Practical argument: A text and anthology - Laurie G. Kirszner, Stephen R. Mandell 2019

Understanding logic and recognizing logical fallacies
Reading and responding to arguments

The photo shows a large crowd of student protestors marching through the college gates holding a banner reading, Free Speech. One of the students is holding the U. S. flag.

AT ISSUE

How Free Should Free Speech Be?

Ask almost anyone what makes a society free and one of the answers will be free speech. The free expression of ideas is integral to freedom itself, and protecting that freedom is part of a democratic government’s job.

But what happens when those ideas are offensive, or even dangerous? If free speech has limits, is it still free? When we consider the question abstractly, it’s very easy to say no. After all, there is no shortage of historical evidence linking censorship with tyranny. When we think of limiting free speech, we think of totalitarian regimes, like Nazi Germany. On the other hand, what if the people arguing for the right to be heard are Nazis themselves? In places like Israel and France, where the legacy of Nazi Germany is still all too real, there are some things you simply cannot say. Anti-Semitic language is considered “hate speech,” and those who perpetuate it face stiff fines, if not imprisonment. In the United States, speech—even speech that many would consider “hate speech”—is explicitly protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Nonetheless, many colleges and universities have sought to combat discrimination and harassment by instituting speech codes that prohibit speech that they deem inappropriate.

On American college campuses, freedom of speech has traditionally been considered fundamental to a liberal education. Indeed, encountering ideas that make you feel uncomfortable is a necessary part of a college education. But the question of free speech is easy to answer when it’s theoretical: when the issue is made tangible by racist language or by a discussion of a traumatic experience, it becomes much more difficult to navigate. Should minorities be forced to listen to racists spew hate? Should a rape survivor have to sit through a discussion of rape in American literature? If you penalize a person for saying something hateful, will other subjects soon become off-limits for discussion?

Later in this chapter, you will be asked to think more about this issue. You will be given several sources to consider and asked to write a logical argument that takes a position on how free free speech should be.

The word logic comes from the Greek word logos, roughly translated as “word,” “thought,” “principle,” or “reason.” Logic is concerned with the principles of correct reasoning. By studying logic, you learn the rules that determine the validity of arguments. In other words, logic enables you to tell whether a conclusion correctly follows from a set of statements or assumptions.

Why should you study logic? One answer is that logic enables you to make valid points and draw sound conclusions. An understanding of logic also enables you to evaluate the arguments of others. When you understand the basic principles of logic, you know how to tell the difference between a strong argument and a weak argument—between one that is well reasoned and one that is not. This ability can help you cut through the tangle of jumbled thought that characterizes many of the arguments you encounter daily—on television, radio, and the internet; in the press; and from friends. Finally, logic enables you to communicate clearly and forcefully. Understanding the characteristics of good arguments helps you to present your own ideas in a coherent and even compelling way.

Specific rules determine the criteria you use to develop (and to evaluate) arguments logically. For this reason, you should become familiar with the basic principles of deductive and inductive reasoning—two important ways information is organized in argumentative essays. (Keep in mind that a single argumentative essay might contain both deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. For the sake of clarity, however, we will discuss them separately.)

What Is Deductive Reasoning?

Most of us use deductive reasoning every day—at home, in school, on the job, and in our communities—usually without even realizing it.

Deductive reasoning begins with premises—statements or assumptions on which an argument is based or from which conclusions are drawn. Deductive reasoning moves from general statements, or premises, to specific conclusions. The process of deduction has traditionally been illustrated with a syllogism, which consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion:

MAJOR PREMISE

All Americans are guaranteed freedom of speech by the Constitution.

MINOR PREMISE

Sarah is an American.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Sarah is guaranteed freedom of speech.

A syllogism begins with a major premise—a general statement that relates two terms. It then moves to a minor premise—an example of the statement that was made in the major premise. If these two premises are linked correctly, a conclusion that is supported by the two premises logically follows. (Notice that the conclusion in the syllogism above contains no terms that do not appear in the major and minor premises.) The strength of deductive reasoning is that if readers accept the major and minor premises, the conclusion must necessarily follow.

