Introduction
Aristotle famously characterized human beings as rational animals.1 Maybe he was talking about a very different species I’m unaware of, though, or maybe he had just done some really bad empirical research, because the human beings I know aren’t very rational at all. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of interacting with any of them (in which case, my condolences), you know what I’m talking about. Human beings are, generally speaking, very, very bad at reasoning.
I’m not just saying that because I woke up feeling grumpy (though admittedly, that’s probably a factor). Human beings are prone to all kinds of cognitive biases that systematically lead us astray in our reasoning: We’re biased toward our in-group and against our out-group; we’re biased toward evidence that supports what we already believe and against evidence that challenges it; we imagine that all kinds of phenomena, from weather events to random patterns, are intentional even when they aren’t.2
Not only that, but as you’ll learn in any introduction to critical thinking, our biases also incline us to commit all sorts of egregious fallacies when we reason. Philosophers, bless their hearts, have made a valiant effort to identify these fallacies and teach us to recognize them. That way, we can avoid them ourselves and point them out in others! Right? Well, not so much. If you teach people who are really bad at thinking how to identify bad thinking, they will predictably proceed to think very badly about identifying bad thinking.
And that’s exactly what’s happened. If you’ve been on the Internet lately (in which case, again, my condolences), you might have noticed people accusing calling out fallacies left and right. The problem, though, is that they are almost always wrong! So now someone needs to come in and clean up the philosophers’ mess by teaching people to identify the errors they’re making in identifying errors in reasoning. Well, I have the requisite level of obsession and not a whole lot to do with my time, so I guess that it might as well be me.
In what follows, I’ll touch on the two fallacies I see thrown around most often online, namely the straw man fallacy and the ad hominem fallacy. I might address other common fallacies, like the appeal to authority fallacy, in a later post. My hope is that next time someone incorrectly accuses you of committing a fallacy, you’ll be able to give them the link to this post. It probably won’t help, of course, but think of how intellectually superior you’ll feel!
What is a Fallacy?
First things first: What is a fallacy anyway? Put simply, a fallacy is just a kind of incorrect argument. And that, of course, leads us to the next question, namely: What’s an argument? In everyday life, when we talk about arguments, we mean something like people yelling at each other or calling each other names. That is vehemently not what I’m talking about here. An argument, in the relevant sense, is simply a piece of reasoning. It’s a set of reasons offered in support of some belief.
You may or may not be aware of this, but you make arguments all the time. Anytime time you reason from one piece of information to another, you’re doing just that. Here are some very mundane examples:
I know Debra got off work at four o’clock and she usually gets here pretty quickly. I guess she must be stuck in traffic.
I really want ice cream, but I heard that the ice cream machine at McDonald’s is broken. So we should go elsewhere.
And here are some more philosophical examples:
You can’t know something if you might be wrong. But I might be in a simulation. And if I am, then I’m wrong that I have hands. It follows that I don’t know that I have hands.
God is the essence of love. Moreover, the essence of love is to be a bond between different persons. Therefore, God must be a community of persons who share one essence.
These are arguments. They contain statements, called premises (in italics) that are supposed to support some further statement, called a conclusion (in bold). The premises, taken together, are supposed to give reasons to think that the conclusion is true. That’s what an argument is: it’s a set of premises that are meant to support a conclusion.
We said a fallacy was, by definition, a kind of incorrect argument. That’s just what a fallacy is. So now what can we conclude? Well, that to commit a fallacy, you must be making an argument. If there’s no argument, there can be no fallacy. Okay? Repeat after me: No argument, no fallacy. Keep it in mind as we navigate the treacherous and unsettling landscape of internet discourse. With some luck, we’ll manage to emerge with our sanity intact.
The Straw Man Fallacy
This one drives me absolutely up the wall. Until about ten years ago, I had never seen the term “straw man” outside of philosophy. Then suddenly it started popping up all over the place. Randos were throwing around accusations of “straw-manning” all over Internet message boards and comment sections. What happened? I can’t say for sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say either that the world was cursed by a dark wizard around that time, or else that I was placed in a simulation designed to torture me for entertainment. Those seem like the two most likely hypotheses.
In case you don’t know, a straw man fallacy occurs when you misrepresent someone’s argument to make it easier to attack. Again, an argument consists of premises that are meant to support a conclusion. If you misstate the premises, misstate the conclusion, or misstate the links between them, you’re misrepresenting the argument. When you do that intentionally, you’re building a straw man. Straw men, you might already know, are much easier to tear down than flesh-and-blood ones!
Now here are some things that are not straw man fallacies. Incorrectly ascribing a view to someone is not, in and of itself, a straw man fallacy. Suppose I said that Christians are polytheists because they believe in multiple gods. In that case I’d, be making a false statement; Christians don’t, in fact, believe in multiple gods. But I wouldn’t be committing a straw man fallacy. Why not? Remember our slogan: No argument, no fallacy. I’m not making an argument here—nor, by the way, am I misrepresenting an argument. I’m just saying something false. Annoying? Maybe. Ill-informed? Sure. But not a fallacy.
