Fallacies Applications Document 2: Solutions

Academics MINERVA® CS50 Formal Analyses SCHOOLS AT KGI

Flora, T. (M22), Koloskov, N. (M23), Terrana, A. Last Modified: July 2020

Introduction 1

Ex 1. Euthanasia and assisted death 1

Ex 2. Recreational cannabis legalization 5

Ex 3. Food aid to developing countries 8

Ex 4. Dress codes, uniforms, and protests 10

Introduction

The examples and solutions below exemplify rigorous and thorough applications of #fallacies. These should assist you in structuring and deepening your applications. When reading them, however, keep in mind that some arguments can be interpreted differently and that not all fallacies in the excerpt were fully analyzed and corrected within this document. Only the underlined fallacies are focussed on here. Compare these solutions to your own, spot differences and similarities between them, and remember that, especially when it comes to correcting a fallacy, there are multiple ways to go about it.

Ex 1. Euthanasia and assisted death

"The case for assisted suicide seems to depend on human sympathy — on the impulse toward mercy, the desire to ease what seems like pointless pain and suffering. Why shouldn’t the terminally ill meet death on their own terms, rather than at the end of prolonged agonies? Why shouldn’t the dying depart this earth with dignity, instead of enduring the inexorable stripping away of their physical and mental faculties?

Such are the sentiments that made Jack Kevorkian, who died last week of natural causes, a hero to many millions of Americans. Though he was tried repeatedly and finally convicted of second-degree murder, the former pathologist’s career as “Dr. Death” (he said he assisted at

more than 130 suicides) was widely regarded as a form of humanitarianism rather than a criminal enterprise. (...)

[Kevorkian] didn’t just provide death to the dying; he helped anyone whose suffering seemed sufficient to warrant his deadly assistance. When The Detroit Free Press investigated his “practice” in 1997, it found that 60 percent of those he assisted weren’t actually terminally ill. In several cases, autopsies revealed 'no anatomical evidence of disease.' This record was ignored or glossed over by his admirers. (So were the roots of his interest in euthanasia: Kevorkian was obsessed with human experimentation, and pined for a day when both assisted suicides and executions could be accompanied by vivisection.) After his release from prison in 2007, he was treated like a civil rights revolutionary rather than a killer — with fawning interviews on “60 Minutes,” $50,000 speaking engagements, and a hagiographic HBO biopic starring Al Pacino.

Fortunately, the revolution Kevorkian envisioned hasn’t yet succeeded. (...) There is no American equivalent of the kind of suicide clinics that have sprung up in Switzerland, providing painless poisons to a steady flow of people from around the globe. (...)

Were [Swiss suicide clinicists] operating in the United States, [they] might well have as many apologists and admirers as the late Dr. Death. But it should make us proud of our country that [they] would likely find [themselves] in prison, where murderers belong.”

Source: Douthat, R. (2011). Dr. Kevorkian’s victims. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/opinion/06douthat.html?_r=2&hp

Ex 1. Solution

Fallacies: red herring, straw man, ad hominem One possible interpretation of the argument the author is trying to make is:

1. Proponents for assisted suicide claim dying patients should have the freedom to end their lives on their own terms through the practice. 2. Many of those who seek assisted suicide are physically healthy. 3. A prominent assisted suicide administrator was a controversial figure, obsessed with human experimentation, and earned a lot of money from speaking engagements after he left prison. 4. (Implied) Therefore, dying patients should not have assisted suicide as an option.

In this case, we can see that the conclusion is not reached through the premises. In the third paragraph, the author invokes many facts about Dr. Kevorkian that are not related to assisted dying or euthanasia. They apply a red herring fallacy by distracting the reader from the issue at hand, using controversial aspects of a doctor who assisted in voluntary deaths to attack the practice itself. This is characterized as an informal fallacy and a non-sequitur of relevance since

the information about Dr. Kevorkian does not allow us to conclude anything about the morality of assisted dying.

The argument is missing a premise that connects Dr. Kevorkian's practice of assisted dying to the moral validity of assisted dying. Because the conclusion cannot be derived with certainty from the premises, the argument is unsound. We are thus interpreting the argument as a strictly deductive one (do you think this is fair?).

