Being yourself

In his book on identity, the French philosopher Vincent Descombes tells a fable made by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) for teaching one of his pupils (1). Usually I look up the original source of such a text, but since it’s not important here, I’m too lazy to do this and I follow Descombes’s interpretation (more or less). Here is the story:

A shipwrecked person is washed ashore on an unknown island. By chance, not so long before the king of the island had disappeared and the islanders couldn’t trace him, despite their efforts. However, since the shipwrecked person resembles the disappeared king, the islanders think that he is the lost ruler and they reinstall him on the throne. The person doesn’t protest and accepts being the king. From now on he has double thoughts, so Pascal. On the one hand he has the thoughts as the king he now is, but behind these thought he hides the thoughts of the person he really is. We can also say that from now on the shipwrecked person leads a double life: In public as the king and in his heart as the man he really is. In fact, so Descombes explains, we have here an identity problem: Because the “king” doesn’t want to reveal his real identity, he must continuously be on the alert, just as impostors must be.

Pascal used this fable to teach his pupil, the son of a duke, that in future he’ll come across the same problem. Of course, the future duke is not an impostor, but once when he has become duke, people will bow for him, will praise him, will be friends with him, simply because he is the duke and not because of the person he “really” is and because of what he thinks of it himself. For the duke then the problem is how to handle this double identity. He can behave like two very different persons: in public as the duke and in private as himself. Then he must fully separate the two persons functionally as much as he can. Or he can try to integrate both persons and to put as much of himself in his function as the duke, in addition to what the function formally requires. Rules are always open to a strict interpretation or a lenient interpretation and not everything is prescribed. In other words, the boy who has become the duke must continuously ask himself: Who am I? On the one hand, I am the duke, a function that I inherited from my father; a function with rules I didn’t make myself; a function I got without desiring it but imposed on me by others. On the other hand, I am myself, with all my personal preferences, desires, likes and dislikes, characteristics, and so on. To what extent must I, can I and do I want to keep these functions apart?

Actually, the problem that Pascal puts forward here is one of the basic problems of life: How to be authentic and when to be authentic? How and when to be yourself? In fact, Pascal wasn’t original when he raised the problem, for implicitly we find it already in Shakespeare’s words “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. In his fable Pascal dealt with a function that we are thrown in by others; a function we cannot help to be charged with. But functions – or roles, to go on with Shakespeare’s metaphor of the world as a stage – can also be chosen by ourselves. They can be taken up voluntarily. But even when the choice of the role (function) is voluntarily, the rules of the role usually aren’t. It’s an exception that the main lines of a role are made by ourselves. Usually they are already prescribed. So in any role we play, in any function we occupy the basic question always is: Will I be authentic in this function or will I not; and to what extent? Will I play a role or will I play myself?

In the Internet you can find many websites on how to be authentic and how to be yourself. I arbitrarily mention two websites (both by chance from Psychology Today): “Develop Authenticity: 20 Ways To Be A More Authentic Person” (2) and “4 Ways To Be A More Authentic Person” (3). It seems simple: Follow the rules there and you’ll become more authentic in what you do (if you wish). However, I can assure you that being authentic, being yourself is not as easy as that. Being yourself is very difficult and often it is impossible, even if you are and want to be honest. The reason for this is simple: Being yourself is not only dependent on you but also on the people around you; the people you go along with or those you meet in your role. Often authenticity is not valued by them.

Sources

(1) Vincent Descombes, Les embarras de l’identité. Paris: Gallimard, 2013 ; esp. pp. 147-156.

(2) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-happiness/201904/develop-authenticity-20-ways-be-more-authentic-person

(3) https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/201503/4-ways-be-more-authentic-person

The base rate fallacy

Faulty base, faulty result

There is a lot more to say about fallacies than I did in my recent blogs. It is important to avoid fallacies, for they are mistakes in reasoning and they distort the way we look at the world around us and how we get along with others and with ourselves as well! Often fallacies lead to wrong decisions or you can get unnecessarily worried about things that might happen. The book Bad arguments that I used for my lasts blogs treats hundred fallacies, but actually it’s only a selection of all the ways we can reason in the wrong manner. Sometimes one wonders how it is possible to survive, if you can make so many mistakes, but the practice is that we do, more and more successfully.

I end the present series of blogs on fallacies by discussing one that is very common: The base rate fallacy. This is the fallacy in which basic information is ignored or is confused with specific information. If you fall into this trap, you get a completely wrong image of what is happening around you or what is happening with you. You can become worried without reason, as said, for instance when you take part in a medical examination of the population and then it appears that you have a positive test result, so you may have a serious illness.

Say, a medical examination of the population is done for a certain deadly disease. 0.1% of the adult population is infected and the government thinks that it is worth to test the whole adult population of the country, for the disease can be well treated if discovered in time. Let’s assume that there are ten million adults in this country and that every adult takes part in the test. The test has a false positive rate of 5% and no false negative rate, so – besides those with a correct positive test result – 5% of the adults with a positive test result actually is not infected, while nobody who with a negative result is infected. The next step is then that everybody with a positive result is called up for further medical examinations. Now it often happens that people in this selected group think that they have a 95 chance of being really infected, for isn’t it so that the test is 95% accurate? By thinking this way these people ignore, however, that this 95% tells us only something about the quality of the test, not about the presence of the disease in the population, which is 0.1% (among adults). Therefore they may become more worried than they need to. Let me show:

- The test is applied to 10,000,000 (ten million) people and 0.1% is infected. So 10,000 people are infected. They all have positive test results.

- 5% of the tests indicate that the tested persons are infected, while actually they are healthy. So

499,500 (5% of “10,000,000 minus 10,000”) people have a positive test result, but they are not infected.

- Both the first group and the second group will have to undergo extra medical examinations in order to determine whether they are really ill or whether they aren’t. So 10,000 + 499,500 people have to undergo extra examinations, which are altogether 509,500 people.

- Only 10,000 people among these 509,500 people are really infected, so 1,96% of the selected group is really infected. Therefore, if you belong to the group selected by the first test, the chance then that you have really been infected in this example is not a high 95% but only about a tiny 2 %. Although this may be serious enough, don’t be more worried than you need to.