Another thing that isn’t a straw man is reasoning from views someone really holds to a conclusion they wouldn’t accept. Suppose that a Christian apologist—let’s call him Dr. Johnny-Boy McPhilosophyPants—made exactly the argument for the Trinity I laid out above. Here it is again:
God is the essence of love. Moreover, the essence of love is to be a bond between different persons. Therefore, God must be a community of persons who share one essence.
Suppose I were to say to Dr. McPhilosophyPants: “Well, you claim there are three persons who share a single essence. But on the usual understanding of how individuals participate in essences, this would mean that there are multiple gods. So your argument seems to commit you to polytheism.”
If I say this, I am not committing a straw man fallacy! Of course, I may be making a mistake. But I’m not committing a straw man fallacy. Why not? Notice: this time, I am making an argument. I’m arguing for the conclusion that Dr. McPhilosophyPants’ views commit him to polytheism. But in making that argument, I’m not misrepresenting his own views. On the contrary, I’m accurately representing what he said: he really did say that there are three persons who share the one essence! It’s just that, rightly or wrongly, I think that commits him to polytheism.
The Ad Hominem Fallacy
I said it drives me up the wall when people incorrectly accuse others of committing straw man fallacies, but now that I think about it, it also drives me up the wall when they do that with ad hominem fallacies. Maybe I’m just an irascible guy and should consider therapy or something. Until then, though, I guess I’ll settle for unhinged Substack rants, so here we are. You might want to consider sending me an invoice for the outlet you’re providing just by reading my blog.
An ad hominem fallacy occurs when you attack the person making an argument as a way of dismissing what they say. Now this one’s tricky, so pay attention. Simply insulting someone isn’t committing a fallacy. Even if you’re insulting them because you think they’ve made a bad argument, you still aren’t necessarily committing an ad hominem fallacy. Why not? Because you might not be making an argument! As we’ve seen, a fallacy is an incorrect argument. Something can’t be an incorrect argument if it isn’t even an argument!
Suppose our friend Dr. Johnny-Boy McPhilosophyPants posted a YouTube video presenting his argument for the Trinity. And suppose I retweeted the video with the text “Wow, this guy’s a moron.” Now let’s do a pop quiz! Is this an ad hominem fallacy or not? Think about it now. Is it? Okay, you can probably guess what I’m going to say: No, this is not an ad hominem fallacy! Now that doesn’t mean that what I said is acceptable. It’s ungentlemanly, overconfident, and quarrelsome. But I’m not committing a fallacy. Why not? Because—you guessed it—I’m not making an argument.
Here’s an actual ad hominem fallacy: “Well, Johnny-Boy McPhilosophyPants says that God must be a Trinity because God is love and love occurs between multiple people. But who cares what he thinks? He sends dick pics to girls on Twitter.” See that? There’s an argument there. The conclusion, which isn’t stated explicitly, is that Johnny-Boy is wrong or that we should dismiss what he’s saying. I’m using a fact about him that is completely irrelevant to what he’s saying, as a reason to think that he’s wrong or that we shouldn’t listen to him.
If I’m not doing this—if I’m not suggesting that we should dismiss his argument because he’s an idiot, because he’s heartless, etc.—, I’m not committing an ad hominem fallacy. This is true even if I say he’s an idiot because I think this particular argument for the Trinity is bad. If I’m not appealing to his purported idiocy as a reason to dismiss what he says, if I think there are independent grounds for thinking it’s a bad argument, then I’m not committing a fallacy! Let it be as a mantra to you: No argument, no fallacy; no argument, no fallacy; no argument, no fallacy.
Conclusion
Human thinking, as we’ve seen, is extremely flawed. So flawed, in fact, that even when someone teaches us about the errors we make, we just immediately start making mistakenly identifying them. In this piece, I’ve tried to give you the tools to correct people when they do this. But of course, given the flaws in human thinking, this probably just means that you’ll soon begin mistakenly to correct people you think are mistakenly correcting mistakes in thinking.
Is human thinking doomed to consist in an endless parade of mistakes and misunderstandings until such a time as the heat death of the universe wipes us all out? Are all philosophers’ attempts to teach reasoning skills in vain? Are our lives a waking nightmare? Yes. But does that mean that philosophers have to live their lives in a state of depression and despair? That they are cursed forever to see other people’s bad reasoning without being able to do anything about it? Also yes. Just one more reason to seek therapy, I suppose.
Strictly speaking, Aristotle doesn’t explicitly say “man is a rational animal” anywhere even though the sentence is often attributed to him. However, it accords with what he says in multiple places, most notably in Book III of De Anima, trans. C.D.C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2017).
Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly (New York: Harper, 2013). For an insightful look at how cognitive biases distort our moral and political thinking, see Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon, 2012).
Very enjoyable piece. I haven't noticed these errors but I expect I will start to see them now.
"Even if you’re insulting them because you think they’ve made a bad argument, you still aren’t necessarily committing a straw man fallacy."
I think you meant ad hom here.