Thomas Jefferson used deductive reasoning in the Declaration of Independence (see p. 732). When, in 1776, the Continental Congress asked him to draft this document, Jefferson knew that he had to write a powerful argument that would convince the world that the American colonies were justified in breaking away from England. He knew how compelling a deductive argument could be, and so he organized the Declaration of Independence to reflect the traditional structure of deductive logic. It contains a major premise, a minor premise (supported by evidence), and a conclusion. Expressed as a syllogism, here is the argument that Jefferson used:

MAJOR PREMISE

When a government oppresses people, the people have a right to rebel against that government.

MINOR PREMISE

The government of England oppresses the American people.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, the American people have the right to rebel against the government of England.

In practice, deductive arguments are more complicated than the simple three-part syllogism suggests. Still, it is important to understand the basic structure of a syllogism because a syllogism enables you to map out your argument, to test it, and to see if it makes sense.

Constructing Sound Syllogisms

A syllogism is valid when its conclusion follows logically from its premises. A syllogism is true when the premises are consistent with the facts. To be sound, a syllogism must be both valid and true.

Consider the following valid syllogism:

MAJOR PREMISE

All state universities must accommodate disabled students.

MINOR PREMISE

UCLA is a state university.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, UCLA must accommodate disabled students.

In the preceding valid syllogism, both the major premise and the minor premise are factual statements. If both these premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true. Because the syllogism is both valid and true, it is also sound.

However, a syllogism can be valid without being true. For example, look at the following syllogism:

MAJOR PREMISE

All recipients of support services are wealthy.

MINOR PREMISE

Dillon is a recipient of support services.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Dillon is wealthy.

As illogical as it may seem, this syllogism is valid: its conclusion follows logically from its premises. The major premise states that recipients of support services—all such recipients—are wealthy. However, this premise is clearly false: some recipients of support services may be wealthy, but more are probably not. For this reason, even though the syllogism is valid, it is not true.

Keep in mind that validity is a test of an argument’s structure, not of its soundness. Even if a syllogism’s major and minor premises are true, its conclusion may not necessarily be valid.

Consider the following examples of invalid syllogisms.

Syllogism with an Illogical Middle Term

A syllogism with an illogical middle term cannot be valid. The middle term of a syllogism is the term that occurs in both the major and minor premises but not in the conclusion. (It links the major term and the minor term together in the syllogism.) A middle term of a valid syllogism must refer to all members of the designated class or group—for example, all dogs, all people, all men, or all women.

Consider the following invalid syllogism:

MAJOR PREMISE

All dogs are mammals.

MINOR PREMISE

Some mammals are porpoises.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, some porpoises are dogs.

Even though the statements in the major and minor premises are true, the syllogism is not valid. Mammals is the middle term because it appears in both the major and minor premises. However, because the middle term mammal does not refer to all mammals, it cannot logically lead to a valid conclusion.

The cartoon shows a dog. The thought bubble of the dog reads, All cats have four legs. I have four legs. Therefore, I am a cat.

In the syllogism that follows, the middle term does refer to all members of the designated group, so the syllogism is valid:

MAJOR PREMISE

All dogs are mammals.

MINOR PREMISE

Ralph is a dog.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Ralph is a mammal.

Syllogism with a Key Term Whose Meaning Shifts

A syllogism that contains a key term whose meaning shifts cannot be valid. For this reason, the meaning of a key term must remain consistent throughout the syllogism.

Consider the following invalid syllogism:

MAJOR PREMISE

Only man is capable of analytical reasoning.

MINOR PREMISE

Anna is not a man.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Anna is not capable of analytical reasoning.

In the major premise, man refers to mankind—that is, to all human beings. In the minor premise, however, man refers to males. In the following valid syllogism, the key terms remain consistent:

MAJOR PREMISE

All educated human beings are capable of analytical reasoning.

MINOR PREMISE

Anna is an educated human being.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Anna is capable of analytical reasoning.

Syllogism with Negative Premise

If either premise in a syllogism is negative, then the conclusion must also be negative.

The following syllogism is not valid:

MAJOR PREMISE

Only senators can vote on legislation.

MINOR PREMISE

No students are senators.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, students can vote on legislation.

Because one of the premises of the syllogism above is negative (“No students are senators”), the only possible valid conclusion must also be negative (“Therefore, no students can vote on legislation”).

If both premises are negative, however, the syllogism cannot have a valid conclusion:

MAJOR PREMISE

Disabled students may not be denied special help.

MINOR PREMISE

Jen is not a disabled student.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Jen may not be denied special help.