In his article on the base rate fallacy (see below), Manninen discusses yet another case where the base rate is ignored. In short it is this: Between 1999 and 2011, 2151 whites were killed by the police in the USA and 1130 blacks were. Therefore whites are worse off than blacks. Is it true? If you look only at the figures given here, you would think “yes”. However, according to the 2010 Census in the USA, 72,4% of the population was white and 12,6% was black. When you add this basic information to the example, the picture completely changes. Need I further explain? If you have come thus far, I assume that you are smart enough to see that in proportion to the respective populations by far more blacks were killed by the police than whites were.

There is a phrase that says “there are lies, there are damned lies and there are statistics”. However, statistics lie only because we don’t know how to use them or use them intentionally in the wrong way.

Sources,

- “Base rate fallacy”, in Wikipedia on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

- Manninen, Thomas W., “Base rate”, in Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 133-136.

Is a fallacy a fallacy?

An argument is either or fallacy or it isn’t. True? If we say “This is tea”, or “This is coffee”, such a statement is either true or false. A drink is tea, or it is coffee, or it isn’t. But in my last blog we have seen that an apparently clear question such as “Do you like tea or coffee?” can be confusing, since its meaning depends on the context in which it is asked. In the same way, also the soundness of an argument can depend on the circumstances in which it is presented. I want to explain this with a short discussion of the so-called ad hominem argument (see also my blog dated 20 May 2019). Like last week, I rely heavily on the book Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy, and now especially on chapters 8-11, written by George Wrisley.

“Ad hominem argument” literally means “argument [directed] against the man” (homo is Latin for “man”). The argument is also called “playing the man”, namely instead of playing the ball, as you are supposed to do in football and in other ball games. There are several types of ad hominem arguments, but here I’ll ignore that.

The phrase “playing the man” makes clear what is wrong with this argument. In football playing the man is not football, since it is breaching the rules. Likewise using an ad hominem argument is breaching the rules of sound arguing. Whether a person who utters an argument is black, white, young, old, a thief, a murder or a decent person, and whether or not s/he behaves as his or her argument says s/he should do, tells us nothing about the correctness of the argument as such. However, sometimes in football a shoulder charge is allowed, which can be seen as a kind of playing the man. How about the ad hominem argument?

Take this example from chapter 8 in Bad arguments (p. 73):

“A school teacher argues for increased pay for school teachers and a critic attacks his argument by replying: ‘Sure! It’s easy to see why you’re in favor of a raise!’ ” Indeed, a school teacher has an interest in increased pay and he can be biased towards it, but makes it that his argument is not correct? Usually it is so that employers want to keep salaries down and employees want to have them increased. Seen this way, it can be right to look for extra information that supports or just undermines the teacher’s demand. Say, he lives in a country in which teachers receive relative high salaries. Then there is a reason to belief that the critic’s ad hominem argument is right. However, in the Netherlands there is a lack of teachers and one measure proposed by politicians to tackle the problem is a salary increase. So in the Netherlands we can assume that the argument is correct, even though the teacher has an interest in a salary increase. What this example shows is that there may be a reason to play the man (namely in the first case).

Or take this example from chapter 10 in Bad arguments (p. 86):

“An eyewitness is on the stand, testifying to the guilt of the accused. The defense attorney asks the eyewitness: ‘Isn’t it true that you’ve been convicted of perjury twice before, and, thus, you are a perjurer, a liar?’ ”

This looks like an ad hominem fallacy, for usually it is so that eyewitnesses are believed just because they might have seen what happened and not because of their personal qualities. However, in this case the eyewitness’s character and credibility are relevant, for twice it has been proven that he was not reliable. It’s not necessary that he’ll be again unreliable (he might have learned his lesson), but there is a good reason to play the man here, and to test his reliability.

The upshot is that, just as a shoulder charge is allowed in football, an ad hominem argument can be to the point. Whether it is, depends on the situation. In his chapters in Bad arguments Wrisley gives some questions which may help to judge whether an ad hominem argument is relevant. In short they are:

1) Is there a good reason to belief that the utterer of the argument is biased; that his or her behaviour doesn’t agree with the argument; and the like?

2) Are these details about the person and his or her circumstances relevant to the argument in question or to the dialogical context?

3) Makes this that the ad hominem argument is to the point or that we need further information in order to substantiate that the utterer’s argument is correct?

But generally it is so that an ad hominem argument is a fallacy. Whether you are black, white, a woman, a man, a Congresswoman, have foreign roots, or whatever your characteristics are, has nothing to do with the soundness of your arguments.

I return to the starting point of this blog, namely the question whether a fallacy is a clear and distinct notion. In Bad arguments a fallacy is defined as “an error in reasoning whereby someone attempts to put forward an argument whereby a conclusion supposedly has been appropriately inferred from a premise (or premises) when, in fact, the conclusion does not and should not be inferred from the premise(s).” (p. 19) According to this definition an argument is a fallacy or it isn’t. In the sense of the definition an ad hominem argument is always a fallacy, for it is not directed against the reasoning but against the circumstances of the reasoning. It’s the same for other fallacies. Nevertheless, as my example of the ad hominem argument has shown, a fallacy can be a relevant argument in casting doubt on a reasoning.

Tea or coffee?

I find logic and argumentation interesting, so when I saw, when browsing on the Internet, that recently a book titled Bad Arguments. 100 of the Most Important Fallacies in Western Philosophy had been published, I couldn’t resist buying it. Already when I read the first chapter, it was clear that it was a good choice, for the chapter is about one of the most confusing words in language: Or.

Consider this example: I have invited my friend John and I ask him what he wants to drink: “Do you like tea or coffee?” Then John will say, for instance, “Tea”. He might also have said “Coffee”, but not “Tea and coffee”, for making a choice is what you are supposed to do in such situations. It’s not polite to ask both for tea and for coffee. However, John might also have said that he wants to drink nothing at all.

Take now another situation. John and I are talking about drinks and then I ask him: “Do you like tea or coffee?” John replies “Tea”, although he might also have replied “Coffee” or even that he doesn’t like tea nor coffee or just that he likes both tea and coffee. That he might have replied the latter is remarkable, for in both examples I asked the same question and nevertheless in the first example John can’t choose both coffee and tea, and in the second example he can. How is this possible?

