Logical Fallacy 14: Special Pleading

Special Pleading is a fallacy where you support your argument with arbitrary exceptions that apply only to you or a group that you have a special interest in. Basically it's creating a Double Standard. This fallacy can be hard to recognize.

This is Part 14 in a series about Logical Fallacies.  Please comment or email if there’s a particular fallacy you want me to tackle, or if you have success with refuting an argument using a good technique you can share.

Special pleading makes an excuse for why someone's situation is the exception to the rule. But there's nothing to back up the ad hoc reasoning.

Examples:

Harold Camping's rapture prediction is a good example. When the rapture didn't happen, Camping eventually said that it did, but that there were special circumstances, namely that it was a spiritual rapture instead of a physical one.

Another one that is more direct: "I believe that all drunk drivers should lose their license. But even though I was legally intoxicated I shouldn't be punished because I was fine and I can hold my liquor better than others."

Another form of Special Pleading is the assertion that you don't have the qualifications to comprehend the person's point of view. For example, "As an atheist, you can't understand God because you're on the outside looking in."

How to Refute Special Pleading:

The first thing you can do is tell the person that they are using a double standard with nothing to back it up. The only other thing I can think of is restate the facts that negate the spurious claim.

Another way to go is to give a similar example to what the person is saying, and get them to admit that in that case things would have to go the normal way. Then say that the case they've brought up is basically the same and should be treated the same.

If you have successfully refuted this logical fallacy, please share how you did it!

Sources:

• Skeptics Guide to the Universe
• Wikipedia

A Revelation!

I realized something this morning. As you might know, I have a second blog with a Catholic friend of mine called AtheistCatholic. We have tried to keep the atmosphere friendly, but the comments get a bit heated and get very debate-like which drives me nuts.

I don't like to debate. For someone like me, it makes me incredibly frustrated. Well, I don't mind having arguments with some people. For instance, I can disagree with my husband and many of my friends and we can have a friendly argument where we have different points of view. I usually end up feeling we both hopefully learned something and it seems productive. Awesome.

But there are some people (and some types of people) that I just can't stand arguing with. With them it turns into a debate and I end up feeling extremely frustrated or downright angry. I don't like being frustrated or angry. My revelation is why it's so irritating.

It's because they don't play fair. They use logical fallacies like cats take naps. They play the "offended card" at the slightest disagreement. But the main reason is that their logic is so flawed that it makes me feel crazy just trying to figure out what they said.

My problem is that I can tell that they are doing these things intuitively now, but I can't name the logical fallacy or explain the flawed logic and straighten it out. Sometimes it's because I know the topic well enough to understand it, but not well enough to explain the mistakes of someone else. For this issue, the only solution I see is to learn more deeply about the topics that matter to me.

And I guess I can study the logical fallacies more, right? But the flawed logic, that just boggles my mind. I think I need to study that more. If you have any suggestions for good books that teach logic, let me know! Preferably something that is understandable in everyday language.

Do you have people that you deal with who don't play fair and are really irritating to argue with? How do you deal with them? How do you avoid debating but still get your point across? I can't figure that out either.

 

Thoughts on Arguing

I have been wondering about arguing lately. How we argue, how we get set in our world view and dig in like a donkey sits back on its hind legs and won't budge. The reason this has been in my mind is because I've been trying to learn about determinism. When I first heard about it in a podcast by the Reasonable Doubts guys, I resisted and thought, this is ridiculous! Of course I have free will! I feel like I do!

But after 4 hours of them explaining it, I felt like I was getting it. Then we had our Morgantown Atheists group have a meeting on determinism and free will. A professor from WVU came and talked about it and I got it even more. Now I've tried to explain it to my husband Butch and my friend Jeff, who are both extremely resistant and argue against it. Part of that is probably because I don't understand it enough to explain it well. But part of it is because the idea of determinism is huge. It rocks your world when you hear about it.

What I'm really trying to get at, though, is how we, as humans, seem to always fight for what is most comfortable and familiar to us. We always seem to resist new ideas. And something else, we always seem to pick the other side of an argument if we're up in the air. For instance, when I was explaining determinism to my friend Jeff, he objected heartily.

But then we were talking about this topic, about how people stick to their comfort zones, and he told me that he ended up explaining determinism to his son, and found himself defending it, while his son objected.

Isn't that interesting? Why do we do this? I'd love to see some research on this. I've heard of a few studies that might apply to this, but I can't recall them clearly enough to find them for you. If I can think of how to search for them, I'll add them here. If you know of any studies please let me know!

Also, do you find this is true for you and your friends and family? Or do you see it differently?

The Science of Persuasion

The other day I gave you a transcript from a lecture. The article was titled Why People Defend Their Dogma. At the end I promised a follow-up with some practical advice. And here it is. They did another episode of Reasonable Doubts, Episode 70, where they talked about how to persuade people, especially about science. They talked about a professor who has done some studies. I have written up a transcript of the salient parts of the conversation.

Partial Transcript:

37:18 If the goal is not to score points, if the goal is actually to persuade people, if the morally superior goal is to win minds rather than just make people look stupid, then tone really does matter. Psychology has some things to say about how we should best go about trying to persuade people to really, any position, but even more specifically to a scientific position that they may otherwise feel threatened by,  or may conflict with their worldview.

38:07 It's an empirical issue. What is likely to be persuasive or off-putting or not is a testable question. There are people right now researching how you package factual issues and seeing if that affects the rate at which people believe, disbelieve or deny them.

