[lit-ideas] Re: Ideology vs Experience
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 21:29:20 -0700
Lawrence writes:
An "anecdotal argument" isn't a real argument. It's a fallacy. Its
conclusions are not valid. What you've presented isn't an anecdotal
argument. And it isn't what Simon presented. Do a Google search on
"Anecdotal Argument" + "fallacy".
I've already done Googled it. Yes, so-called anecdotal arguments are in
various
places called fallacies. But a fallacy is just any argument whose conclusion
could be false even though its premises were true. The only thing wrong with
'anecdotal evidence' is that when 'anecdotes' make up the premises of an
argument, their truth is suspect--at least that's all that I can find to
distinguish anecdotal arguments from other sorts of arguments. And here I'll
amend my earlier remarks and say that this really doesn't distinguish them at
all.
Here's an example (found online) of what somebody takes to be an an anecdotal
argument, and hence fallacious:
My sister prayed to be healed.
She was healed.
Therefore, praying heals.
What is it about this argument that makes it fallacious? The subject
matter? The
falsity of its premises? It has the same form as:
My sister stood on her head to make her loose tooth fall out.
Her tooth fell out.
Therefore, standing on one's head causes one's tooth to fall out.
The first argument might be suspect because it isn't clear what the
link between
the first and second premises is. If the second premise had been 'She grew a
moustache,' we'd wonder how (or why) praying to be healed would cause her to
grow a moustache. We slide past this in the argument given because it's
easy to
think that the second premise was simply shorthand for something like 'This
caused her to be healed.' But the argument is a fallacy not because of the
anecdotal nature of its premises but because its conclusion could be
false even
though its premises were true, for the conclusion seems to be a general claim
about the efficacy of prayer, whereas the premises refer only to what happened
(or didn't happen) to my sister. Lawrence knows that from 'There is an x, such
that...,' one can't derive 'So, for all x...' One can't conclude from a single
instance some general truth, whether its about the efficacy of prayer or the
efficacy of standing on one's head.
Suppose that the conclusion of the first argument had been 'Prayer works.' And
suppose we add the premise 'If something works in one instance, it
works.' This
might be a stipulation--take it or leave it--of what it is for something 'to
work.' And if it is, the argument looks OK to me except for this: the
first two
premises could easily exemplify what's usually called a post hoc
fallacy (this,
then that; so this because of that). Well, where have these ramblings got me?
Not far. I still don't think there's a special kind of fallacious argument
called an 'anecdotal argument.' (I know people claim this, but when they do,
they don't point to anything that's really unique to what they point to.) That
is why I said earlier that the questionable thing in the case of anecdotal
evidence is that it's just that: anecdotal and unconfirmed.
Lawrence says:
The problem with this fallacy is that we don't believe it is one. If we
have a bunch of accidents, more than most people do, we think we are
accident prone, but what does that mean? It may mean that we are not as
well coordinated as most people. It may mean that we have been unlucky. It
may mean something that we are an awkward adolescent and will grow out of
it.
It is true of most fallacious reasoning and its acceptance that those
who engage
in it and those who accept it don't believe it's fallacious. Nothing special
about anecdotal arguments in that regard. In the case of inferring, or trying
to infer, from the fact that a person has had far more 'accidents' than might
be expected is 'accident prone,' there's no problem of evidence or reasoning,
no special one: there's a problem of creating a phony substantive 'accident
prone-ness' and thinking it exists on all fours with chronic asthma, or
whatever. Something that doesn't exist is conjured out of a sequence of
actions
or events, which, as far as the world goes, exist only as a sequence of
actions
and events, period. Perhaps a clearer example would be attributing manual
dexterity to someone on the basis of her being able to perform neatly and well
when e.g. taking apart an old-fashioned watch. (David Savory and I used to
discuss IQ in this light.)
But in a real case, the case of Iraq (say), the fact that many
witnesses report
the same thing bears on the evidence supporting a certain claim (that whatever
they report is common or pervasive). And evidence about things in the real
world, ideology apart, supports or csts doubt on some empirical claim, usually
an interesting general one, without aspiring to be related to that
claim as are
the premises and the conclusions of deductive arguments.
I've heard that the very best argument is one such that if you accept its
premises but don't accept its conclusion, you die. Just below this are
arguments such that if you accept the premises and don't accept the conclusion
you become very, very ill.
There's nothing about an 'anecdotal argument' that distinguishes it from other
common fallacies. And, since every fallacy is, as I said five hours ago, just
an instance of the possibility that an argument's conclusion could be
false and
its premises true, that we give special names to common fallacies says nothing
about their logical form.
Robert Paul
lost in logical space
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