This week's common nonsense is the fallacy known as ad ignorantium, or the Argument from Ignorance. I prefer to remember it as the Argument from Uncertainty, as uncertainty seems more relevant to the definition. The fallacy occurs when I try to prove my argument by pointing out that no one has proven it false. The flamingos in my yard are real until they melt in your bonfire. This fallacy is very much like shifting the burden of proof . . . it's taking the benefit of unproof, twisting doubt in your favor when neither side can really make a solid case. I always suspect it must take a face like Ben Kingsley's to commandeer uncertainty in this way and take it for a pleasure drive. I just saw him in the 1996 Shakespeare-based film Twelfth Night. I thought for the first two acts that his character was an an eccentric nobleman. As it turns out, he played the role of the Clown. Maybe Kingsley's stage presence lends him authority by default, though one could also argue that Shakespeare's clowns have the best lines.
The Argument from Uncertainty is one of the fastest ways to win an argument using almost no effort at all. My favorite example comes from The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. A young boy named Milo wishes to enter the city of Dictionopolis, but the guard at the gate forbids Milo entrance unless he can presnt a reason. Milo hasn't prepared a reason, so the guard takes pity and slips him a little medal engraved with the words "WHY NOT?" then lets him in. The point is fair enough; although your argument may be weak, it may still be the better of two. Better, however, does not equal proven.
The problem with steering ambiguity in this way is that it's a bit too easy to get comfy in the leather seats. Win too many arguments by relying on lack of disproof, and you may never have to produce your own reasons. It's easy enough to sit there cultivating ignorance, pointing out that people can't disprove you rather than constructing a real argument. If someone relies heavily on the Argument from Uncertainty, there's a good chance that like Milo, they haven't got many bricks in their own foundation. For example, take ads that feature "baffled scientists." Miracle treatments advertised in the very back pages of Travel and Leisure are fond of claiming that their product has baffled scientists, but not very fond of citing studies that support their own safety and effectiveness. In reality, I imagine scientists spend a lot of time being baffled; it comes with the territory. If only their bafflement was always the result of true miracle cures, we'd have trumped with cancer long ago. Proving and disproving things, getting past the point of bafflement, is expensive, like 3 x 5 index cards. To demonstrate, here are a few things I cannot afford to prove:
1. I really do remember getting splashed by the whales at Sea World when I was two years old.
2. The color magenta looks the same to everyone.
3. Jane Austen would have preferred the BBC adaptation of Pride and Predjudice to the Kiera Knightley version.
4. Major international disputes could be settled constructively with scat jazz singing showdowns.
5. There is one man alive who looks better with a mustache than without, and that man is Tom Sellek.
6. The towing company that guards my day-shared parking lot has gotten a bit lazy, and I could probably park Friday afternoons with impunity.
How quickly using fallacies turns us to the dark side! I would get to park until proven illicit. But then, once those towing people catch you . . . not even Ben Kingsley could sway their sympathies. My point: the world hands us plenty of uncertainty to manage. We cannot always take advantage of another's confusion and use it to sell "therapeutic" copper bracelets for $100.
Another classic problem with the "why not" fallacy is that if you use it enough, someone (like the people at Lyons Towing) may actually offer disproof. It's an especially bad idea to use the Argument from Uncertainty to defend that pet superstition or belief or yours that you wish to remain cloaked, or even stylishly jacketed, in enigma. I advise avoiding the fallacy especially if you hang out around skeptics or scientists, who might interpret the phrase "prove me wrong" as a job offer. Since the industrial revolution, most Christian apologetics have wised up a bit and avoid the old millennia-old strategy of finding God in the unexplained, in the gaps, so to speak, because those gaps have a way of closing up. For a belief or opinion to endure, it takes an argument more substantial than "How else do you explain it?"
Of course, your not-disproven opinion could be correct, but I wouldn't ask for disproof unless you don't mind seeing your belief sliced into a pie chart. It In defense of my own irrational beliefs, I prefer the following approach: "Yes, you might be able to plot this with the help of Texas Instruments, but that won't really capture its full meaning." This phrase takes you out of the realm of truth, and into the realm of phraseology and meaning. It will keep you safe around scientists, who are unlikely to claim dibs on "full meaning." Not on the job, anyways. Watch out around nihilist fiction writers, though.
If your argument truly has merit, you can probably find some real reasons tucked in there somewhere, and needn't be dodgy in the first place. Who knows. The pie chart might actually work out in your favor.
My snail probably won't be so fortunate. As long as he remains tucked safely inside his shell, the mother bird will warm him and care for him, for she cannot prove that he isn't an egg. This argument will keep him warm for a spell, but eventually the other eggs will hatch. If the snail shell does not produce a hatchling, the snail inside may find himself in an awkward position when there are little beaks to feed. Mother birds, I hear, are less forgiving to invaders than urban towing companies.
