In a cooperative argument, you should never* explicitly refer to logical fallacies.
*additional qualifications below
This is a point I’ve made several times before, especially in my How To Argue post.
In that post, I make a distinction between cooperative and competitive arguments. In a cooperative argument, you are trying to find the truth, which involves coming up with the best arguments you can, but does not necessarily involve “winning” the argument. In a competitive argument, you are trying to win the argument, which might involve coming up with truthful arguments, but not necessarily. I don’t mean to say there is anything inherently wrong with having a competitive argument, I’m just not talking about them here.
In a cooperative argument, you don’t want to antagonize the person you are arguing with (“interlocutor” is the term I would use). After all, your goals are aligned. You’re both trying to figure out the truth. And if you tell your interlocutor that they’ve just used a logical fallacy, I think there’s something inherently antagonizing about that. It’s like telling them not just that they’re wrong, but that they’re wrong in a particularly predictable and trite way.
It’s like, suppose you made one of those bingo cards, where each square contains an argument that you expect your opponent to make. While your opponent is making their argument, you visibly take out your bingo card, and then make a show of crossing out one of the boxes. Does this sound like it belongs in a cooperative argument? The bingo card is condescending, because you’re fitting your opponent into a small number of boxes, and you’re giving a stock response based on which box they used this time, rather than a respectful response based on actually listening to what they’re saying.
From Pinterest, but original source is unknown.
When you explicitly refer to logical fallacies, you’re pretty much doing the same thing. This goes not just for proper logical fallacies, but also other related terminology, like “strawman” or “burden of proof”.
Instead of referring to logical fallacies, I suggest just describing the problem that you are perceiving. For example, instead of “strawman”, you might say that they’ve misinterpreted what you said, or that you’ve never said it, or you said it but now you realize you didn’t mean it, or somebody else said it but you don’t agree with them, or hardly anybody else is saying it. Instead of “ad hominem”, you might say that their views don’t follow from their personal attacks, or that their personal attacks don’t advance the argument, or serve as a distraction, or that you just don’t like them.
Now, I will note some exceptions. Obviously if the argument is competitive, then maybe logical fallacies will score you rhetorical points. And maybe some of you have cooperative arguments where you openly antagonize your interlocutor. If it works for you, fine, I guess. I also have no issue with identifying logical fallacies in your own arguments, or in other people’s arguments, as long as you’re not identifying them in your interlocutor’s arguments. If you have no interlocutor (e.g. you’re writing a blog post for the world to read), then it depends on whether your intended audience identifies with the argument you want to say is fallacious.
I also note that some logical fallacies seem more antagonizing than others. For instance, I don’t have much of an issue with an issue with “non sequitur” because it’s a very broad term, that doesn’t necessarily imply that your interlocutor is being wrong in a specific predictable way. I also don’t have an issue with “sunk cost”, because “sunk cost” is a complicated concept that is pretty hard to convey without explicitly referring to it. Your mileage may vary on which logical fallacies are more or less appropriate, and it may vary by context as well.
Of course, besides antagonizing your interlocutor, there are other issues with explicitly referring to logical fallacies.
One problem is, it just looks amateurish. I get the sense that people who have just learned about a logical fallacy are the people who are most zealous about mentioning the fallacy whenever they have a chance. You don’t want to look like you’ve just learned about logical fallacies. The people who are long-familiar with these logical fallacies are not impressed by your apparent inexperience, and the people who are not familiar with the fallacies are not impressed by your apparent failure to communicate clearly. That means that maybe you want to avoid explicitly mentioning logical fallacies even in competitive arguments, where image is key.
The other problem is, I think logical fallacies encourage cookie-cutter thinking on your part. A few paragraphs ago, I described five distinct varieties of strawmen, and four distinct varieties of ad hominem. By labeling these many different situations as “strawmen” or “ad hominem”, you are not encouraging yourself to think about distinct situations that call for distinct responses. You are encouraging yourself to fit a large number of situations into a small number of boxes, offering stock responses to each box. This is useful in a pedagogical context, where you start out by learning about a small number of types of arguments, and the appropriate responses to each. But if you want to grow beyond critical thinking 101, then you should make increasingly fine-grained distinctions between different arguments, and learn to deliver the right response for each situation.
