How should one respond to fallacious moves?

• Author: van Eemeren, Frans H.
• Position: Essay

WHAT IS WRONG WHEN A FALLACY HAS BEEN COMMITTED?

In argumentative discourse it is inevitable that now and then something goes wrong; even the commitment of fallacies is an unavoidable fact of life. In practice, however, it is not always immediately clear whether an argumentative move is fallacious or not. In some cases the fallaciousness of a move may not be of any real importance to a serious evaluation because the move was made without the speaker or writer fully realizing what he or she said--such as when the move is not an intentional contribution to the discussion but just a slip of the tongue (or the mind) that can be corrected right away--or just ignored. Also when it is evident that the would-be fallacious move was only made as a joke, the commitment of a fallacy may not be of any real importance to a serious evaluation. This is, for instance, the case when the speaker or writer makes fun of someone else's position by blowing it up in a way that is plainly out of all proportion to all concerned. In such cases--and there are a great many more of them--the matter can usually be put right without any further negative consequences to the dialectical process of resolving a difference of opinion on the merits (although there may be rhetorical consequences).

At times, fallacies can be so witty that we all like them. All the same, our sense of humor should not prevent us from remaining critical, because there are cases in which we cannot afford to take a lenient attitude towards the fallacies concerned. A very nice example, taken from an exchange that took place in the Canadian House of Commons, was provided by Douglas Walton (1985, pp. 203-204). In 1970, Prime Minister Trudeau responded negatively to a request to consider using a Jet-star government plane to send an information-gathering team to Biafra by saying: "It would have to refuel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ..." Whereupon the Member of Parliament Mr. Hees--known for his drinking habits--retaliated by raising a point of order: "On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I bought the plane for the government and I know it can make the flight with the proper stops on the way ..." Mr. Trudeau then finished off this exchange by making the following remark: "I do not think it would have to stop if the hon. Member went along and breathed into the tank."

By insinuating that the honorable Member Mr. Hees is habitually drunk, the Prime Minister introduced a textbook example of the fallacious personal attack known as the argumentum ad hominem, here appearing in its abusive variant, which was in this case killing. The example nicely illustrates how humor can be brought to bear not only to enliven the discussion and make it more relaxed, but also to get away with fallacies.

It is obvious that Mr. Trudeau did not allude to Mr. Hees's drinking habits in order to show that the conclusion of the MP's argument does not follow from its premises. The Prime Minister had expressed a standpoint, and his diversionary allusion to his challenger's drinking habits enabled him to evade having to defend that standpoint. Mr. Trudeau's allusion is an argumentum ad hominem that violates the pragma-dialectical Freedom Rule (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004, pp. 190-191) by putting Mr. Hees in a position that makes it practically impossible for him to maintain his opposition. "If Trudeau had not ridiculed his challenger," David Hitchcock observed, "he would have had to admit that his challenger was correct and that Trudeau was wrong" (2006, p. 114).

In principle, fallacies are distortions of the progress of an argumentative exchange because they distract from a sound resolution process (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992, pp. 102-106). In order not to go against the maintenance of reasonableness in the discussion, they therefore deserve our undivided attention. The question we are concerned with in this essay is what needs to be done when a fallacy has been committed in the discourse and it is clear that the fallacious move is to be taken seriously. Does the commitment of such a fallacious move mean that the reasonable exchange is over and that the discussion is brought to an untimely end? Or do the participants in the discussion still have a dialectical obligation to look for possibilities to continue the discussion?

We think that the answer to these questions depends on the impact the fallacy concerned may be regarded to have on the possibilities for having a reasonable discussion in the argumentative situation the parties are in. Is the fallacious move just an isolated case of unreasonable acting? Or does the making of this move imply that in this discussion the whole idea of reasonableness has been abandoned? Only if the commitment of a fallacy signals a fundamental rejection of the very principle of reasonableness it does not make sense to continue the discussion.

In this essay, we concentrate on fallacies that may hinder the resolution process but do not completely block the discussion. We examine how such fallacies can best be responded to in practice. After having determined what it may be taken to mean that an argumentative move is to be regarded fallacious, we discuss the pieces of advice for responding to such fallacious moves given by two prominent argumentation theorists, Erik C.W. Krabbe (2003) and Scott Jacobs (2000). In conclusion we give our own view on the matter.

The theoretical models developed in the study of argumentation to create a suitable framework for analyzing argumentative discourse and tracking down fallacies vary in their most extreme articulations from abstract models for regulating argumentative discourse by formal rules, which cannot be violated without destroying the game, to functional models that view argumentative discourse as a methodical exchange of moves that are instrumental in realizing the argumentative purposes of the arguers. Depending on the model that is applied, the quality of the moves that are made and their potential fallaciousness will be assessed differently. If the assessment takes place from a precisely delineated formal perspective, as is the case in formal dialectics, the evaluation will be strictest. In that case, argumentation is treated as a rule-bound game and every move that the rules of the game do not allow is, unexceptionally, inadmissible. Like in chess, when such an inadmissible move is made, the game is over--and lost by the party that made the wrong move. Formal dialectics as developed by Barth and Krabbe (1982) in From Axiom to Dialogue provides a model of argumentative games of this type.

The assessment of argumentation can also be approached from a perspective that is less rigid, such as the pragma-dialectical perspective. However close to formal dialectics the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion may be as far as its dialectical dimension is concerned, this model is--as Rob Grootendorst and I have explained (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1984, 2004)--primarily of the functional type. By considering the moves made in resolving a difference of opinion on the merits as performances of speech acts that are...