Fallacies and frustrations: why skeptics dread conversations with
true believers

Fallacies and frustrations: why skeptics dread conversations with
true believers

Skeptical Inquirer, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Phil Mole

Skeptics often hesitate to engage in conversations with believers
in the paranormal because these conversations are usually very
frustrating. Paranormal adherents tend to make fallacious use of
language, logical arguments, and established knowledge. Yet
skeptics must acknowledge and work past these frustrations to
further the cause of rational inquiry.

Fallacies and frustrations: why skeptics dread conversations with
true believers

Skeptical Inquirer, Jan-Feb, 2004 by Phil Mole

Skeptics often hesitate to engage in conversations with believers
in the paranormal because these conversations are usually very
frustrating. Paranormal adherents tend to make fallacious use of
language, logical arguments, and established knowledge. Yet
skeptics must acknowledge and work past these frustrations to
further the cause of rational inquiry.

How many times has the following situation happened to you: You're
at a party or social event, distractedly sipping your beverage of
choice, when suddenly the conversation turns to paranormal or
pseudoscientific topics. You squirm in your chair, dreading the
moment you know is coming. Hoping the topic will change, you look
at your watch, drink your beverage just a little too quickly, and
nervously adjust your shirt collar. Then, the moment you've been
dreading finally comes. Someone asks you for your opinion.

Why should situations like this be so uncomfortable for skeptics?
It isn't usually because we lack confidence in our opinions,
because skeptics usually have much more knowledge about paranormal
topics and the rules of critical thinking than the general public.
Rather, the cause of our anxiety is usually the awareness that the
ensuing conversation is likely to be unproductive and extremely
frustrating for us. We know that our acquaintances are certain to
derail the discussion with countless argumentative fallacies, and
our efforts to refute these fallacies are more likely to result in
exasperation than in enlightenment. There are many varieties of
these obstacles to rational discourse, but most of them involve
misuses of language, logical blunders, or ignorance of the Facts
and ideas relevant to the issues.

Fallacies of Language

Much of the frustration we skeptics encounter arises from the
seeming inability of many people to correctly use and understand
language. It shouldn't be this way. Most people have some schooling
during their lives, and presumably learn how to distinguish the
meaning of one word from another. Moreover, dictionaries can clear
up any remaining confusion unaddressed by our formal education. But
yet, when the crucial moment comes for people to read or listen to
someone else's argument and discern its meaning, they often
stumble. They seem unable to comprehend that words already have
well-established definitions, and it isn't permissible to make up
their own whenever convenient opportunities arise.

Consider the following example, assembled from various actual
discussions in which it has been the author's misfortune to
participate. Suppose you're discussing an Arts and Entertainment
network program about the amazing fulfillment of biblical
prophecies that claims the apocalypse will soon be upon us. Your
acquaintance wonders how you can deny that so many of the Bible's
"predictions," such as the onset of atomic warfare, the AIDS
epidemic, and unprecedented numbers of wartime deaths, are now
coming true. You object that there are not unprecedented levels of
warfare or illness epidemics in our time; in fact, other historical
periods had far higher death counts. More important, you point out
that the Bible never actually "predicted" any of these things,
because the definition of prediction implies an unambiguous
assertion that a specific future event will happen in a specific
way. Playing games with language to link vague phrases from the
Bible to specific events in our own time is not logically
permissible, and runs roughshod over the conclusions of sound
scholarship. Real scholars, familiar with historically informed
Bible criticism published in peer-reviewed academic journals,
reject the idea that biblical prophets were talking about anything
remotely similar to AIDS or other twentieth-century calamities.
Such a selective and uncritical reading of the Bible does not serve
anyone's purpose, religious or otherwise.

"Maybe you're talking about the tension between academics and
faith," he offers. You can't recall talking about anything remotely
like this, so you reject his attempted solution. "No I wasn't," you
say, "and anyway, there doesn't seem to be any necessary tension
between 'academics,' as you say, and religious faith. Many academic
Bible scholars of exceedingly high reputation are men of faith, and
while not all of them believe in the same way that most people do,
they nonetheless do believe."