Personally, if I accidentally made a logical fallacy (I don’t do that on purpose), I would prefer my interlocutor to just state the term instead of giving me a long and pointlessly wordy definition. Here are my problems with the latter:
(1) Unnecessary wordiness for the sake of being more polite seems like inefficient communication and a waste of time for me.
(2) When I read a definition of some fallacy, in my mind I still think of the relevant term anyway. Firstly, was my interlocutor expecting me to be unfamiliar with the terminology? Fine, I sometimes make mistakes. I will admit that when I do so. Just because I made a mistake doesn’t mean people have to assume that I don’t know even basic terminology. Secondly, was my interlocutor expecting me to fail to decipher their definition, to fail to figure out what they actually meant to say?
This one’s a cultural difference. In some countries (like the USA), politeness means never saying something that another person might dislike hearing. Where I come from, people tend to use more direct speech. We don’t say “I’ll go to the restroom,” instead we say “I’ll go to the toilet.” And if somebody asks, “do these jeans make me look fat,” they’d better be prepared to stomach an honest answer, because that’s what they will get.
People’s insistence of fake politeness seems annoying for me.
Firstly, it’s deceiving and dishonest. It attempts to hide the truth. People say one thing, and then it’s up to me to interpret their words, translate them into a more honest statement, and decipher what they actually meant.
Secondly, it devaluates honesty and genuine communication. Facebook’s insistence on calling acquaintances “friends” devalues the meaning of the word “friend.” People’s insistence on asking “how are you” even when they don’t care to hear my truthful answer devalues those instances where somebody asks me, because they actually care about how I’m doing. People telling me compliments they never meant devalues those instances where somebody genuinely believes that the thing I did was amazing and praiseworthy.
And I really hate hearing the words “I will call you” whenever the person has no intention of actually calling me. Firstly, I don’t need false hopes and expectations, secondly, that moment when I realize how I got tricked feels rather unpleasant.
I strongly dislike rudeness. One should always be polite in discussions. But I don’t think that equating honesty with rudeness is a good idea.
I prefer speaking directly and being straightforward. I don’t like substituting honest statements with verbose descriptions that attempt to hide what some person really meant. I know that people who have been socialized in different cultures disagree with me. Occasionally they unintentionally annoy me. On those same occasions, I unintentionally offend them. I do try to somewhat tone down my speech when talking with people from different countries, but I’m not happy about the fact that I need to do so just to avoid unintentionally offending somebody who, in my opinion, is way too sensitive.
In discussions, it depends. If I’m talking with somebody who isn’t familiar with some terminology, then of course I shouldn’t use that term. There are also situations where explaining the problem with some argument is much more comprehensible than just saying, “This is fallacy X.” Your example of five distinct varieties of strawmen, and four distinct varieties of ad hominem is an excellent example of a situation that would benefit from elaborating why you don’t like some argument. So “always call a fallacy by its term and move on,” clearly isn’t a good strategy. But “never explicitly refer to logical fallacies” isn’t something I like either. For me that’s just one of those annoying things that people who were socialized in different cultures tend to do.
I assume this depends on who you are talking with. In both of my debate clubs this wasn’t the case. We mentioned fallacies by their terms whenever appropriate. There was no expectation that an experienced debater must pretend that that they don’t know how various fallacies are called.
Yes, I agree with this.
Really? Were I to employ a logical fallacy, I would appreciate it being explicitly pointed out.
Not just “like” that, but precisely that. So?
Heh. Only when its cells are checked, otherwise it’s fatuous.
It may, if amateurishly attempted, this is true. But, at the end of the day, pointing out a fallacy that vitiates the argument works, whether or not it seems amateurish to someone.
Why is that problematic? Cookie-cutters make great cookies.
What is worth bewaring is the fallacy fallacy.
@Andreas Avester #1,
Explicitly spelling out the problem is usually either a) not any wordier, or b) conveys more information. For example: a) saying “You missed a third option in the middle” is no wordier than “You used the fallacy of excluded middle”; b) saying “nobody of import is saying that” is much more informative than “that’s a strawman”. If there’s a fallacy that really is a lot wordier to spell out, and the wordiness does not convey additional important information, then I would grant that this fallacy is one of the exceptions. Like “sunk cost fallacy” as I mentioned in the OP.