One of the examples of this, there is a researcher who's name is Geoffrey Monroe from Towson University who has done some studies on peoples' willingness to agree with belief consisting information as opposed to information that's inconsistent with beliefs as a function of things like how the information is presented to them.

So he had a piece on Science and Religion Today where he folded this into the debate about, do you alienate people by using blunt language that offends them. The theory behind this that people don't, as most people probably realize, they don't simply make up their mind on the basis of factual, cognitive, cold type calculations. This is one aspect that frustrates us, is that when we are debating with somebody, it quickly becomes apparent that the facts of evolution in some cases won't make a difference, if the person has an emotional investment.

So people hold attitudes because they are linked to aspects of your self-identity. As stated in Terror Management Theory, if you have a worldview that can be threatened, you get defensive. You circle your wagons as if attacked. In the same way, with factual issues like scientific-type things, religious people hold these as part of their broader self-identity.

Arguments For God's Existence Are Wrong - Teleological Argument

Recently, the Morgantown Atheists hosted a satirical night of (re)Conversion where our Brights friend Rachel tried all the arguments she could think of to convince us to turn back to god. No one took her up on her offer. But she did go through a bunch of classical arguments that I thought I might share with you. It's good to hear what people use as excuses for believing in god, and it's good to have sound arguments against those beliefs.

Let's start out with the Teleological Argument.

Teleology: the philosophical study of design and purpose. The supposition that there is purpose or direction in the works and processes of nature.

Teleological Argument: the Argument from Design: argues for the existence of god or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, design or direction in nature.

Here's the basic argument:

• The universe is too complex, orderly, adaptive, apparently purposeful or beautiful to have occurred randomly or accidentally.


• Therefore the universe must have been created by a sentient, intelligent, wise or purposeful being.


• god is a sentient, intelligent, wise or purposeful being.


• Therefore god exists.

You can substitute just about anything in for the universe. The eye, humans, the fundamental constants of the universe, etc.

Many great men have used this argument over the centuries, but that doesn't make it valid. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero to name a few. Cicero started the Watchmaker Analogy:

"When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?" (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 34)

You Are Wrong Because:

Hello Everyone! I hope, if you're in the States, you had a happy 3 day weekend (all non-Americans, I hope you had a happy regular weekend!). Mine was packed full of socializing centered around the annual family reunion. Needless to say I've been quite busy, but I did want to show you something my friend Rachel over at Morgantown Brights shared with me since we're always talking about logical fallacies here.

Nothing can reduce your happiness faster than an argument with an irrational co-worker. You can’t win irrational people over to your side by your superior reasoning abilities. And you can’t talk them into getting inside abandoned refrigerators and closing the door to see if the light goes out. There simply aren’t that many abandoned refrigerators. If you use the refrigerator in the break room, everyone will start whining about how there’s no room for yogurt. Until there are more refrigerators, or less yogurt, you will find yourself in frustrating discussions that can have no good endings.Trying to win an argument with an irrational person is like trying to teach a cat to snorkel by providing written instructions. No matter how clear your instructions, it won’t work. Your best strategy is to reduce the time you spend in that sort of situation.

I have developed a solution to this problem. It is based on the fact that irrational people are easily persuaded by anything that has been published. It doesn’t matter who published it, or what the context is, or how inaccurate it is. Once something is published, it’s as persuasive as anything else that’s ever been published. So I figure that what you need is a publication that supports all of your arguments no matter what they are. This is that publication.

I have collected the most common arguments made by irrational people into a handy reference guide and titled it “You Are Wrong Because.” Circle the irrational arguments that apply to your situation and give a copy to the person who is bugging you. Look smug, as though this were conclusive evidence of your rightness. A rational person might point out that just because something is written down doesn’t make it so. But since you’re not giving the list to anyone with that much insight, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you will feel as though you brought closure to a potentially frustrating situation.

You Are Wrong Because:

For your convenience, I have circled the brain malfunction(s) that most closely resemble(s) the one(s) you recently made on the topic of (fill in topic):

The Christian Questionnaire

This is so clever, I have to share it with you. We all need to keep copies of this to hand to those pesky christians trying to convert us to their cult: The Christian Proselytizer Questionnaire:

If you're reading this paper, it means I've given it to you because you were proselytizing to me and you are a Christian. I'm giving you this paper to save us both some time; you see, I'm not a Christian, although I used to be. I'm a secular humanist, and I became one for both logical and emotive reasons.

Since I've been a Christian, I do know quite a bit about the religion, although I might not know much about your particular sect. (I use the word sect instead of the word denomination because I think it unfair that Christians get denominations, which is a nice-sounding word, while everyone else gets sects, which is an evil-sounding word.) I became a non-Christian because I didn't like what I knew about the Christian religion. If you want to even begin attempting to convert me, you have to settle those problems. Specifically, you have to answer the questions below. Answers to each question should be typed or neatly handwritten on a separate sheet (or sheets) of paper, and no answer should exceed 100 words. This is because one of the reasons I left Christianity is that it was so complex, and I've found that the simplest answer to a question is usually the right one. Quotes from scripture count for bonus points as long as you can refute other quotes from scripture that contradict the passage that you are quoting. If you return this paper to me personally, or if you mail it to me, and if I think that your answers justify my return to Christianity, then I will get in touch with you.