In order to make this clear, let me write the examples with the help of symbols. I start with the first case. Since logicians prefer the letters p and q for indicating objects, sentences etc, let me use the letter p for “I like tea” and q for “I like coffee”. Moreover, if such a statement is the case logicians call it “true” (or T for short), and if it is not the case they call it “false” (F). Then we can describe my question as “p or q?” and John’s answer is “p ”, which means that p is true and q is false and “p or q” is true. However, if John would have preferred coffee, q would have been true and p would have been false, but “p or q” would also have been true. If he didn’t want a drink at all, both p and q would have been false and so “p or q” would be. Moreover, John knows that it is not polite to ask both for tea and for coffee (p is true and q is true), so for this possibility “p or q” is also false. We can put these results in a table (a so-called “truth table”) in this order:

                                   p          q          p or q

                                   –––––––––––––––––

                                   T         F              T

                                   F          T             T

                                   F          F             F

                                   T         T             F

In the same way the second example can be described with symbols and reproduced in a truth table. Then my question to John is again “p or q?”. John answered “p” as we have seen so p is true and q is false and “p or q” is true. If John had answered “q” instead, q would have been true and p false, but still “p or q” would have been true. However, now it is also possible that John likes both tea (p) and coffee (q), as we have seen, so now – as both p and q are true – “p or q” is true! Including also the possibility that John doesn’t like tea and coffee at all (p, q and “p or q” are false), we get this truth table:

                                   p          q          p or q

                                   –––––––––––––––––

                                   T         F              T

                                   F          T             T

                                   T         T              T

                                   F          F              F

What has this analysis brought to us? I started with two examples in which, as I supposed, the same question was asked, albeit in different situations. Then I clarified the question and the possible answers by constructing truth tables for the two situations. What we see then, however, is that the supposedly same question led to different truth tables in different situations. This is only possible if I actually have asked two different questions, despite the same wording. Although the difference might be in the word “like” (which has slightly different meanings in the examples, indeed), it’s not the “like” that determines the contents of the truth tables, but the choices we are allowed to make do. In each case the choice can be reduced to the question “tea or coffee”. Since tea is tea and coffee is coffee, the upshot is that the word “or” has two different meanings in my examples. In the first example “or” excludes the possibility to choose both coffee and tea, but the second example allows this possibility. Cases like these have logicians made to distinguish two kinds of “or”. They have called them “exclusive or” and “inclusive or” respectively. If we ask a question with the first or, they call it an “exclusive disjunction” (p ⊕ q in symbols), while they talk of a “logical disjunction” (p v q) if we ask a question with the inclusive or. So, when your host asks you whether you would like tea or coffee, it might be possible that he asks you whether you would like to have both.

Reference

Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019.

See especially Jason Iuliano, “Affirming a Disjunct”, pp. 39-41.

Ursula von der Leyen, the new ruler of the European Commission

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (alias Macron and Merkel)

When I saw the excellent performance of Verdi’s opera Macbeth by Opera Vlaanderen in Antwerpen, Belgium, recently, I couldn’t help to compare its story with the power politics as you can see it every day everywhere in the world. Even more, I had to think of a special case, namely the way the new president of the European Commission was chosen by the government leaders and president of the countries of the European Union. Or rather, I had to think of the intrigues by two of them: The French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Angela Merkel. But let me first tell the main lines of the story of the opera, based on the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare (which goes back to a true history that took place in 1040).

The main characters in the opera are the Scottish general Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth. When King Duncan of Scotland is Macbeth’s guest in his castle, Lady Macbeth, in her lust for power and her desire to become Queen of Scotland, incites her husband to murder Duncan. And so Macbeth stabs him, while he is asleep. Now Macbeth and Lady Macbeth become the new King and Queen. However, they fear the Scottish general Banquo, since a prophecy says that his descendants will inherit the throne. Therefore, Macbeth arranges to kill Banquo and his son as well by hiring two men for the job. Banquo doesn’t survive the attempt but his son escapes. The opera ends with the fall and death of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

So far the opera. Now the other story: The nomination of the new president of the European Commission. As is usual in a democracy, after parliamentary elections a new government must be appointed in accordance with the results of the elections. As a rule this starts with the designation of a new prime minister. For the European Union (a confederation of 27 states – assuming that the Union Kingdom has already left the club) this means in the same way that a new European Commission must be chosen, to start with the election of a new president of the commission. On the basis of the results of the elections for the EU parliament the most likely candidate for this function was the socialist Frans Timmermans, with the leaders of the christian-democratic and liberal fractions as acceptable alternatives.

Democracy? In the EU the procedure is that the government leaders and president of the member countries come together in conclave in Brussels, and after long discussions and long nights they come with their nominations for the presidency of the European Commission and for some other important functions and then the parliament gives its consent. Of course, this is the theory, for in practice it is so that only Germany and France decide and that the other government leaders are simply assessors. Actually, what the parliament thinks is unimportant. For isn’t it so that elections are hold only for keeping the people quiet? So, instead of nominating Timmermans (or one of the other acceptable candidates) as president of the European Commission, Macron and Merkel proposed the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, a person who is hardly known outside Germany (and who is the minister of an army known for its broken aircraft and submarines and guns with crooked barrels, and a shortage of everything that an army needs, including soldiers). So when I was in the theatre in Antwerpen a week ago, I couldn’t help to draw a parallel between the opera and the election soap in Brussels: Just as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth first murdered Duncan, the King of Scotland, and then Banquo, their possible rival, in the same way Macron and Merkel first killed Timmermans (too strong) and then Democracy (a future danger). Is there a case of power politics in a “democracy” that is more cynical than what happened there in Brussels? But look what happened to Macbeth and his wife ...

Now it’s up to the parliament to accept the nomination of von der Leyen or not. At the moment that I publish this blog it was not known yet what it will do. Is it important? Sometimes it’s not the facts that count but the intentions are, even if these facts didn’t happen.

A little ethics

Usually I am too late when I want to pay homage to a philosopher, like two weeks ago, when I paid a tribute to Jürgen Habermas. Usually you publish a tribute just before the birthday or other relevant date of the philosopher concerned or soon after the death of the person, but I always miss the news, so also in such cases. I am the kind of person who’ll hear about the end of the world ten years after it happened, so to speak. But this time I am ahead of the fact, for when browsing on the Internet, I discovered that next month on 6 August it will be fifty years ago that Adorno died; in Visp in Switzerland. Now I could wait yet three weeks before publishing my homage, but last week I wrote already about Adorno on occasion of my trip to Frankfurt. Therefore I just write this tribute as a continuation of that blog. Moreover, a philosopher of his standing certainly deserves two blogs. This is the more so, since Adorno still is one of the most popular philosophers in Germany. Also outside Germany his work still is often reprinted, especially his main works Dialectics of Enlightenment (written together with Max Horkheimer), Negative Dialectics (which is more a work for specialists, to my mind) and his Minima Moralia. Just this latter work is Adorno’s most popular book. Even more than 100,000 copies have already been sold in Germany! It has been translated in many other languages as well and also there it is often reprinted. Any philosopher who had such a success can be proud of it. It’s this book I want to write a little bit about as a tribute to Adorno.