The conclusion seems rather extreme for the premises established. There is also some evidence in the passage that goes unused in the argument as we interpreted it. One way to “correct” the argument, then, is to make use of this evidence in an inductive argument that has a more reasonable and likely conclusion.To make the argument reliable, we want to establish a stronger connection between Dr. Death's story and the wider point against assisted dying. This is done in the proposed “correction” below by:

● Removing the red herring (distracting) content of the article, along with premises specifically about Dr. Kevorkian’s controversial behavior. ● Incorporating more appropriate and relevant evidence by adding a premise (about Switzerland) and making the analogy with murder more explicit. ● Narrowing the conclusion to be less extreme (only illegal about “healthy” patients), meaning that it follows more directly from the premises, thus producing a stronger argument.

1. Dr. Kevorkian's case shows that most “patients” who opt for assisted death will have been preventable deaths. 2. Switzerland takes in many patients seeking euthanasia administrations from all around the world, many of whom are not ill. 3. Assisting preventable deaths is equivalent to murder, which is illegal. 4. Therefore, assisted death should be strictly illegal for healthy patients.

This argument could further be strengthened with more lines of quality evidence (premises) to add support to the extent of the issue, in addition to the anecdotes presented here about Dr. Kevorkian and Switzerland.

Additional considerations

At the very beginning of the excerpt, the author frames the argument for assisted dying using a straw man fallacy, narrowing it to an argument for respect for those suffering from disease and pain. This fallacy matters as it misguides readers inexperienced with this debate but it is not the main argument of the passage. It is also arguable that there is an ad hominem fallacy (personal attack), as the controversial facts about Dr. Kevorkian are being used to argue against his practice.

Ex 2. Recreational cannabis legalization

“A study conducted by a team of drug experts in the UK found that marijuana has lesser side effects than many other popular drugs. Researchers found that the combined health risks posed by marijuana are much lower than that (sic) associated with alcohol and tobacco consumption. While alcohol is the direct or indirect cause of thousands of deaths around the country every year, there are no recorded cases of death from marijuana. Proponents of marijuana believe that legalizing other, more harmful, drugs but keeping marijuana criminalized destroys the credibility of valid warnings regarding the risks of substance abuse.”

Source: Why marijuana should be legal everywhere. (n.d.). Mercy Wellness of Cotati. Retrieved from https://mercywellness.com/why-marijuana-should-be-legal-everywhere/ Ex 2. Solution

Fallacy: tu quoque/two wrongs make a right (implied) The excerpt contains an argument of the form:

1. Cannabis poses health risks, but other drugs that pose more serious health risks are legalized. 2. Therefore, cannabis should be legalized.

The argument does not strengthen the claim that legalizing cannabis would generate more benefit than harm, instead appealing to the status of other harmful drugs. While the reasons for a drug to be legalized or not could be used in a strong argument for legalization, they are not present anywhere in the excerpt. Appealing to other drugs, then, can be interpreted as a tu quoque fallacy, in which the speaker shows an error or the hypocrisy of an entity (e.g. a drug enforcement regulator) and uses it as justification for something their premises don't justify. The tu quoque fallacy is an informal fallacy and is a specific kind of two wrongs make a right. In this case, it could be interpreted that the health risks associated with cannabis are permissible in light of the health risks legal drugs pose, which is not grounds for legalization. The argument is invalid, as the conclusion is not related to the premises.

To make the argument valid, we could add more explicit premises related to the reasons drugs should be legalized or not, and use valid rules of deduction to reach the conclusion. In this case, we use modus tollens (denying the consequent to conclude the opposite of the antecedent):

1. A→B: If a drug is illegal, it must be more harmful than legal drugs. 2. ￢B: Marijuana is not more harmful than legal drugs (such as alcohol).

3. Therefore, ￢A: Therefore, marijuana should be legal.

With this revision, we have made the argument valid. Success!...? Not really. The soundness of the argument can be put into question: the first premise is dubious. To make this argument sound, we need more robust criteria for determining what drugs should be legal or not. To address this, we could establish an additional premise that drugs can be ranked by harm, and that the legality of drugs should primarily be based on this ranking. This would allow us to make the case that either alcohol needs to be made illegal or cannabis needs to be made legal (or both). However, this additional premise is still questionable since there are other criteria, besides potential harm, that should be considered to determine whether or not to legalize a drug.

