Lindsey Graham, "Everything I learned about Iranians I learned working in the pool room [as a teenager]," he said. "I met a lot of liars, and I know Iranians are liars."Clearly, the conclusion (Iranis are liars) does not follow from the statement (I met a lot of liars in the poolroom), even if he'd used a more logical middle statement (I met Iranis who were liars). The clear illogic did not, however, keep him from saying it as if it were persuasive. And that's the key. After all, according to Humpty, the only question is: who is the actual master (of the message)? Sometimes it's the king. Sometimes it's the fool. Sometimes its the Senator.