"That's not what I meant," your acquaintance answers, "for now I
see that instead of saying 'academics,' I should have said
'reason.' I really meant to say that we cannot disprove the tenets
of faith. Bible prophecies are matters of faith, which has nothing
at all to do with reason." Now you don't even know where to start.
You can't help but wonder how your acquaintance initially confused
the meaning of reason with academics, and wonder why he thinks that
just because something isn't completely disprovable, it has nothing
to do with reason. After all, it's also impossible to disprove the
notion that an invisible, colorless, odorless, tasteless,
noncorporeal goblin is lurking in my basement, although few sane
people would find this reason enough to believe the goblin exists.
Therefore you reply by saying that people generally believe things
that seem at least plausible to them, even if faith also involves
going beyond what we can know through reason.

Since things are going badly for his arguments, your acquaintance
pushes even further into definitional dubiousness. "I see clearly
where your confusion lies," he says, "because you were using an
alternate definition of reason. I was using the word reason in its
'classical' sense, as a term for 'science.' In that sense, faith
has nothing do with reason, because science cannot disprove the
tenets of religious faith."

Once again, you find yourself perplexed by the shifting pattern of
fallacious definitions on display. You can't help but wonder if
your acquaintance is trying to redefine the entire debate in terms
that automatically support his conclusions. You're frustrated by
his repeated failure to accurately use and understand the existing
definitions of words. You try to explain that reason is not a
synonym for science, in its "classical" sense or any other sense,
and that there is a complicated relationship between science and
religion that should preclude us from making simple judgments about
their interactions. In addition, disproof means something rather
different to a scientist than it does to a layperson. But your
acquaintance, gleefully unencumbered by any adherence to word
definitions, still sees reason as being identical to science, and
for good measure, even accuses you of shifting the definitions of
the debate terms to find fault with his arguments. Through the most
ironic redefinition of all, the skeptic is now the one who doesn't
understand how to use words correctly, and our good-natured
acquaintance can only marvel at our verbal ignorance.

Fallacies of Logic

Assuming our opponents know the correct definitions of the relevant
terms, there's still a great chance that they'll make debates
frustrating for us. Most people do not have the critical thinking
skills necessary to craft good arguments, and continually try to
pass off logical fallacies as sound reasoning. It would require an
entire book to catalogue and describe all of the logical fallacies
the skeptic encounters in his travels among the credulous, but I
will list a few of the most common varieties.

The false dichotomy presents an issue as an all-or-nothing choice
between only two alternatives. When presenting an issue as a false
dichotomy, a person is usually trying to simplify a complicated
issue into terms he can more easily understand, and render his own
opinion more plausible in the process. For instance, paranormal
true believers frequently use false dichotomies in arguments about
the validity of the anecdotal evidence offered to support claims of
ghost sightings, alien visitations, and other Fortean phenomena.

Paranormalists often maintain that the people who claim to

Phil Mole is a Chicago-based author. He frequently writes about
issues relating to the philosophy and methodology of science. He
can be reached at p.mole@att.net. have had these experiences must
be telling the truth, or they must be either lying or crazy. Since
there is often no reason to think that people reporting paranormal
experiences are clinically insane or documented liars, believers
confidently rule out the second half of their artificial dichotomy
and conclude that the paranormal claims must be true. "Why would
they make this up?" they triumphantly ask. They seem unaware that
there are many other possible explanations. [See John McDonald,
"200% Probability and Beyond: The Compelling Nature of
Extraordinary Claims in the Absence of Alternative Explanations,"
SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, January/February 1998.]

A witness may believe he is telling the truth, but his perception
and memory of the events may be distorted by many psychological and
social factors. However, full awareness of these other options
requires strong knowledge about psychology, sociology, and the
subtle effects of culture on what we see and remember, It's much
easier to just reduce the whole issue to two choices.

The fallacy of personal preference assumptions is a species of
argumentative fallacy that I have not seen discussed before. this
fallacy conveniently assumes that people who report paranormal
experiences have personality traits that guarantee the authenticity
of their reports. Let me explain.