Additional considerations

It's interesting to note that the implied argument at the end of the paragraph that is specifically about the credibility of substance abuse warnings is sound. If you haven’t noticed that in your first reading, try using propositional logic to write down the premises and the conclusion of that argument (some bits of it are implied) and prove it is valid using your #deduction skills. Below, we show one possible interpretation of this non-fallacious part of the argument using symbolic logic as we move backward through a hypothetical syllogism using modus tollens:

Symbolization Key for Propositions: ● A: Marijuana is an illegal drug. ● B: Drugs more harmful than marijuana are legal. ● C: Rules defining what drugs should be illegal are contradictory. ● D: Substance abuse warnings are not credible. ● E: Substance abuse increases.

Premises: 1. (A&B) → C: If drugs more harmful than marijuana are legal and marijuana isn't, then the rules defining what drugs should be illegal are contradictory. 2. C→D: If the rules are contradictory, then the credibility of substance abuse warnings is put in check. 3. D→E: If substance abuse warnings aren't credible, substance abuse increases. 4. ￢E: Substance abuse should not increase. 5. B: Drugs more harmful than marijuana (e.g. alcohol and tobacco) are and should be legal.

Derivation: 6. (A&B) → E (hypothetical syllogism, 1,2,3): If drugs more harmful than marijuana are legal and marijuana isn't, then substance abuse increases.

7. ￢(A&B) (modus tollens, 4,6): We cannot have a situation where marijuana is illegal while other, more harmful drugs, are legal. 8. ￢A ∨ ￢B (De Morgan's Laws, 7): Either marijuana should be legalized or more harmful drugs should be made illegal.

Conclusion: 9. Therefore, ￢A (disjunctive syllogism, 8, 5): Therefore, marijuana should be legal.

Since we have derived a conclusion using valid rules of deduction (namely hypothetical syllogism, modus tollens, disjunctive syllogism, and De Morgan’s Laws), we see that this argument is valid. Moreover, since the premises are all reasonable, the argument, or at least this interpretation of it, is sound. That does not mean it can’t be disputed: the last proposition, in particular, that alcohol and tobacco should remain legal, appeals to common sense and could be challenged. They may also be an unrepresentative sample of drugs that are more harmful than marijuana, which have reasons other than “sufficiently low” harm to be legalized, for instance being part of local cultural heritage.

Ex 3. Food aid to developing countries

The international community has been fighting world hunger since the 1960s through the World Food Program and other massive-scale efforts, and yet still today there are hundreds of millions of hungry people every year. It is only reasonable to ask: should food aid, as we know it, continue?

People should be able to feed themselves, and so if the UN and food security NGOs really want to support poor countries struggling to feed their populations, it should focus on providing scientific and technical aid and machinery. They can keep trying to stave off hunger with palliative shipments of food, or they can step up to the challenge of helping the poorest nations develop through science and increased productivity. Let’s not let food rot in the form of counterproductive aid.

Source: curated example

Ex 3. Solution

Fallacies: false dichotomy, affirmation of the disjunct The excerpt above contains a very contentious ‘or’ statement in its second to last sentence, which is a strong hint that a false dichotomy may be present. This is also an indication that we should check for proper application of deductive rules associated with disjunctions, since denying the disjunct is valid (disjunctive syllogism) but affirming the disjunct is invalid. Our interpretation below shows that the argument above applies two fallacies in one stroke: one informal, and the other, formal. Putting the arguments in symbolic form and atomic sentences, we have:

● A: The international community wants to support poor countries. ● B: The international community should provide scientific and technical advice and machinery so poor countries can develop. ● C: The international community continues to provide food donations.

1. A→B: If the international community wants to support poor countries, it should provide scientific and technical advice and machinery so they can develop. 2. B∨C: We can provide technical advice and machinery for poor countries so they develop, or keep providing palliative food donations. 3. A: The international community wants to support poor countries. 4. (Implied) Therefore, ￢C: We should not keep providing food donations to poor countries.