How does spelling out a problem rather than referencing a logical fallacy hide the truth?
This whole analogy is a non-starter for me, because I have actively wanted to devalue the meaning of “friend” for years, for reasons that I won’t get into.
Debate clubs hold competitive arguments in formal settings. Applying the same approach to cooperative arguments in informal settings indeed looks very amateurish to me. I’m quite cynical about the habits that debate clubs teach people, and I think if you ask around, I am not the only one.
A big difference in informal settings is that you can’t really know what your interlocutor’s expectations are most of the time. Maybe they find naming fallacies antagonizing, maybe they don’t. So, do you want to adopt a tactic that your interlocutor might or might not consider antagonizing? I’d rather not. You say you are unsatisfied with this constraint, but it’s still a constraint.
I’d prefer to call it an “argument” if it’s cooperative and a “fight” if it’s competitive. It’s clearer that we’re talking about two very different things.
I think you should be saying it’s wrong to engage in that way, when you have a much better alternative. It’s better because you should give honesty/rationality/etc. a higher priority than beating somebody in a fight. There’s isn’t a good/valid position you could adopt, according to which beating them dishonestly (etc.) is the option you should choose.
If you’re really restricting this to the context of cooperative arguments, citing a logical fallacy is helpful. It’s cooperative. It clearly tells your interlocutor where you think there was a mistake in their reasoning, and you can both benefit from that. It shouldn’t be done sloppily or ambiguously or whatever, like you said. And identifying fallacies certainly isn’t the only tool that ought to be in your toolbox (or weapon in your arsenal, if it’s a fight). But I don’t think you’ve given a valid argument for why it shouldn’t be done at all.
Where’s the antagonism? If one person believe it’s a fight, they may feel antagonized or threatened.
But if we’re stipulating that both parties are arguing for the sake of figuring out the truth (or at least being less mistaken), there is no antagonist to be found.
If I’m citing/identifying a fallacy cooperatively, and the other person takes it to be a competitive move (or something like it), then isn’t that their problem and not mine? Instead of talking to me, why not give that person advice on how they should interpret a remark about their fallacious reasoning, since they are the ones who are not approaching it in a cooperative way?
But this leads back to your first quote above. That person’s reaction is problematic, as far as I’m concerned, but you explicitly decided to take no position about the wrongness (if not inherent wrongness) of competitive arguments. That’s strange to me, but anyway, if you did put that (I think obvious) position on the table, the way you’d have to evaluate their reaction is pretty straightforward I think.
I’d prefer to call it an “argument” if it’s cooperative and a “fight” if it’s competitive.
That’s interesting. I usually call it a “discussion” if it’s cooperative and an “argument” if it’s competitive.
@CR #4,
Um, based on previous interactions with you, I think you are very bad at arguing on the internet, but I guess that’s everyone else’s problems not yours.
In informal settings, intentions can be hard to read, and if you make an argument that other people interpret as a competitive move, it’s not a completely unreasonable conclusion.
“That person” has an unclear referent, and maybe I should await clarification before trying to interpret your comment further.
Siggy:
Yes, it may be reasonable. It may also be reasonable to interpret it as a cooperative move. It’s up to them how they decide to interpret that.
Other things one is saying/doing could be taken as evidence, which can guide their interpretation. For instance, one could not only identify a fallacy but also say “here’s a better way to get what you wanted, with an improved version of the argument.” Or one could suggest that their conclusion seems fine, but not how they got there, so let’s work through that issue together somehow. It could be as simple as saying “don’t take this the wrong way, but….”
How you do it may depend on the situation, how well you know each other, etc. The point is that there are ways to help them interpret it as a form of cooperation. We’re not talking about only citing a fallacy and doing nothing else, are we? So, it would be an unreasonable conclusion, when they are given reasons to think otherwise. Since giving them a reason to believe it’s cooperative is allowed, maybe we can agree that this sort of thing should (sometimes?) be done, in combination with citing a fallacy.
I meant the interlocutor from the previous paragraph, “the other person [who] takes it to be a competitive move.” It refers to that person, who is responding to me (or anybody) cooperatively pointing out some of their fallacious reasoning.