Suppose one of our friends wants to visit a hotel allegedly haunted
by ghosts, according to the informative hosts of the History
Channel's show "Haunted History." The television program supplies
anecdotes about former guests who claim to have seen or felt
ghostly visitors during their stay at the hotel. The obvious
skeptical response is that the guests had foreknowledge of the
ghost legends surrounding the hotel, and this knowledge caused them
to imagine their spectral visitors. But hearing this explanation,
our acquaintance replies that if they had known about the legends,
they never would have stayed at the hotel!

Presumably, their fear of seeing a ghost would have kept them away.
Therefore, no one who visited a haunted hotel could have had
foreknowledge of haunting legends that may influence their
observations. Thus, our paranormalist friend concludes, all
observations of ghostly phenomena at the hotel must be objective
and reliable. This reply blatantly ignores the obvious fact that
our acquaintance herself wants to visit the hotel, and knows very
well that it is allegedly haunted. In fact, that's the whole reason
she wants to visit the hotel! How can she assume that the other
visitors, who probably watch the same popular television shows
about ghosts and have the same widespread fascination with the
supernatural, would refuse to stay at a "haunted hotel?" Such an
assumption claims a knowledge of the personal preference of the
guests that she cannot possibly have. Clearly we cannot rule out
the strong possibility that the guests may have had prior
expectations that compromised their reliability as witnesses.
Equally clearly, we cannot make personality preference assumptions
wherever convenient opportunities arise.

This fallacy allows our acquaintance to surmise that the hotel
guests have personality traits different from her own and from
those of the general public, simply because this assumption makes
their testimony about ghostly visitors more plausible.

The post hoc fallacy consists of automatically attributing the
cause of a phenomenon, after the fact, to an unrelated event
preceding it. This fallacy seems to be deeply ingrained in the
thinking habits of our species. David Hume, in his classic An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, provided a psychological
description of the process through which people perceive causation,
and showed that events that closely precede a phenomenon in time
are most likely to be seen as causes of that phenomenon. Sometimes
this habit leads us to correct assumptions, but often it leads us
to find causal relationships where none actually exist. The most
common examples of a post hoc fallacy involve superstitions, such
as belief in "lucky" items of clothing. For example, someone buys a
new shirt and suddenly finds herself awarded with a big promotion
at work. There's no logical reason to think that the shirt had
anything to do with her promotion, especially since management
probably made the decision long before she ever set foot inside the
clothing store. But the close association of the two events in time
seems strangely compelling, and she reaches the past hoc conclusion
that her lucky shirt was the cause of her new prosperity. The
skeptic who tries to argue with her is likely to be in for a
frustrating time.

The argument from incredulity maintains that if we cannot easily
imagine the proposition is true, we are justified in concluding
that it is false. This strategy uses the assumption that whatever
is not instantly comprehensible must be wrong. Creationists are
masters of arguments from incredulity, and use every available
opportunity to portray evolution as the farfetched pipe dream of
egghead scientists. Science-fiction writer and Scientology founder
L.Ron Hubbard, who was a creationist of a particularly odd sort,
once described evolution as a modern variant of an ancient Egyptian
myth describing the magical appearance of the first living
creatures from primordial ooze. Creationists want evolution to seem
as though it argues that man sprung fully-formed from the chaos of
nature like Athena from the forehead of Zeus--an idea clearly too
ridiculous to believe. Of course, the use of this strategy saves
its proponents the bother of actually learning something about the
issues they're discussing, or acknowledging that some familiarity
with the philosophy of science and the methods of critical thinking
could prove beneficial to them. It also tends to skew evaluation of
ideas toward arguments that seemplausible to most people,
regardless of their validity. Arguments from incredulity wallow in
a vulgar populism that elevates appeal to unlearned prejudice to a
categorical imperative, and rejects as meaningless all attempts to
achieve deeper understandings.

Fallacies of Ignorance

If I had to pick the most common source of frustration for
skeptics, I'd have to choose plain old garden-variety ignorance.
Ignorance involves knowing very little, or at least not nearly
enough, about the issues one is discussing. Far too often, impaired
knowledge of an issue does

not deter people from offering their opinions about it, and from
being absolutely sure that their ideas are the very embodiment of
informed rationalism. As the observant reader may have already
noticed, ignorance is related to all of the frustrations and
fallacies already discussed. Indeed, it is the center of the
credulous person's universe. It is the foundation of every logical
fallacy, the cause of every miscomprehension, and the font of all
foolishness.