Adorno was born in Frankfurt as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund but later changed his name to Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (Adorno was his mother’s family name). He studied philosophy, sociology, psychology and musicology in Frankfurt (where he met Max Horkheimer) and elsewhere. He became a teacher at the University of Frankfurt but in 1933 he was forbidden by the Nazis to lecture any longer. Therefore Adorno decided to emigrate and returned to Germany only in 1953, although he had visited his home country already a few times again since 1945. He spent most of his time in exile in the USA. It was during these years abroad that Adorno begun to write his aphorisms and mini-essays that later would be published as his Minima Moralia (MM for short). Originally Adorno wanted to give the MM to Horkheimer on his 50th birthday, but it was not yet finished then and finally it was published in 1951 in Germany. The title refers to the Magna Moralia that supposedly had been written by Aristotle, although now this is called into question. Apparently Adorno wants to say with the title that the book contains very small (minima) ethical remarks (moralia), to be distinguished from Aristotle’s big (magna) ethics.

The structure of the MM is very different from Adorno’s other books and articles. While these are longer or shorter treatises, the MM consists of 153 short pieces or statements that can each be read on its own: Just open the book on an arbitrary page and start to read – and to think of course. And there is always something to think, for Adorno never writes a word without giving it a wider intention. The book is also a kind of mirror of the author’s experiences, as the subtitle expresses: “Reflections from a damaged life”. Note that when Adorno wrote his book, his country (and most of Europe as well) lived through one of its darkest periods in history: The violence and destruction by Nazism and fascism. So Adorno writes how life must not be and the book has become, as some call it, a negative moral philosophy; a moral philosophy after the holocaust. It’s your task as a reader to transform this into a positive ethics: Make good by criticizing what is not good.

Of course, I tried to trick to open the book on an arbitrary page. In my Dutch edition it was page 99, where I read in reflection 72: “How so many things are inscribed with gestures, and thereby with modes of conduct. Clogs – ‘floppies,’ slippers [in English] – are made so that one can slip them on one’s feet without using the hands. They are monuments to the hatred of bending over.” I have italicized what especially stroke me in this aphorism. What a chance that I just saw this passage, for it says much about present society. In a sense it says how we gradually become alienated from actual life; from how things come about. Basic actions are taken away from you so that you don’t know any longer how basic things come about in life. Go to a supermarket. Do you still know where your food comes from and how it is produced? Take cheese. In the past you bought it from a farmer; then you bought it from a dairy shop, which got its products directly from the farmer. Then you bought your cheese in a supermarket, but you still bought a whole cheese or a piece of it. But today, you can buy there only (or nearly only) slices of cheese. You even don’t recognize the original cheese in it any longer, and you are spared the effort to slice the cheese yourself. Look further around in the same supermarket. Most food is readymade for you, prepacked. You don’t even have to cook any longer. But it’s true, you’ll not get your fingers burnt.

Adorno’s Minima Moralia in German: https://web.archive.org/web/20131114172541/http://www.offene-uni.de/archiv/textz/textz_phil/minima_moral.pdf

Adorno’s Minima Moralia in English (I quoted from this source): https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1951/mm/index.htm

On Adorno

The Adorno Monument in Frankfurt am Main, Germany

When I was in Frankfurt in Germany, lately, I wanted to see also the Adorno monument on the grounds of the Goethe University there. For for a long time Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-1969) has been one of my philosophical and sociological heroes, and actually he still is a little bit. And wasn’t Adorno one of the founders of the famous “Frankfurt School”, once an important current in philosophy and sociology with Jürgen Habermas as its most important “product” (to use an anti-Adornian term)? And it were, among others, Adorno’s ideas that inspired in the 1960s the student movement and its leaders like Rudi Dutschke – the man who said that a real revolution is not a sudden change of society (often based on violence) but that it’s a “long march through the institutions of power”, so a slow internal change by taking nonviolently the seats of power. By the way, this idea that wasn’t unreal at all, as is exemplified by the political career of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, another leader of the 1968 student movement, who later became one of the leaders of the Green movement in Germany and France, deputy mayor of Frankfurt (indeed) and leader of the group of the Greens in the European Parliament. As such I see the green movement as the intellectual legacy of the student movement of the 1960s; and if so it has been inspired indirectly by Adorno’s ideas.

But back to Adorno himself. I must say that his ideas are often not easy to understand. I remember that his book Negative Dialectics stood for more than ten years on my special shelf with books “yet to read”. Then I decided to remove it from there, for if you haven’t read a book for ten years since you bought it, you’ll never read it. When leafing through the book and reading some fragments, I found it actually obscure. I understood hardly a word of it. Also his Dialects of Enlightenment, which he wrote together with Max Horkheimer – his co-founder of the Frankfurt School –, is not an easy book, but I read it with interest and pleasure. In this book – published for the first time in 1947 in Amsterdam, after a pre-publication in 1944 in New York – Adorno and Horkheimer defended the thesis that Nazism was a logical consequence of the Enlightenment. When they wrote it, the thesis didn’t sound implausible but now more than 70 years later it seems too simple. With the same persuasiveness that Adorno and Horkheimer defended their thesis one can object that the Enlightenment was flexible enough to overcome Nazism, or that it were just its ideas that overcame Nazism. Another thesis in the Dialectics of Enlightenment is that capitalist society represses expression of individuality and tries to make everybody the same and uniform and to bring everybody on the same line, for instance because this should be better for massa consumption (one of the pillars of capitalism in the 20th century). I think that this thesis has more substance and still applies to the society of the 21th century. Look how social media like Facebook try to manipulate us and try to make us like what they like! In view of this, Dialectics of Enlightenment is still a book worth to read but then one must try to translate what Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in the 1940s to society as it is in 2019. When you succeed to do so, the book is still modern.

Adorno didn’t write only obscure texts that are difficult to understand. Although also his Minima Moralia isn’t always easy, this book with 153 mini-essays about life and society gives you time to think and when you still don’t understand what you read, just try the next mini-essay.