In the preceding syllogism, both premises are negative. For this reason, the syllogism cannot have a valid conclusion. (How can Jen deserve special help if she is not a disabled student?) To have a valid conclusion, this syllogism must have only one negative premise:

MAJOR PREMISE

Disabled students may not be denied special help.

MINOR PREMISE

Jen is a disabled student.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Jen may not be denied special help.

Recognizing Enthymemes

An enthymeme is a syllogism with one or two parts of its argument—usually, the major premise—missing. In everyday life, we often leave out parts of arguments—most of the time because we think they are so obvious (or clearly implied) that they don’t need to be stated. We assume that the people hearing or reading the arguments will easily be able to fill in the missing parts.

Many enthymemes are presented as a reason plus a conclusion. Consider the following enthymeme:

Enrique has lied, so he cannot be trusted.

In the preceding statement, the minor premise (the reason) and the conclusion are stated, but the major premise is only implied. Once the missing term has been supplied, the logical structure of the enthymeme becomes clear:

MAJOR PREMISE

People who lie cannot be trusted.

MINOR PREMISE

Enrique has lied.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Enrique cannot be trusted.

It is important to identify enthymemes in arguments you read because some writers, knowing that readers often accept enthymemes uncritically, use them intentionally to unfairly influence readers.

Consider this enthymeme:

Because Liz receives a tuition grant, she should work.

Although some readers might challenge this statement, others will accept it uncritically. When you supply the missing premise, however, the underlying assumptions of the enthymeme become clear—and open to question:

MAJOR PREMISE

All students who receive tuition grants should work.

MINOR PREMISE

Liz receives a tuition grant.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Liz should work.

Perhaps some people who receive tuition grants should work, but should everyone? What about those who are ill or who have disabilities? What about those who participate in varsity sports or have unpaid internships? The enthymeme oversimplifies the issue and should not be accepted at face value.

At first glance, the following enthymeme might seem to make sense:

North Korea is ruled by a dictator, so it should be invaded.

However, consider the same enthymeme with the missing term supplied:

MAJOR PREMISE

All countries governed by dictators should be invaded.

MINOR PREMISE

North Korea is a country governed by a dictator.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, North Korea should be invaded.

Once the missing major premise has been supplied, the flaws in the argument become clear. Should all nations governed by dictators be invaded? Who should do the invading? Who would make this decision? What would be the consequences of such a policy? As this enthymeme illustrates, if the major premise of a deductive argument is questionable, then the rest of the argument will also be flawed.

BUMPER-STICKER THINKING

Bumper stickers often take the form of enthymemes:

§ Self-control beats birth control.

§ Peace is patriotic.

§ A woman’s place is in the House … and in the Senate.

§ Ban cruel traps.

§ Evolution is a theory—kind of like gravity.

§ I work and pay taxes so wealthy people don’t have to.

§ The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.

§ No one needs a mink coat except a mink.

§ Celebrate diversity.

Most often, bumper stickers state just the conclusion of an argument and omit both the major and minor premises. Careful readers, however, will supply the missing premises and thus determine whether the argument is sound.

Bumper stickers on a car.

EXERCISE 5.1 CONSTRUCTING A SYLLOGISM

Read the following paragraph. Then, restate its main argument as a syllogism.

Drunk Driving Should Be Legalized

In ordering states to enforce tougher drunk driving standards by making it a crime to drive with a blood-alcohol concentration of .08 percent or higher, government has been permitted to criminalize the content of drivers’ blood instead of their actions. The assumption that a driver who has been drinking automatically presents a danger to society even when no harm has been caused is a blatant violation of civil liberties. Government should not be concerned with the probability and propensity of a drinking driver to cause an accident; rather, laws should deal only with actions that damage person or property. Until they actually commit a crime, drunk drivers should be liberated from the force of the law. (From “Legalize Drunk Driving,” by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., WorldNetDaily.com)

EXERCISE 5.2 ANALYZING DEDUCTIVE LOGIC

Read the following paragraphs. Then, answer the questions that follow.

Animals Are Equal to Humans

According to the United Nations, a person may not be killed, exploited, cruelly treated, intimidated, or imprisoned for no good reason. Put another way, people should be able to live in peace, according to their own needs and preferences.

Who should have these rights? Do they apply to people of all races? Children? People who are brain damaged or senile? The declaration makes it clear that basic rights apply to everyone. To make a slave of someone who is intellectually handicapped or of a different race is no more justifiable than to make a slave of anyone else.