The Argument from Uncertainty is one of the fastest ways to win an argument using almost no effort at all. My favorite example comes from The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. A young boy named Milo wishes to enter the city of Dictionopolis, but the guard at the gate forbids Milo entrance unless he can presnt a reason. Milo hasn't prepared a reason, so the guard takes pity and slips him a little medal engraved with the words "WHY NOT?" then lets him in. The point is fair enough; although your argument may be weak, it may still be the better of two. Better, however, does not equal proven.
The problem with steering ambiguity in this way is that it's a bit too easy to get comfy in the leather seats. Win too many arguments by relying on lack of disproof, and you may never have to produce your own reasons. It's easy enough to sit there cultivating ignorance, pointing out that people can't disprove you rather than constructing a real argument. If someone relies heavily on the Argument from Uncertainty, there's a good chance that like Milo, they haven't got many bricks in their own foundation. For example, take ads that feature "baffled scientists." Miracle treatments advertised in the very back pages of Travel and Leisure are fond of claiming that their product has baffled scientists, but not very fond of citing studies that support their own safety and effectiveness. In reality, I imagine scientists spend a lot of time being baffled; it comes with the territory. If only their bafflement was always the result of true miracle cures, we'd have trumped with cancer long ago. Proving and disproving things, getting past the point of bafflement, is expensive, like 3 x 5 index cards. To demonstrate, here are a few things I cannot afford to prove:
1. I really do remember getting splashed by the whales at Sea World when I was two years old.
2. The color magenta looks the same to everyone.
3. Jane Austen would have preferred the BBC adaptation of Pride and Predjudice to the Kiera Knightley version.
4. Major international disputes could be settled constructively with scat jazz singing showdowns.
5. There is one man alive who looks better with a mustache than without, and that man is Tom Sellek.
6. The towing company that guards my day-shared parking lot has gotten a bit lazy, and I could probably park Friday afternoons with impunity.
How quickly using fallacies turns us to the dark side! I would get to park until proven illicit. But then, once those towing people catch you . . . not even Ben Kingsley could sway their sympathies. My point: the world hands us plenty of uncertainty to manage. We cannot always take advantage of another's confusion and use it to sell "therapeutic" copper bracelets for $100.
Another classic problem with the "why not" fallacy is that if you use it enough, someone (like the people at Lyons Towing) may actually offer disproof. It's an especially bad idea to use the Argument from Uncertainty to defend that pet superstition or belief or yours that you wish to remain cloaked, or even stylishly jacketed, in enigma. I advise avoiding the fallacy especially if you hang out around skeptics or scientists, who might interpret the phrase "prove me wrong" as a job offer. Since the industrial revolution, most Christian apologetics have wised up a bit and avoid the old millennia-old strategy of finding God in the unexplained, in the gaps, so to speak, because those gaps have a way of closing up. For a belief or opinion to endure, it takes an argument more substantial than "How else do you explain it?"
Of course, your not-disproven opinion could be correct, but I wouldn't ask for disproof unless you don't mind seeing your belief sliced into a pie chart. It In defense of my own irrational beliefs, I prefer the following approach: "Yes, you might be able to plot this with the help of Texas Instruments, but that won't really capture its full meaning." This phrase takes you out of the realm of truth, and into the realm of phraseology and meaning. It will keep you safe around scientists, who are unlikely to claim dibs on "full meaning." Not on the job, anyways. Watch out around nihilist fiction writers, though.
If your argument truly has merit, you can probably find some real reasons tucked in there somewhere, and needn't be dodgy in the first place. Who knows. The pie chart might actually work out in your favor.
My snail probably won't be so fortunate. As long as he remains tucked safely inside his shell, the mother bird will warm him and care for him, for she cannot prove that he isn't an egg. This argument will keep him warm for a spell, but eventually the other eggs will hatch. If the snail shell does not produce a hatchling, the snail inside may find himself in an awkward position when there are little beaks to feed. Mother birds, I hear, are less forgiving to invaders than urban towing companies.
‘Milo hasn't prepared a reason, so the guard takes pity and slips him a little medal engraved with the words "WHY NOT?" then lets him in.’
ReplyDeleteThere’s even a design agency in the UK called Why Not? Associates. It says a lot about the profession; it’s completely uncertain of itself, as is demonstrated in the number of books written with conflicting views about what should and should not be done.
I will have to look at Why Not? Associates.
ReplyDeleteI think that any in any creative field it can be tricky to lay down a set of objective rules and keep everyone happy, though I do wish coding languages wouldn't shift around so much.
There are certainly guidelines that work best in most situations, and I say that if any agency or designer wants to shift those guidelines, we need reasons better than "Why Not." :)