Adorno’s most well-known contribution to sociology and social research is his The Authoritarian Personality, written together with Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford. In this book the authors develop the famous F-Scale, a method to test whether a person is inclined to be authoritarian and to have fascist ideas. In the meantime this work is classic, and in view of the rise of right-wing populism it is still relevant. As the copywriter of Verso Books writes about it: “It ... marks a milestone in the development of Adorno’s thought, showing him grappling with the problem of fascism and the reasons for Europe’s turn to reaction.”

Adorno was a many-sided philosophical and social thinker and researcher, but not only that. He was also a composer, musicologist and literary critic, but to write about this is outside my competence.

On occasion of his 100th birthday the Goethe University in Frankfurt erected in July 2003 a monument for Adorno (see the photo above). The monument was created by the Russian artist Vadim Zakharov. “[He] described the desk and accompanying paraphernalia as ‘the true expression of Adorno’s personality’. ...  [Zakharov] chose to present the philosopher by documenting his ideas. Thus the functioning desk lamp symbolises his propensity for working at night and the ticking metronome his achievements as composer. Likewise, the edition of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics (1966) [indeed the book that I couldn’t read], placed on an otherwise remarkably tidy desk, represents his philosophical works; manuscripts and sheets of music indicate the main foci of his work. Quotations from Adorno’s Minima Moralia (1951) and Aesthetic Theory (1970) are engraved into the paving slabs surrounding the glass cube. They provide insights into Adorno’s thinking and inspire visitors to reflect on his philosophical ideas.” (quoted from https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/68260839/The_Adorno_Monument). The jury that chose the monument from six entries was enthusiastic about it. Nevertheless, it was marked by controversy, for– paraphrasing Adorno – who are you that you see yourself worth enough to value someone else? Do you think that you are better than that person? (same source). But who am I, then, that I have written this blog about Adorno?

Jürgen Habermas 90 years: A personal homage

The Insitute for Social Research in Frankfurt, 

where Habermas started his academic career

Tuesday last week one of the most outstanding living philosophers celebrated his 90th birthday: Jürgen Habermas. Already this would be reason enough to devote a blog to him. But there is also another reason: Habermas is one of those philosophers who had a big influence on my thinking, especially during the earlier years of my sociological and philosophical development. Currently Habermas is especially known as a political philosopher who stands for the freedom of speech and opinion, for democracy and open discussions and who is an advocate of the European Union. Habermas has always had these views, but during the earlier years of his career he was especially known by his contributions to methodology and the philosophy of science and also because he stressed the importance of language for human understanding. His works in these fields were an attack on positivist thinking and on the idea that there is such a thing as an objective fact. This was especially so in his first major work Knowledge and Human Interest. In this book Habermas defended the view that behind each type of science there is a leading interest that guides its practice. In plain words, the natural sciences are guided by an interest in instrumental action and technical manipulation, while the humanities are guided by an interest in communicative action and mutual human understanding. In order to understand this view one must know that “science” (“Wissenschaft”) in German can refer both to the natural sciences (as in English) and to the humanities and the liberal arts (just as in Dutch, though); then “humanities” can also be read as “hermeneutic sciences”.

Habermas’s epistemological thinking didn’t stop here. On the contrary, it just had started and in his Theory of Communicative Action he further founded the view that no theoretical thinking – so including the theories of the natural sciences – can be objective, independent of what humans value. Moreover, all this thinking is based on the mutual human understanding of what these theories are about. Actually there are two levels of thinking: theoretical thinking, so scientific understanding, and commonsense thinking, so human understanding in daily life. Habermas called the former level of thinking and understanding level 1, and the commonsense level – the way we understand in daily life – level 0. This brought me the idea that there are two levels of meaning related to these levels, which I called respectively meaning 1 and meaning 0 (see my blog dated 16 March 2009).

But what does it mean when we say that we have come to a mutual understanding, be it in scientific discussions or be it in daily life? According to Habermas mutual understanding has three aspects. All these aspects are equally important. In my interpretation, we have only reached mutual understanding on what we say if we – firstly – agree about the truth of the statement we discuss about. So, is the snakelike animal over there really a snake or is it a blindworm (so a kind of lizard)? And – secondly – what is our intention by uttering a statement, for example that there is a snake over there (and not a blindworm)? Are we classifying animals, or is it a warning for a dangerous animal? Moreover – thirdly – do we really mean what we say: Are we honest or authentic when uttering a statement? Maybe, you know that that animal is a blindworm but you try to convince me that it is snake so that I become scared and I’ll run away. I think that this threefold “theory of acceptability” is an important contribution in grasping what mutual understanding and coming to a consensus means. Although the original version of this theory of acceptability was much criticized, for instance because Habermas seemed to suggest that in the end truth depends on our consensus and not on what is out there in the world outside us, I think that its essence, as formulated here by me, still stands.

Anyway, after the publication of his Theory of Communicative Action, questions in the field of philosophy of science faded into the background in Habermas’s work and gradually I stopped following him. I went more and more in the direction of the analytical philosophy of mind and action, also under the influence of Habermas’s friend and co-philosopher Karl-Otto Apel (see my blog dated 20 March 2017). But Habermas’s earlier ideas on methodology and mutual human understanding had a big influence on my further philosophical development and his idea of the levels of understanding were fundamental in my Ph.D. thesis on the method of Verstehen (“understanding”). Moreover it’s not difficult to find there other ideas that directly or indirectly go back to Habermas. However, as it turned out, my thesis led me definitively away from Habermas. This didn’t happen because I came to disagree with his ideas, but my thesis made that I took new paths in philosophy and it stimulated me to develop new ideas in new philosophical fields. However, no doubt , without Habermas I would have failed to see the right signposts.

What does an action mean?

When I asked myself what to write in this week’s blog, I suddenly realized that through the years I have given hardly any attention to my Ph.D. thesis. Actually the only thing that I discussed here from my dissertation was the difference between meaning 1 and meaning 0 (see my blog dated 16 March 2009). Although not everything in my thesis will be of interest to the readers of these blogs, I think that at least one theme is, namely: What do we mean when we say that an action has a certain meaning? The answer to this question is not only of theoretical interest for philosophers or, for instance, sociologists. It has also practical relevance. Think for instance of a court that must judge why a murderer performed his criminal act, or – hopefully more innocent – of parents who want to know why their child did this or that in a certain situation.