The reason why these rights apply to everyone is simple: regardless of our differences, we all experience a life with its mosaic of thoughts and feelings. This applies equally to the princess and the hobo, the brain surgeon and the dunce. Our value as individuals arises from this capacity to experience life, not because of any intelligence or usefulness to others. Every person has an inherent value, and deserves to be treated with respect in order to make the most of their unique life experience. (Excerpted from “Human and Animal Rights,” by AnimalLiberation.org)

1. What unstated assumptions about the subject does the writer make? Does the writer expect readers to accept these assumptions? How can you tell?

2. What kind of supporting evidence does the writer provide?

3. What is the major premise of this argument?

4. Express the argument that is presented in these paragraphs as a syllogism.

5. Evaluate the syllogism you constructed. Is it true? Is it valid? Is it sound?

EXERCISE 5.3 JUDGING THE SOUNDNESS OF A DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT

Read the following five arguments, and determine whether each is sound. (To help you evaluate the arguments, you may want to try arranging them as syllogisms.)

1. All humans are mortal. Ahmed is human. Therefore, Ahmed is mortal.

2. Perry should order eggs or oatmeal for breakfast. She won’t order eggs, so she should order oatmeal.

3. The cafeteria does not serve meat loaf on Friday. Today is not Friday. Therefore, the cafeteria will not serve meat loaf.

4. All reptiles are cold-blooded. Geckos are reptiles. Therefore, geckos are cold-blooded.

5. All triangles have three equal sides. The figure on the board is a triangle. Therefore, it must have three equal sides.

EXERCISE 5.4 ANALYZING ENTHYMEMES

Read the following ten enthymemes, which come from bumper stickers. Supply the missing premises, and then evaluate the logic of each argument.

1. If you love your pet, don’t eat meat.

2. War is terrorism.

3. Real men don’t ask for directions.

4. Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.

5. I eat local because I can.

6. Vote nobody for president 2020.

7. I read banned books.

8. Love is the only solution.

9. It’s a child, not a choice.

10. Buy American.

Writing Deductive Arguments

Deductive arguments begin with a general principle and reach a specific conclusion. They develop that principle with logical arguments that are supported by evidence—facts, observations, the opinions of experts, and so on. Keep in mind that no single structure is suitable for all deductive (or inductive) arguments. Different issues and different audiences will determine how you arrange your ideas.

In general, deductive essays can be structured in the following way:

INTRODUCTION

Presents an overview of the issue

States the thesis

BODY

Presents evidence: point 1 in support of the thesis

Presents evidence: point 2 in support of the thesis

Presents evidence: point 3 in support of the thesis

Refutes the arguments against the thesis

CONCLUSION

Brings argument to a close

Concluding statement reinforces the thesis

EXERCISE 5.5 IDENTIFYING THE ELEMENTS OF A DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT

The following student essay, “College Should Be for Everyone,” includes all the elements of a deductive argument. The student who wrote this essay was responding to the question, “Should everyone be encouraged to go to college?” After you read the essay, answer the questions on pages 138—141, consulting the outline above if necessary.

COLLEGE SHOULD BE FOR EVERYONE

CRYSTAL SANCHEZ

Text reads as follows:

First paragraph: Until the middle of the twentieth century, college was largely for the rich. The G.I. Bill, which paid for the education of veterans returning from World War II, helped to change this situation (a corresponding margin note reads, Overview of issue). By 1956, nearly half of those who had served in World War II, almost 7.8 million people, had taken advantage of this benefit (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs). Even today, however, college graduates are still a minority of the popuLATion. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 30 percent of

Americans age twenty-five or older have a bachelor’s degree. Although this situation is gradually improving, it is not good for the country. Why should college be just for the privileged few? (A corresponding margin note reads, Thesis statement) Because a college education provides important benefits, such as increased wages for our citizens and a stronger democracy for our nation, every U.S. citizen should have the opportunity to attend college.

Text continues as follows:

Second paragraph: One reason everyone should have the opportunity to go to college is that a college education gives people a chance to discover what they are good at (a corresponding margin note reads, Evidence: Point 1). It is hard for people to know if they are interested in statistics or public policy or marketing unless they have the chance to explore these subjects. College—and only college—can give them this opportunity. Where else can a person be exposed to a large number of courses taught by experts in a variety of disciplines? Such exposure can open new areas of interest and lead to a much wider set of career options— and thus to a better life (Stout). Without college, most people have limited options and never realize their true potential. Although life and work experiences can teach a person a lot of things, the best education is the broad kind that college offers.