Let’s break down the use of these two fallacies:

● Since the false dichotomy is an informal fallacy, we identify it by noting the flaw in the content of the argument. The second premise with the disjunction contains the problematic content. It is false because there are more than two solutions to this problem, but only two are presented: providing technical aid (B) and providing food aid (C). ● On the other hand, since affirmation of the disjunct is a formal fallacy, we isolate this fallacious aspect by examining the structure of the argument. Assuming by default that the disjunction is inclusive, we can't infer the truth value of proposition C (we should provide food donations) if we know that proposition B (we should provide technical aid) is true. The argument is thus invalid and, by extension, unsound. We can fix the formal fallacy easily with a slightly altered second premise. We keep the rest of the argument constant and rewrite B∨C as follows:

2. B⊻C: UN and NGOs can either provide technical advice and machinery for poor countries so they develop, or keep providing palliative food donations, but not both because of the budgetary constraints those organizations face.1

By explicitly clarifying and justifying the exclusivity of these options using budgetary constraints, we no longer have a formal fallacy, since affirming an exclusive disjunctive is valid. However, we can not declare the argument sound since we have not fully addressed the false dichotomy. Other possibilities might exist but have not been presented. More acceptable versions of this premise could be...

● Either B or C, or something else entirely. ● Two possible options are B and C. ● The two most important options to consider, out of all possible solutions, are B and C.

Any of these alterations would break the formal validity of the argument, but would at least correct the false dichotomy, thus producing a less fallacious argument overall. The effectiveness of this argument could be improved if more explanation was provided to justify the focus on these two options only, neglecting possible alternatives.

1 The ⊻ symbol used here is the exclusive disjunction (XOR) symbol. It is similar to the (inclusive) disjunction symbol you have seen before (‘∨’), with an added bar at the bottom. Here, it should be interpreted as “B or C, but not both” which translates as “B∨C & ￢(B&C).”

Ex 4. Dress codes, uniforms, and protests

Dear students and parents of Nova Majoris High School,

Enforcement of our school's new dress code and uniforms has been criticized by a vocal minority of students for the past few weeks. We'd like to make it clear why our strict dress code is necessary for the school to operate in an orderly and most fruitful manner.

Wearing short or vulgar clothes shows a lack of decency, and so we cannot allow them to take over the school. A couple of months ago, a student who wore tight clothing had pictures taken of them, and they were ridiculed on the internet, to their and their family's great despair, shared with us on an exasperated email asking for help. If indecency is not enough, it is clear from such instances that allowing students to freely choose their clothing according to what is 'trendy' would actually harm them much more than simply requiring a uniform and proper attire.

The popularity of our uniforms has proved itself in the past weeks, as most students have adhered to them without complaints. If you believe your child is part of the minority causing trouble to our administration (and ultimately, to their own learning experience), or if you are that child, please review our school policy and assume best intentions. Refraining from joining these protests is a large step forward in ensuring learning is carried out successfully at our school.

Best regards,

The principal's office

Source: curated example

Ex 4. Solution

Fallacies: slippery slope, hasty generalization, appeal to ignorance. The letter above is rife with appeals for students to be ‘reasonable’, but not appeal to reason. In one sentence, the author of the email discusses an unfortunate case the school had to deal with when a student was bullied. In that sentence, however, the author goes down a slippery slope, which is implied in the sequence of events described in that case:

1. If a student wears vulgar clothing, then pictures of them will be taken. 2. If pictures are taken, they will be posted all over the school and the internet. 3. If pictures are posted all over the school and the internet, the student will be bullied. 4. If the student is bullied, the family will be greatly displeased, leading to an unwelcome exasperated email from them.

5. We don't want students to be bullied (nor do we want complaint emails from families). 6. Therefore, no tight clothes are allowed.

The slippery slope argument has some interesting features. Firstly, it’s worth noting that the argument has a correct and valid deductive structure, making use of hypothetical syllogisms and modus tollens. The conclusion indeed follows from the premises. As expected for an informal fallacy such as this, the flaw with the argument is not with its structure but with the content of its premises, which here makes it a fallacy of evidence. The generalizations made in the premises contain weak inductions lacking in supportive evidence. Each of them is based on only one case. Given these highly questionable premises, the argument is unsound.