There are countless examples of ignorance at work. Historical
ignorance is present whenever right-wing pundits claim that the
United States began as a Christian nation, and whenever left-wing
pundits argue that Native Americans lived in perfect harmony with
nature. We see scientific ignorance when creationists claim there
is no empirical evidence for evolution, and misguided
consumer-rights groups try to eliminate the fluoridation of
drinking water. In all these cases, the claimants do not adequately
understand the issues at hand.

Ignorance does not always have to involve plain fact, such as the
month Abraham Lincoln originally planned the Emancipation
Proclamation or the age of the oldest known hominid fossil. Often,
it takes the more general and pervasive form of simply being
unaware that there is anything more to an issue than what one
already knows about it. This kind of ignorance is especially
prevalent among paranormalists, who often learn everything they
know about a particularly poltergeist haunting or UFO abduction by
watching Discovery Channel programs, and aren't aware of the strong
counterarguments and other parts of the story withheld from them.
Few of the countless television specials about the Amityville
"hauntings" mention the inconvenient fact that the originators of
the stories admitted to perpetrating a hoax, or that the mysteries
of the Bermuda Triangle were definitively explained more than two
decades ago. The public often fails to realize that programs such
as those found on the Discovery Channel have a well-documented
policy of denying airtime to anyone skeptical of paranormal claims.

Thomas Aquinas noted that ignorance is often consolatory,
especially if it involves issues that we've already interpreted to
our own liking. Finding further information about issues may dispel
our ignorance of them, but may also threaten our happiness and
self-esteem. Stories of ghosts are not only entertaining, but also
allegedly provide comforting proof of life beyond death. Alien
visitation stories suggest that we are not alone in the universe,
and we may one day meet extraterrestrials. The alternate notions
that ghosts do not exist and we have a greater chance of getting
struck on the head by a meteor than we do of encountering
intelligent alien life are somewhat disheartening. It's not
surprising that most people don't want to expend effort to dispel
their ignorance, if ignorance provides comfort.

Conclusions: Coping With Frustration

The net result of these frustrations is that we skeptics often feel
wary of even attempting to engage in conversations with believers
of dubious claims. We know we are very likely to encounter several
fallacies discussed here in the course of a single discussion.

Each attempt to refute a fallacy causes our credulous acquaintance
to commit about three new ones, which then require debunking of
their own. And so it goes, until you're about twenty minutes into
the conversation and realize you've gotten precisely nowhere. Our
partners in conversation are too frequently unwilling or unable to
critically examine their own assumptions, or think critically
before offering their opinions. As a result, we find ourselves in
the conversational equivalent of running on a treadmill. We can
begin to understand what Leo Tolstoy meant when he said,
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without
prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with
their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is
not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is
absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless."

Accepting Tolstoy's diagnosis, many skeptics may wish to shun
conversations with anyone who cannot think and talk at our own
level. This would be a mistake, even if based partially on reality.
It's easy for us to congratulate ourselves for our critical
thinking abilities, but harder to realize that these same abilities
do not make us morally superior to anyone, incapable of learning
from nonskeptics, or exempt from the responsibilities of teaching
others.

If skeptics truly wish to further the cause of rationality, we have
to be active members of an often-credulous society. This often
requires an enormous amount of patience, but this patience is not
misplaced. One truly heartening fact is that, as philosopher Julian
Baggini has pointed out, the rules of argumentative logic seem
curiously self-evident when spelled out. Most people seem to be
able to understand the difference between good arguments and bad
ones at some level, even if they don't always honor this difference
in practice. Many people also seem capable of recognizing fallacies
of language, and generally do not relish the idea of being
ignorant. All of these facts persuade me that the efforts of
skeptics really can bear fruit, even if many more bare branches
remain at any given time. We should not succumb to our frustrations
so readily.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims
of the Paranormal

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