Third paragraph: Another reason everyone should have the opportunity to go to college is that more and more jobs are being phased out or moved overseas (a corresponding margin note reads, Evidence: Point 2). Americans should go to college to develop the skills that they will need to get the best jobs that will remain in the United States. Over the last few decades, midlevel jobs have been steadily disappearing. If this trend continues, the American workforce will be divided in two. One part will consist of low-wage, low-skill service jobs, such as those in food preparation and retail sales, and the other part will be high-skill, high-wage jobs, such as those in management and professional fields like business and engineering. According to a recent report, to compete in the future job market, Americans will need the skills that colleges teach. Future workers will need to be problem solvers who can think both critically and creatively and who can adapt to new situations. They will also need a global awareness, knowledge of many cultures and disciplines, and the ability to communicate in different forms of media. To master these skills, Americans have to be college educated (“Ten Skills for the Future Workforce”).

Fourth paragraph: Perhaps the best reason everyone should have the opportunity to go to college is that education is an essential component of a democratic society (a corresponding margin note reads, Evidence: Point 3). Those without the ability to understand and analyze news reports are not capable of contributing to the social, political, and economic growth of the country. Democracy requires informed citizens who will be able to analyze complicated issues in areas such as finance, education, and public health; weigh competing claims of those running for public office; and assess the job performance of elected officials.

Fourth paragraph continues as follows:

By providing students with the opportunity to study subjects such as history, philosophy, English, and political science, colleges and universities help them to acquire the critical-thinking skills that they will need to participate fully in American democracy.

Fifth paragraph: Some people oppose the idea that everyone should have the opportunity to attend college (a corresponding margin note reads, Refutation of opposing 5 arguments). One objection is that educational resources are limited. Some say that if students enter colleges in great numbers they will overwhelm the higher-education system (Stout). This argument exaggerates the problem. As with any other product, if demand rises, supply will rise to meet that demand. In addition, with today’s extensive distance-learning options and the availability of open educational resources—free, high-quality, digital materials—it will be possible to educate large numbers of students at a reasonable cost (“Open Educational Resources”). Another objection to encouraging everyone to attend college is that underprepared students will require so much help that they will take time and attention away frombetter students. This argument is actually a red herring (a corresponding margin note reads, An irrelevant side issue used as a diversion). Most schools already provide resources, such as tutoring and writing centers, for students who need them. With some additional funding, these schools could expand the services they already provide. This course of action will be expensive, but it is a lot less expensive than leaving millions of young people unprepared for jobs of the future.

Sixth paragraph: A college education gave the returning veterans of World War II many opportunities and increased their value to the nation. Today, a college education could do the same for many citizens. This country has an obligation to offer all students access to an affordable and useful education. Not only will the students benefit personally but the nation will also (a corresponding margin note reads, Concluding statement). If we do not adequately prepare students for the future, then we will all suffer the consequences.

Works Cited

“Open Educational Resources.”Center for American Progress, 7 Feb. 2012, www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/news/2012/02/07/11114/open-educational-resources/.

Stout, Chris. “Top Five Reasons Why You Should Choose to Go to College.” Ezine Articles, 2008, ezinearticles.com/?Top-Five-Reasons-Why-You-Should-Choose-To-Go-To-College&id=384395.

“Ten Skills for the Future Workforce.” The Atlantic, 22 June 2011, www .theatlantic.com/education/archive/2011/06/ten-skills-for-future-work /473484/.

United States Census Bureau. “Highest Educational Levels Reached by Adults in the U.S. Since 1940.” US Census Bureau Newsroom, 23 Feb. 2017, www.census.gov/press-releases/2017/cb17-51.html.

---, Department of Veterans Affairs. “Born of Controversy: The GI Bill of Rights.” GI Bill History, 20 Oct. 2008, www.va.gov/opa/publications /celebrate/gi-bill.pdf.

Identifying the Elements of a Deductive Argument

1. Paraphrase this essay’s thesis.

2. What arguments does the writer present as evidence to support her thesis? Which do you think is the strongest argument? Which is the weakest?

