Logical thinking
10
Education should impart both technical skills and general rational outlooks. Unfortunately, students of even leading fields like law, engineering, business etc usually gain technical skills only, given rote teaching.
The result is the sorry spectacle of educated people frequently arguing like imbeciles, especially in discussing socio-political issues since they lack formal training in reasoning rigorously on these open-ended subjects.
Logic, a sub-branch of philosophy, teaches valid reasoning. Studying Logic can help youngsters become more rational and reduce conflicts.
Unfortunately, non-philosophy departments rarely teach Logic. A review of common logical fallacies depressingly reveals how rampant they are in even high-level national decision-making.
Read blog: In defence of reason
The most common fallacy in politics is argumentum ad hominem: evading the topic by personally attacking opponents.
The most common fallacy in politics is argumentum ad hominem.
One merely has to flip TV channels a few minutes every evening to sight multiple instances of this fallacy.
Related to this is the straw man fallacy which deliberately twists someone’s position, often with tragic consequences.
Deliberately misrepresenting Salmaan Taseer, right-wingers argued that he supported blasphemy whereas he was merely criticising the misuse of blasphemy laws.
The fallacy of victimhood involves covering one’s fault by accusing powerful forces of conspiring against one. This fallacy is commonly invoked by the PPP and MQM in denying even their obvious faults by accusing the establishment of hounding them.
The fallacy of relative privation dismisses a problem given the existence of more important, but unrelated, problems.
Musharraf should not be tried for treason since Pakistan faces more pressing problems like poverty, people argue. Taken literally, this argument ridiculously means that governments should never deal with even two problems simultaneously, since one will be more important than the other.
Clearly, governments must handle multiple challenges simultaneously and maintain separate ministries to do that. Law ministries handle treason cases; welfare ministries tackle poverty.
The fallacy of composition (assuming that something true for a part is true for the whole) is regularly committed by the very stern-looking ‘defenders of Pakistan’s geographical and ideological frontiers’ in assuming that their institutional interests represent national interests.
The argumentum ad populum claims something is true solely because many people believe it. The PTI’s learned counsel recently argued that since the judicial commission is not a court, it must judge merely based on widespread rigging perceptions among politicians. However, what matters is not the number of parties claiming rigging but the type of evidence they present.
The post-hoc, ergo proctor hoc fallacy literally means arguing that since A occurred after B, B must have caused it. The PML-N proudly takes credit for falling inflation since it assumed power, ignoring conveniently the contribution of falling oil prices.
Fallacies based on appeals to emotion, tradition and authority rather than rational arguments were vividly on display recently. Fringe parties were egging Pakistan to jump into the Yemen conflict given Saudi Arabia’s special status among Muslims, Pakistan’s traditional friendship with it and, claimed but unfounded, threats to holy sites.
Cherry-picking involves considering evidence only which supports one’s contention. Pakistani ‘patriots’ deny that Pakistan lags behind India economically by highlighting India’s higher poverty rate. However, comprehensive comparisons of national economies must cover multiple economic indicators. Such analysis confirms India’s current economic edge.
The anecdotal fallacy involves giving isolated personal examples instead of comprehensive evidence. Thus, many people attempt to prove nationwide election rigging by narrating their personal experiences at individual polling stations, ignoring the fact that there were thousands of polling stations nationwide during elections.
The fallacy of hasty generalisation and conclusion means accepting something without sufficient evidence. This fallacy is pervasive in Pakistan. Wild conspiracy theories, eg about 9/11 attacks and foreign designs to destroy Pakistan, are readily accepted by many educated people without checking for evidence. One must check the nature and strength of evidence available for any claim and then form opinions accordingly.
Evidence can be physical, circumstantial or conjectural. Only strong physical evidence justifies strong convictions.
Circumstantial evidence only justifies forming tentative suspicions, accompanied by the realisation that suspicions often later turn out to be false.
Finally, conjectures justify nothing. Unfortunately, many people express more vehement opinions based even on conjectures than I would based on physical evidence.
The writer is a life-time student of Logic and a Senior Fellow with UC Berkeley.
Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2015
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