Another note-worthy feature of the slippery slope argument is the importance of the length of the chain of events in the premises. It could be the case that each of the individual conditional statements in the premises may actually be likely to be true. The argument would still be fallacious because the chain of all of them together would be very unlikely.2 There is a compounding effect: for every premise of uncertain truth value added to the argument, the probability of the overall argument being true becomes smaller. This multiplying effect makes slippery slopes distinct from a typical fallacy of weak induction, in which singular connections between premises or between premises and conclusion are unlikely.

It’s usually not possible to correct a slippery slope fallacy with a small tweak. To improve the argument, we would need to ensure that each of the premises are likely to be true, enough so as to ensure that the combination is likely when chained together. More inductive evidence is needed to support the likelihood of these premises. One should thus strive to provide more examples of students who were bullied for not following the current dress code, perhaps even providing statistics that could back up the claim that it is likely enough that bullying will follow ‘inappropriate’ clothing, and that online platforms are likely to be used for bullying. Another approach is to argue that the harm provided by a few cases of bullying is greater than the benefit of allowing any vulgar clothes, which would not rely as heavily on experience, but on normative statements related to mental health and wellbeing, for instance. That would make the argument fundamentally more deductive and diminish how important probabilities are to the soundness.

Additional considerations

Let’s take another look at the slippery slope we discussed above. Because it involves causation, it may be tempting to label the argument as a questionable cause fallacy. However, questionable (or false) cause fallacies are fallacies of weak induction, in which the causation claim lies in the conclusion, which is unlikely to be true from the given information/evidence. In

2 For example, suppose an argument consists of four conditional (if-then) premises, all 75% likely to be true. If the premises are independent (i.e. don’t interfere with each other’s probability of being true), the 4 probability of all premises being true is approximately 0.75 ≈ 31.6% – much lower!

the above interpretation of the argument as a slippery slope, the questionable inferences (‘pictures will be taken’ and ‘they will be posted all over the internet’) are within the premises instead of leaving them to the conclusion. As indicated above, the slippery slope is valid (but not sound), and so the conclusion does follow from the premises with certainty. Meanwhile, still in the second sentence of the second paragraph of the excerpt, there is a hasty generalization alongside the slippery slope. The author takes one instance that supports his arguments and concludes that the instance would repeat itself constantly, which sounds rather unlikely:

1. Some x are Y: A student who wore improper clothes was harmed by it. 2. Therefore, most x are Y: Most students who don’t follow the dress code will be harmed doing so.

The supporting case appears alone, and its underlying explanation can be disputed; certainly the student’s specific identity could matter for a case of bullying, and if there were more students wearing vulgar clothes without the same consequences, then clothing cannot be the only reason for such a case. Like the slippery slope, then, this argument represents an informal fallacy of evidence, but unlike in the slippery slope the conclusion is unlikely to follow from the premises. This makes the induction in the argument weak, and the argument unreliable.

To avoid the hasty generalization, the author could have included more cases of students who had suffered bullying for wearing clothes that violated the dress code, and make the conclusion for avoiding harm more likely to follow. Even if more cases were used to exemplify the point, the author would have to be careful about confounding correlation and causality; maybe there are alternate underlying explanations for students who break the dress code to be bullied, and the correlation could even be weak without proper analysis. This ties into the interpretation of the argument mentioned above as a questionable cause fallacy; we would need robust evidence to conclude ‘vulgar’ clothes are harmful by themselves.

Finally, concluding the email, the speaker applies an appeal to ignorance, another fallacy of evidence:

1. Most x are Y: Most students have not complained about the uniforms recently. 2. Therefore, most x are Z: Thus, most students support the dress code and uniform policy.

Just because most students have adhered to uniforms without complaining, it does not mean it is either a popular or an appropriate policy. This is especially weak evidence in the face of the discouragement to protest the policy at the end of the email. The argument is unreliable as the induction is weak and the premise has questionable truth. To fix the appeal to ignorance, the

author could appeal to what they do know: mention notes taken during a town hall with students, or the answers to a survey distributed to a representative sample of students.