Traditionally, it is said that, when we want to know what an agent meant with his or her action, we want to know the reason. Let’s take an example. A man shoots down another man on the other side of the street; then he runs to him and takes his wallet. Why? Without any additional information, you may think that the man is a criminal who robs his victim of his wallet, hoping that it is filled with bank notes. However, such an act is difficult to understand, if the agent happens to be a millionaire. We can “understand” that a poor man needs money and that he thinks that he can get it by shooting down and robbing a stranger, who may have a thick wallet in his pocket. But a millionaire? Why should he do that? I’ll not answer this question, but what my example makes clear is that we need at least two questions in order to understand what the agent did; so in my case why he shot down (and robbed) his victim. The first question is: What was the intention of the agent that he shot down a stranger? Answer: He wanted to take his wallet. And the second questions is: What was his motive (ground) for doing so? Answer: he needed money (or had another motive if the perpetrator was a millionaire). In my blog dated 9 July 2019 we saw that Daniel Dennett calls the first question the “for-question” and the second question the “how-come-question”.

Can we say now that we understand the action performed by the agent? Let’s assume that we know that the agent needed money (so he had a motive) and that therefore he shot down the other man in order to take his wallet (so he had also an intention). Then most of us will say that his act is a crime. Nonetheless the latter is not as obvious as you might think. Even if we know an agent’s motive for acting and his intention in acting, it may be that we still don’t fully understand the action in question. In order to make this clear, let me assume that the town where the action just discussed took place is in the frontline of a war. Two armies are fighting against each other in the streets. Now it may be so that the shooting we just saw happen before our eyes has been done by a criminal who had put on a uniform and uses the confusing situation to rob other people. However, it’s also possible that both the agent and the victim are soldiers belonging to different armies. Both soldiers have received orders to kill opponents and to take the wallets of the victims and to give them to their commanders. Then the shooting soldier has a motive (his orders) and an intention (killing enemy soldiers). Should we then no longer call the action a crime but the execution of a – supposedly legal – order? At first sight we may say so; nevertheless it doesn’t need to be correct. For maybe the victim had seen that his opponent wanted to shoot him down and realized that his gun was empty, so that he couldn’t defend himself. Therefore he held his hands up. Nevertheless he was shot down. Then we talk no longer of the execution of an order but of a crime of war. Cases like these made me conclude that in order to understand an action we need not only to know what its motive is (Dennett’s how-come-question) and what its intention is (Dennett’s for-question), but that we need also to ask a third question, namely the question what the action as such is (in my example: a crime or an order). We can only understand an action and so know its reason if we know (1) how it comes about (its motive); (2) what it is for (its intention); and (3) what it stands for or represents (let’s call it its sense). Only when we have answered these three questions, we know what an action means.

The social self

When you want to show yourself to another, you take a picture. With a few clicks you can share it with anybody. There are many reasons to share a photo. Maybe you just want to show your face; or you want to show a funny situation in which you were involved; or something bad happened to you and you want to tell about it. Whatever the reason is to share a picture of yourself, all such pictures have one thing in common: in one way or another, even in negative situations, you try to show your best side in the given circumstances or anyway a better side. Hardly anybody wants to present him or herself as a wretched little creature, or with sleepy eyes just after s/he has woken up in the morning. If the photo is to be shown to strangers, giving a positive impression is even more important.

When the French philosopher Montaigne (1533-1592) wanted to picture himself for his family and friends, of course, he couldn’t take a selfie or had made a photographic portrait. He could have made a painted portrait of himself, – and such portraits exist – but he had another idea: He thought that the best way to present himself was to write about himself. And so he did and so he wrote his Essays. They pleased many people and they still do, for they are still widely read. Because of this we know what kind of person he was, or rather many people think so. But do we really know Montaigne? Even the most honest person can give only a subjective image of him or herself and such a self image is always distorted in some way. It’s your image of how you see yourself; not one how you are. It’s a first-person view and as such it is always a subjectively distorted if not dressed up self-view. Why would it have been different for Montaigne?

If you realize this when making your self-picture, it wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe you don’t know in what way your self-view doesn’t fully represent the way you are, but once you know that you might be wrong about yourself, you are basically open to corrections. But alas, this is often not the case. Often it is so that people unknowingly present themselves better than they are. Even more, some do so intentionally and think that it’s okay. There can be good reasons for this, of course. You want to have a better position or you want to be accepted by others, for instance, and then it is a bad idea to be negative about yourself. The problem is, however, that, once you have painted such a better self-image, you tend to think that this is really how you are. You are going to believe in your own false image; in the image you have first dressed up. Many people fall into this trap set for others. This was already noticed by the French writer and nobleman François de La Rochefoucauld. A century after Montaigne he wrote: “We are so used to present a distorted image of ourselves to others that in the end we distort ourselves for ourselves.” La Rochefoucauld saw it happen in his own social environment. If in his days you wanted to be a successful nobleman, you had to take part in all kinds of intrigues and conspiracies in order to gain a higher position in the pecking order of the nobility and at the court. And you had also to present yourself better than you were, with the psychological consequence that you went to believe your self-created distorted image. Being a sharp observer, this didn’t escape La Rochefoucauld’s attention.

As said, there can be good reasons to dress up your self-image a bit, but there is risk that you will forget your self-distortion. In my blog last week we saw how social media try to manipulate your self. But that’s only one aspect of what the social media do, albeit an important aspect. The social media are also a source of self-manipulation. Take a look at the profiles of people in Facebook, Instagram, and so on. Take especially a look at the photos and look how people present themselves. What you see are nearly only happy lives and handsome people; people presenting their better selves. That would be nice, if it weren’t so that increasingly people are going to believe that life fundamentally is that way; and they are going to believe that they are as they are in the pictures of themselves they have uploaded. “If my life is not that way, there is something wrong with it; if I am not as in my pictures, there is something wrong with me.” That’s what they are going to believe. More and more I get the impression, to give an example, that if people aren’t handsome they think that they have failed. So they make themselves handsome. In the Internet you can do it by using FaceApp (an app for improving a picture of your face), or in real by using makeup. In the same way you can adapt other aspects of yourself. In your profile description, in your chats .... And in the end you become your self-presentation, or rather you think so. But, whatever you do in order to dress up yourself, you cannot change the facts. As Montaigne said, even on the highest throne, you have to sit on your buttocks. Why should you hide that? If it leads to soreness, it’s better to use an ointment.

Determination and Control

We are all manipulated by social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest and searching engines like Google. Everybody knows or can know. Much has been said about it already and as a result these media etc. promise to better their lives. Maybe they’ll do, or maybe they only say that they’ll do, but do we really care about it? Perhaps we should think like Burrhus Skinner, who asked in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity why we should worry about being covertly controlled and manipulated if it makes us happy. Your first reaction may be that he is right and it is my first thought, too. However, on second thoughts, I don’t feel at ease with the idea of being manipulated, even if I don’t know it and even if I shall never know that it happens and shall not have the slightest suspicion that it happens. Why?