3. What opposing arguments does the writer address? What other opposing arguments could she have addressed?

4. What points does the conclusion emphasize? Do you think that any other points should be emphasized?

5. Construct a syllogism that expresses the essay’s argument. Then, check your syllogism to make sure it is sound.

What Is Inductive Reasoning?

Inductive reasoning begins with specific observations (or evidence) and goes on to draw a general conclusion. You can see how induction works by looking at the following list of observations:

§ Nearly 80 percent of ocean pollution comes from runoff.

§ Runoff pollution can make ocean water unsafe for fish and people.

§ In some areas, runoff pollution has forced beaches to be closed.

§ Drinking water can be contaminated by runoff.

§ More than one-third of shellfish growing in waters in the United States are contaminated by runoff.

§ Each year, millions of dollars are spent to restore polluted areas.

§ There is a causal relationship between agricultural runoff and water-borne organisms that damage fish.

After studying these observations, you can use inductive reasoning to reach the conclusion that runoff pollution (rainwater that becomes polluted after it comes in contact with earth-bound pollutants such as fertilizer, pet waste, sewage, and pesticides) is a problem that must be addressed.

Children learn about the world by using inductive reasoning. For example, very young children see that if they push a light switch up, the lights in a room go on. If they repeat this action over and over, they reach the conclusion that every time they push a switch, the lights will go on. Of course, this conclusion does not always follow. For example, the lightbulb may be burned out or the switch may be damaged. Even so, their conclusion usually holds true. Children also use induction to generalize about what is safe and what is dangerous. If every time they meet a dog, the encounter is pleasant, they begin to think that all dogs are friendly. If at some point, however, a dog snaps at them, they question the strength of their conclusion and modify their behavior accordingly.

Scientists also use induction. In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon first proposed the scientific method—a way of using induction to find answers to questions. When using the scientific method, a researcher proposes a hypothesis and then makes a series of observations to test this hypothesis. Based on these observations, the researcher arrives at a conclusion that confirms, modifies, or disproves the hypothesis.

REACHING INDUCTIVE CONCLUSIONS

Here are some of the ways you can use inductive reasoning to reach conclusions:

§ Particular to general: This form of induction occurs when you reach a general conclusion based on particular pieces of evidence. For example, suppose you walk into a bathroom and see that the mirrors are fogged. You also notice that the bathtub has drops of water on its sides and that the bathroom floor is wet. In addition, you see a damp towel draped over the sink. Putting all these observations together, you conclude that someone has recently taken a bath. (Detectives use induction when gathering clues to solve a crime.)

§ General to general: This form of induction occurs when you draw a conclusion based on the consistency of your observations. For example, if you determine that Apple Inc. has made good products for a long time, you conclude it will continue to make good products.

§ General to particular: This form of induction occurs when you draw a conclusion based on what you generally know to be true. For example, if you believe that cars made by the Ford Motor Company are reliable, then you conclude that a Ford Focus will be a reliable car.

§ Particular to particular: This form of induction occurs when you assume that because something works in one situation, it will also work in another similar situation. For example, if Krazy Glue fixed the broken handle of one cup, then you conclude it will probably fix the broken handle of another cup.

Making Inferences

Unlike deduction, which reaches a conclusion based on information provided by the major and minor premises, induction uses what you know to make a statement about something that you don’t know. While deductive arguments can be judged in absolute terms (they are either valid or invalid), inductive arguments are judged in relative terms (they are either strong or weak).

You reach an inductive conclusion by making an inference—a statement about what is unknown based on what is known. (In other words, you look at the evidence and try to figure out what is going on.) For this reason, there is always a gap between your observations and your conclusion. To bridge this gap, you have to make an inductive leap—a stretch of the imagination that enables you to draw an acceptable conclusion. Therefore, inductive conclusions are never certain (as deductive conclusions are) but only probable. The more evidence you provide, the stronger and more probable are your conclusions (and your argument).

Public-opinion polls illustrate how inferences are used to reach inductive conclusions. Politicians and news organizations routinely use public-opinion polls to assess support (or lack of support) for a particular policy, proposal, or political candidate. After surveying a sample population—registered voters, for example—pollsters reach conclusions based on their responses. In other words, by asking questions and studying the responses of a sample group of people, pollsters make inferences about the larger group—for example, which political candidate is ahead and by how much. How solid these inferences are depends to a great extent on the sample populations the pollsters survey. In an election, for example, a poll of randomly chosen individuals will be less accurate than a poll of registered voters or likely voters. In addition, other factors (such as the size of the sample and the way questions are worded) can determine the relative strength of an inductive conclusion.

