Sorting Through Sophistries:
Four Knowledgeable Fallacies
By Gabriel Blanchard
We again confront a collection of sophistries today, all of them involved in the problem of epistemology.
1. The Observer Effect
Also known as “the psychologist’s fallacy,” this pops up mainly in the soft sciences: sociology, political science, anthropology, psychiatry, etc.; at the utmost “micro-” level, it also appears in physics. The problem is that certain things—subatomic particles and people being the main examples we know about—change their behavior when they are observed; they interact with observation. If you look at a cowslip orchid for a week, it is unlikely to behave differently than it would if you weren’t looking at it, no matter how threateningly you scowl; but if you turn that unexplained, unrelenting scowl on your lab assistant for a week, and he might have a panic attack by Saturday.
To be clear, the fallacy here is not that observation affects things; rather, errors occur when people fail to take the observer effect into account. This may lead them to serious shortages or misinterpretations of data—because their observation is an unnoticed variable.
2. The Cotswolds1 Problem
You might also call this the fallacy of magnification, or something to that effect. The problem it represents is: how exact does an answer need to be to count as “correct” in a given circumstance?
The number π is a good example. Everybody knows that the value of π is 3.14159. Except, most of the time, we don’t bother with those last three digits. And actually, 3.14159 isn’t the value of π: its real value is 3.141592653589793238462643383 … As an irrational number, it is literally impossible to say truthfully “This is the exact value of π,” because the decimal goes on forever—all we can do is approximate. This example is obviously specific to maths, but the same principle—how much can you simplify an answer before it’s just wrong—taxes nearly every discipline.
3. Arbitrary Epistemologies
Here we have a chronic problem in modern thought. In brief, epistemology answers the question “How do we know things?”—both in the sense of on what basis and in the sense of via what process. Epistemology has a marked tendency to get itself tied in knots, because it is inherently recursive: “thinking about how we think” almost sounds like the verbal equivalent of a hall of mirrors.
The most ordinary view—not necessarily correct, but ordinary—is that we receive knowledge through a few different means, including sense perception, logic and mathematics, and trusted authorities. Depending on whom you’re speaking with, a few other things might come into it (including but not limited to mumbo jumbo and jiggery pokery).
There's a lovely analogy from cartography, where they say "The only true map is the exact size and shape of the thing you're trying to map," but best of luck taking that on a short camper-vanning holiday in the Cotswolds.
The fallacy of arbitrary epistemology assumes, without discussion, that this or that or the other thing is the only valid source of knowledge. We’ve spoken now and then of the scientistic worldview here at the Journal; this word represents the notion that only experimentally verifiable knowledge is “really” knowledge. Scientism is an eminent example of this fallacy. Another is fideism, or “blind faith” as it is also called; this fallacy treats some religious authority (book, person, institution) as immune to argument.
Mind, though, that the phrase “without discussion” is key. Among people who already subscribe to a narrowly circumscribed epistemology, it’s not fallacious at all: it’s building on common ground. The issue that comes up when an epistemology is sprung on unsuspecting passersby is, that ground is not common to them—or at least, it’s neither reasonable nor fair to assume it is.
And talking of unfairly springing things on passersby …
4. The Socratic Fallacy?
We opened this series commemorating Socrates; we condemned the false association his enemies made between him and the Sophists. We stand by that commemoration and that condemnation. We do not believe that Socrates realized one of his most frequent assumptions was flawed and just didn’t care.
… But it was flawed. It feels almost petty to bring it up; then again, Socrates would be the first to insist that the exact truth is worth having for its own sake. The flawed assumption in question is simply this: that knowing something and being able to articulate it always go together. Probably all of us know from experience that that isn’t true.
In a sense, this fallacy must be allowed for purposes of debate. If arguments are going to be constructed at all, they must include (for instance) clear definitions of key terms; it really won’t serve for anything to be defined as “Y’know, like [meme of choice],” no matter how apt that definition may feel.2 But it is also worth our while to remember, now and then, that not everything exists to be debated.
1The Cotswolds are a scenic region in England to the west of Oxford and above the Severn River, famed for the yellowish limestone of which many local buildings are made. Tewkesbury Abbey, founded in the seventh century and considered one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in existence, is in the Cotswolds.
2That said, there is no reason that additional explanation of a definition could not include [meme of choice]. Even debate may have a touch of whimsy now and then.
Gabriel Blanchard vanishes on being seen.
If you enjoyed this piece, you might like our posts on the great debaters and epistemologists Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, or our “Great Conversation” posts on the concepts of hypothesis, opposition, and time.
Published on 22nd August, 2024. Page image of Aspasia Conversing With Socrates and Alcibiades (1801) by Nicolas-André Monsiau.