Actually there is nothing special about being limited by external causes and influences in what we do. You have broken a leg and cannot walk for a long time. You have even to stay in hospital at first. A bridge has collapsed and we must make a detour. There is a power failure and the fridge, the Internet and a lot more don’t work for hours. So, why shouldn’t we adapt to the manipulation by the social media just as we must in these cases? It sounds reasonable. Life is that way. Is it?

Take the case of the bridge, but the same could be said about the other cases. The bridge has been built according to the newest insights and has been well maintained, but it has been destroyed by an earthquake. It’s a mere natural disaster. We are sad that it happened, but it happened. But what if the bridge would have been blown up by terrorists? Then we are not sad but angry. Apparently there is a difference between natural limitations and human limitations. Even more, we may find the latter objectionable, while we’ll never use such a word for natural causes.

Once we see this, we are close to the solution of our problem. For “objectionable” has everything to do with objectives, so with purposes. We cannot find what nature does objectionable. Nature doesn’t have purposes but in nature everything just happens, and that’s it. The word “objectionable” can be applied only to human agents, namely to what they do and to the effects of what they do. As Robert Kane says in his book The Significance of Free Will: “Objectionable control is exercised by purposeful agents, not natural forces.” And, referring to Daniel Dennett, he continues: “For, while nature may determine us, nature (‘not being an agent’) does not control us.” (p.69). So, while both nature and the purposeful agent constraint us and limit us in what we can do, nature has no interests in doing so and doesn’t act intentionally. The purposeful agent, however, does have interests, like earning money in the case of the owners of the social media. In view of these interests the purposeful agent sets his aims and tries to manipulate and so constraint our behaviour intentionally. By doing so this agent impedes the wills of the persons who are his objects. That’s why we don’t simply say that the agent determines what we do but that he controls what we do. In this way he limits our freedom, even in case we don’t know he does. But why should we follow the will of the other? Freedom is “the power to be the ultimate source or origin of one’s own ends or purposes rather than have that source be in something other than you.” (id., p.70) In short, freedom is being yourself. That’s what you give up, if you allow yourself being controlled by social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and searching engines like Google, and so on. But maybe you are happy with it.

Source

Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; pp.67-71.

Playing the man

Playing the man or playing the ball?

Not so long ago the mayor of my town organised a meeting with the inhabitants because a serious incident had taken place here. Also some other authorities that were responsible for the incident were present. At the beginning of the meeting the rules were established. One rule was “Don’t say ‘you are stupid but it is stupid that ...’ ” Actually this rule referred to one of the most important fallacies in discussions: The argumentum ad hominem. Someone who uses it attacks his or her opponent as such and not what s/he says. In sports terms we say that you play the man instead of the ball, and – like in sports – in the meeting in my town the rule was set in order to keep the meeting decent and fair and especially in order to avoid verbal aggression. For a public meeting this is important, but it’s not the real reason that you must avoid the argumentum ad hominem. The real reason is that it is a fallacy and that an argument is only good or bad because of its content and not because it is uttered by a person with such and such qualities. Bullying a person does not disqualify the truth of his or her claims.

Playing-the-man arguments often go this way:

- “You say so because you are a socialist” (Ignoring that the person concerned presents figures that show that the measured proposed is bad for poor people; you should attack the figures, not the membership of the socialist party).

- He is not a Christian, so it is not surprising that he committed the murder (As if non-Christians or non-religious persons in general do not have morals).

- He looks like a tramp so he cannot be trusted (As if a suit and a black tie or a neat dress makes you more reliable; but alas, many people think so. In a discussion it can mean that you believe a dressed up person sooner rather than a “tramp”; or just the other way round, depending on your psychological make-up).

- “How can you think so, you are only an ordinary wo/man.”

The essence of the argumentum ad hominem is that we don’t judge a person on the arguments produced in the discussion but – actually or openly – on his or her character, morals, appearance, reputation or anything else that is the supposed reason behind the argument; so actually the person is judged on our prejudices. It can happen, of course, that someone produces a socialist argument, because s/he wants to follow the party line in order to make career within the party; or the tramp lies because it is the only way to survive; etc. But this can only be a sound argument if it has been proved to be the real reasons of the socialist, tramp etc. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the arguments produced.

A fallacy related to the argumentum ad hominem is “guilt by association”. For example, you make a certain claim and another person, who happens to be a crook, makes the same claim; so your claim must be false just because of that. Two weeks ago I discussed in my blog already a special example of this fallacy, the reductio ad Hitlerum, like that you are a vegetarian and Hitler was a vegetarian as well, so it is bad to be a vegetarian. Or another example of the “guilt by association”: John cannot be trusted because he has criminal friends (does just this makes him untrustworthy?). The logical inverse of the guilt by association exists as well: the honour by association fallacy. For instance, she must be a feminist, for she comes from Sweden (supposing, as I do, that feminism is a positive value). Another related fallacy is the tu quoque argument, or the you-also fallacy, but I suppose that now you are smart enough to find out what it involves. As such I hope that these blogs about fallacies have made you smarter and that I have drawn your attention to the way you can be tricked in discussions. And you’ll certainly be smarter after having read Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations.

False reasoning

Fallacies are flaws in reasoning that are not easily noticed, or anyway aren’t noticed at first sight. However, some are easier to discover than others. Some are even quite silly, so Aristotle, and some are even clear “to the man in the street”, especially those that play with the double meanings of words. Many jokes are like that, “e.g. ‘Where are you bound?’ ‘To the yard arm’; and ‘Which cow will calve afore?’ ‘Neither, but both behind’ ”. (182 b 15)

Here is a type of reasoning that seems to have been used often by Sophists (travelling teachers). It has been constructed by me:

1) Carl wrote a history of American capital

2) Washington (D.C.) is the American capital

3) So Carl wrote a history of Washington (D.C.)

Or one that Aristotle ascribes to the Sophists:

1) John has ten

2) John gives one to Pete

3) John no longer has ten, so he has nothing.

I admit that the last one is a bit difficult to understand, because it is based on a weird twist of the mind, but it seems that the Sophists often reasoned that way. Since many people fell into such traps or didn’t understand what was wrong with them, Aristotle decided to write his Sophistical Refutations.

