Sorting Through Sophistries:
Five Words to
Watch Out For
By Gabriel Blanchard
A fine smattering of sophistries, just to keep things bad and silly.
This week, we’re taking a look at five minor fallacies. They are normally examples of some more general sophistry, or of multiple sophistries operating together; however, these particular forms recur often enough to be worth noting. They are not always worded identically, but, especially in the case of the first three, certain key words frequently signal them, and have provided their nicknames accordingly.
1: The Obvious Fallacy
Claims that something “is obvious” or that such-and-such an idea is “obviously false” are not always incorrect. Sensitivity to context is especially important here—a fact might be obvious to, say, a doctor when it is not at all obvious to her patient. But in many cases, calling an idea “obvious” is a signal that the person saying it cannot offer evidence or argument for their view, and may not have thought about it much at all.
2: The Common-Sense Fallacy
This one comes slightly closer to having some substance: common sense is a real thing (more elegantly named practical prudence), and it’s possible to behave either in or out of accord with it. However, when “common sense” comes up in argument—especially when the phrase “it’s just” is put in front of it—there’s a decent chance that the real appeal being made is to the human desires to fit in and not look bad.
3: The Natural Fallacy
This fallacy is a current favorite with many advertisers: they love to boast that a product is “natural,” or that its ingredients are. Given the importance of protecting the environment and so on, this one may seem like it has at least as much potential validity as the common-sense fallacy, but if anything, it has less. The appeal it makes is not only emotional, but nonsensical.* What, after all, does “natural” mean? It has well over a dozen definitions; until it’s been pinned down to one of them, any might apply. Being stung by a wasp or getting the flu are 100% natural, yet people will hardly pay anything to get those.
4: The Latest Fallacy
The fourth and fifth are a little bit different. With the latest fallacy, the specific expression “the latest” need not appear; it has many synonyms. One of its more elaborated forms is what C. S. Lewis dubbed “chronological snobbery.” It is a sort of inversion of the ad verecundiam fallacy—swapping tradition for modernity, it appeals to the embarrassment of seeming uncool rather than the embarrassment of being rudely childish.
An occasional reader may feel that more detailed description should have been given of the experiments and calculations upon which these theories rest. Let him reflect, however, that a volume so elaborate would take longer to read and cost more to buy.
This one is also different in that, oddly, its fallaciousness is not equally applicable in every field. The hard sciences rightly give priority to “the latest” information—not because data gathered on a Thursday is inherently more valuable than data gathered on a Wednesday, but because, in the context of the whole sum of data amassed by these sciences, whatever is “the latest” represents the most complete state of information available. (The same does not apply to less experiment-driven fields like, say, ethics.)
5: The Fallacy Fallacy
This one sounds paradoxical at first, but it is less subtle than it appears. The claim the fallacy fallacy makes (or implies) is: if the arguments in support of X are shown to be invalid or fallacious, then X must be false. The thing is, that doesn’t actually follow. In those circumstances, X has not been ruled out but merely remains unproven—a crucial distinction.
Let’s take a historic example. Copernicus was not the first person to suggest a heliocentric cosmos. As early as the third century BC, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus suggested that the sun might be the center of the universe rather than the earth, but his theory was rejected. Why? Because, with the technology available at the time, no one could see stellar parallax.** Aristarchus argued the stars were simply too far away for us to observe this, and we now know he was correct; but back then, there was no evidence that the stars were as far away as Aristarchus said they were. If anything, this belief of his seemed clearly motivated by the fact that he needed it to be true for his theory to work! In other words, classical heliocentrism was rejected not on the basis of superstition, but on scientific grounds. Aristarchus’ arguments genuinely weren’t adequate to support his conclusion, until our technology got better and we were able to increase and refine our data; the impartial astronomers who wouldn’t accept fallacies or special pleading wound up accepting a wrong conclusion that they had no way of knowing was wrong.†
And there lies the problem with the fallacy fallacy. The truth it misses is simply this: it’s possible to come up with bad arguments for any idea—even the truth. All the more reason to steel-man all arguments, those of others as well as our own.
*I.e., the appeal is nonsensical in isolation. It doesn’t follow that the product is bad, nor even that “being natural” is always a nonsense appeal. For example, a person who is allergic to aspartame but has no adverse reaction to cane sugar may look specifically for foods without artificial sweeteners; that genuinely is common sense.
**Stellar parallax refers to apparent but detectably false movements of the stars relative to each other (the appearance is caused by our own movement through space, and the earth must be moving through space if any theory but geocentrism is true). A more in-depth explanation can be found at this link; but, if you want a short version, you can define parallax right now with just your computer or your phone. Position your device about two feet from your face; then, close one eye and hold one finger up between your face and the screen. Then, switch the eye you’ve got closed. It will look as if your finger has moved. You know very well that it hasn’t, it’s only a trick of perspective; that trick of perspective is essentially the same kind of thing as parallax.
†Funnily enough, the Galilean proofs of heliocentrism prevailed centuries before stellar parallax was detected. The earliest accurate measurements of parallax were not made until the early 1830s: throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, astronomers were in the embarrassing position of having to accept Aristarchus’ argument about parallax without (direct) proof!
Gabriel Blanchard has a bachelor’s in Classics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and serves as CLT’s editor at large. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
If you enjoyed this piece, you might also like our ongoing series on Western history: after our introduction to what the study of history is and what it isn’t, we touch briefly on the Stone and Bronze Ages and the Early Iron Age, before getting into classical antiquity proper (starting with the Græco-Persian War).
Published on 27th June, 2024. Page image of a graphic from 2013, originally titled “Where Would We Be Without Religion?”; created in apparent good faith, it has since become a minor running joke among students of history online for its vagueness and ignorance about its subject matter.