What is a logical fallacy?
In philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy or non sequitur is a patter of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure.
Some logical fallacies are pretty easy to explain.
- 'Ad Hominem' is when, instead of addressing, attacking or arguing against a person's position, the person himself is attacked. For example, claiming that a person's position on Medicaid for All is wrong because she once got a DUI
- A 'Straw Man' is when a weaker (or sometimes an imaginary) version of an argument is attacked rather than the argument itself
- A 'False Dilemma' supposes that there are only two alternatives, for instance "We either pass this bill or we are no longer a Democracy", when there are in reality multiple intervening positions.
- An 'Appeal to Authority' is when a person's intelligence, credentials or background are substituted for actual evidence, like when the opinion of Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Steven Hawking, eminent physicists, is treated as valid in the realm of economics or public health.
In any logical fallacy, the person resorting to its use isn't necessarily wrong, just that they have not presented facts or evidence sufficient to back up their position. A person who says that Donald Trump was a bad president because he was a New York real estate developer may have been 100% correct about him being a bad president, but the fact that he was a New York real estate developer had nothing to do with it. That would be the ad hominem fallacy.
The fallacy 'Hypothesis Contrary to Fact' gets used a lot, but the casual participant in social media arguments may be unfamiliar with it. Simply put, the premise is something that didn't actually happen, which is used to support the conclusion. The fictional literature subgenre called "alternate history", or sometimes "contrafactual history" uses this fallacy. We've all likely heard of, if not read, the "If The South Won the Civil War" books. "The Man in the High Castle" by Phillip Dick builds upon the premise that the Allies lost World War II. (In a neat twist, the book references a fictional account of how the Allies won World War II). All of these stories are extended version of 'Hypothesis Contrary to Fact'.
How does this relate to current events? Many of us reacted to the news that the killer of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year by making statements that started with "If the killer was Black..." and drawing various conclusions about the outcome if this was true. I recently saw these types of statements described as "flawed and worthless" since the "if" portion of the statement, the premise, was false. I will concede two points: (1) The premise is not factual, the killer isn't Black and (2) We can't prove that the conclusion based on the contrafactual premise would have come to pass if the premise were true.
So what?
No one who makes statements or shares opinions about what they think would have happened if the murderer of two people in Kenosha were Black thinks that they are proving anything. We'll never know for certain how the verdict would have been different, or even if he would have gotten past the police alive, if he had been Black...not with 100% certainty, but we can make a pretty good guess based on the difference between how armed White people and armed (or even unarmed) Black people are treated by law enforcement and by the courts. The lack of certainty is only a technicality within the laws of logic, which don't always align with the real world. There's certainly examples where, despite the presence of this particular fallacy, we can speculate pretty accurately how things would have turned out. I can state with a high degree of confidence that if I had begun contributing to a retirement account when I was 25, instead of when I actually did, at age 45, that my financial situation would be much better. Technically and logically, I don't know that, but...c'mon.
There have been enough examples, enough of a trend, about how White and Black people have been treated and how they're viewed differently to come to reasonable conclusions. I think we can reasonably extend our suppositions to the difference in how progressive/left wing protesters are treated versus right wing protesters. There hadn't been a lot of shootings at last year's protests, but we have one example of Michael Reinoehl, a self-described Antifa activist, who allegedly shot and killed a right wing counter-protester in Seattle. Reinoehl never had the opportunity to plead self-defense at his trial because he didn't have a trial. He was shot and killed by police. We can also look at, specifically in Kenosha, how Black Lives Matter activists were viewed as a threat, while armed counter-protesters were allowed to roam freely, despite there being a curfew that the police were attempting to enforce on the BLM protesters. Of course, unless you have been hiding under the proverbial rock for the last few years we see how quick police are to shoot first, ask questions later when it comes to Black men. Right next to you under that same rock will be people who deny that there is racial bias in our legal system despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
So, even though, according to the rules of logic, a hypothesis contrary to fact is a logical fallacy, that doesn't mean that the conclusion is wrong, just that it can't be proven logically. Based on the long history of unequal justice in this country it's certainly reasonable to conclude that if the killer who roamed the streets of Kenosha with a deadly weapon, who had killed two people and wounded a third in plain sight, had been Black, he would not have been allowed to walk away, and likely would have been shot as a threat. And if he had survived that night, it's also reasonable to presume that he would have had a less friendly judge and spent time in jail.
Not everything can be neatly tied up in a logician's bow.