As I see it, the book has two main themes. One theme is an analysis of fallacies. The other theme is how to debate and how to defend yourself against fallacies. The themes are mixed together in the book, though. I think that for a current reader the analysis of fallacies is more interesting than what Aristotle tells us about the technique of debating. The reason is that Aristotle supposes a type of discussion that is currently seldom performed. Aristotle supposes that there is a questioner (the Sophist) and someone who defends a thesis. The former holds then the opposite thesis and tries to refute the thesis upheld by the latter by asking all kinds of questions and producing all kinds of reasons why the defender is wrong. Of course, the defender tries to make clear why s/he is right. Sophists often used fallacies to win the debate. However, nowadays discussions are usually of another kind. They are often debates between two or more advocates of different points of views that are not necessarily the opposite of what the other participants in the debate say (political debates are a case in point). A participant tries to convince the other participant(s) that his or her views are the best. And if s/he cannot convince the other participant(s), s/he hopes at least to convince the public that her or his view is preferable. Discussions as supposed by Aristotle do occur but not so often, but if you are interested in debating techniques, anyhow, you should certainly read Aristotle’s treatise.

In the Sophistical Refutations Aristotle analyzes thirteen fallacies. I’ll not give a description of the fallacies, let alone an analysis, but the main flaws are double meanings, weak or incorrect conclusions and circular arguments. Above I gave already examples of the double meanings of words. Also questions can be confusing in this way. For example, a question like “Did you stop smoking every day?”, can mean to ask whether you stopped smoking, or whether you smoke now less than before, for example one cigarette every other day, or one once a week. An example of a false conclusion is: “Plato is different from Aristotle. Aristotle is a man. So Plato is not a man.” Maybe you’ll not fall into this trap, but one that often happens is the so-called “post hoc - propter hoc” fallacy: “If p is the case then q is the case. q is the case, so p is the case.” An example: If it has rained, the street is wet. Now the street is wet, so it has rained. Of course this need not be true, for it’s possible that a leaking tank lorry has just passed. This fallacy happens more often that you think, for instance in political discussions! The last main flaw I mentioned, the circular argument, is also called petitio principi or begging the question. A circular argument is often hidden in a long chain of reasoning, in which the conclusion is the same as the point of departure of the reasoning. This makes it difficult to give an example here. I know that it is weak to say so, but my excuse is that also Aristotle doesn’t give an example but simply says that the flaw often happens (see 181 a 15).

All this can give only an impression of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. The book is a rather detailed treatise of argumentative reasoning and the first one ever written. Aristotle was aware of this and thought that without a doubt the book would need improvement. Nevertheless, the book was used as a guide to argumentative reasoning till far in the 20th century. Can there be a better proof of the quality of the Sophistical Refutations?

Note on the sources of this blog

The numbers in the text refer to the standard system for referring to passages in the Sophistical Refutations. The quotes are from the online edition mentioned in my blog last week. For writing this blog I have used the introduction to the Dutch edition: Aristoteles, Over drogredenen. Translated and annotated by Pieter Sjoerd Haspers and Eric C.W. Krabbe. Historische Uitgeverij, Groningen; 2018.

Sound reasoning

Aristotle with the Dutch translation of 
De Sophisticis Elenchis, in English Sophistical Refutations

When Aristotle wrote his book on fallacies (De Sophisticis Elenchis, in English Sophistical Refutations) he will not have realized that it would last 1500 years before it would become a standard work of argumentation. This book, which belongs to his Organon (a collection of six methodological works), is the first systematical treatise on reasoning ever written. It analyzes a range of fallacies often used by people in their argumentations and it describes also how to perform a discussion. The book was especially directed against the Sophists. These were, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica tells me, “lecturers, writers, and teachers in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, most of whom traveled about the Greek-speaking world giving instruction in a wide range of subjects in return for fees.” Basically what the Sophists did was okay, but some – or too many – applied intentionally false arguments in order to win their debates and so to earn money. It made that the Sophists got a bad reputation. For Aristotle it was a reason to write his book.

After some time the Sophistical Refutations and most other works written by Aristotle became forgotten. At least this was so in Europe for in the Arab world they remained influential. Only from the 12th century on they became known again in Europe, especially thanks to the Arab philosopher Averroes and Jewish scholars in Andalusia. Also the Sophistical Refutations was rediscovered and it became even the standard work for argumentation till far in the twentieth century, although it didn’t remain without criticism. We saw already in my blog two weeks ago that Descartes was not satisfied with Aristotle’s argumentation theory, because it was only useful for arranging knowledge but not for acquiring new knowledge. The authoritative status of the Sophistical Refutations was only undermined when Charles Hamblin published in 1970 his book Fallacies. Since then it is still seen as an important book on sound reasoning, but it is recognized that there is more to say about argumentation and that Aristotle’s theory must be adapted and supplemented in view of later developments.

I just started reading Aristotle’s book, so I don’t know whether he treats the fallacy under another name, but one that Aristotle certainly doesn’t discuss is the Reductio ad Hitlerum, the “Reduction to Hitler”, a term coined by professor Leo Strauss in 1951. Sometimes the fallacy is also called the Argumentum ad Hitlerum (Argument to Hitler) or “Playing the Nazi-card”. It’s a version of the association fallacy, which says: A has property p and B has also has property p, so A and B are the same (at least in some relevant aspects). In the case of the Reductio ad Hitlerum the reasoning is that someone has a certain view and, since this view was also held by Hitler, this person is wrong. For instance, it’s not good to be a vegetarian, because Hitler was also a vegetarian.

Forty years later the American attorney and author Mike Godwin developed the Argumentum ad Hitlerum into what became known as Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. So, if an Internet discussion lasts long enough, sooner or later a statement by one of the participants will get the reply “Hitler (or the Nazis) said the same”. But, as my example just given made clear, a view hold by Hitler is not automatically wrong. Even so, such an argument can pollute a debate, which makes that some moderators of Internet discussions have decided to finish a thread, as soon as the Argumentum ad Hitlerum is put forward. Of course, someone can use the Hitler-argument with the intention to end a discussion, but often people use incorrect arguments like this one without knowing that they are fallacies. They sincerely belief that their factual fallacies are sound arguments. In view of the latter, although it is true that the time has come to improve and supplement Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations, even after more than 2300 years it still keeps its value.

You can find an Internet version of Sophistical Refutations on https://web.archive.org/web/20061004164921/http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/sophistical/