As with all inferences, a gap exists between a poll’s data—the responses to the questions—and the conclusion. The larger and more representative the sample, the smaller the inductive leap necessary to reach a conclusion and the more accurate the poll. If the gap between the data and the conclusion is too big, however, the pollsters will be accused of making a hasty generalization (see p. 154). Remember, no matter how much support you present, an inductive conclusion is only probable, never certain. The best you can do is present a convincing case and hope that your audience will accept it.

Constructing Strong Inductive Arguments

When you use inductive reasoning, your conclusion is only as strong as the evidence—the facts, details, or examples—that you use to support it. For this reason, you should be on the lookout for the following problems that can occur when you try to reach an inductive conclusion.

Generalization Too Broad

The conclusion you state cannot go beyond the scope of your evidence. Your evidence must support your generalization. For instance, you cannot survey just three international students in your school and conclude that the school does not go far enough to accommodate international students. To reach such a conclusion, you would have to consider a large number of international students.

Atypical Evidence

The evidence on which you base an inductive conclusion must be representative, not atypical or biased. For example, you cannot conclude that students are satisfied with the course offerings at your school by sampling just first-year students. To be valid, your conclusion should be based on responses from a cross section of students from all years.

Irrelevant Evidence

Your evidence has to support your conclusion. If it does not, it is irrelevant. For example, if you assert that many adjunct faculty members make substantial contributions to your school, your supporting examples must be adjunct faculty, not tenured or junior faculty.

Exceptions to the Rule

There is always a chance that you will overlook an exception that may affect the strength of your conclusion. For example, not everyone who has a disability needs special accommodations, and not everyone who requires special accommodations needs the same services. For this reason, you should avoid using words like every, all, and always and instead use words like most, many, and usually.

EXERCISE 5.6 IDENTIFYING DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS

Read the following arguments, and decide whether each is a deductive argument or an inductive argument and write D or I on the lines.

1. Freedom of speech is a central principle of our form of government. For this reason, students should be allowed to wear T-shirts that call for the legalization of marijuana.

2. The Chevy Cruze Eco gets twenty-seven miles a gallon in the city and forty-six miles a gallon on the highway. The Honda Accord gets twenty-seven miles a gallon in the city and thirty-six miles a gallon on the highway. Therefore, it makes more sense for me to buy the Chevy Cruze Eco.

3. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor flatters Fortunato. He lures him to his vaults where he stores wine. Montresor then gets Fortunato drunk and chains him to the wall of a crypt. Finally, Montresor uncovers a pile of building material and walls up the entrance to the crypt. Clearly, Montresor has carefully planned to murder Fortunato for a very long time.

4. All people should have the right to die with dignity. Garrett is a terminally ill patient, so he should have access to doctor-assisted suicide.

5. Last week, we found unacceptably high levels of pollution in the ocean. On Monday, we also found high levels of pollution. Today, we found even higher levels of pollution. We should close the ocean beaches to swimmers until we can find the source of this problem.

EXERCISE 5.7 ANALYZING DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS

Read the following arguments. Then, decide whether they are deductive or inductive. If they are inductive arguments, evaluate their strength. If they are deductive arguments, evaluate their soundness.

1. The Farmer’s Almanac says that this winter will be very cold. The National Weather Service also predicts that this winter will be very cold. So, this should be a cold winter.

2. Many walled towns in Europe do not let people drive cars into their centers. San Gimignano is a walled town in Europe. It is likely that we will not be able to drive our car into its center.

3. The window at the back of the house is broken. There is a baseball on the floor. A few minutes ago, I saw two boys playing catch in a neighbor’s yard. They must have thrown the ball through the window.

4. Every time I go to the beach I get sunburned. I guess I should stop going to the beach.

5. All my instructors have advanced degrees. Richard Bell is one of my instructors. Therefore, Richard Bell has an advanced degree.

6. My last two boyfriends cheated on me. All men are terrible.

7. I read a study published by a pharmaceutical company that said that Accutane was safe. Maybe the government was too quick to pull this drug off the market.

8. Chase is not very good-looking, and he dresses badly. I don’t know how he can be a good architect.

9. No fictional character has ever had a fan club. Harry Potter does, but he is the exception.

10. Two weeks ago, my instructor refused to accept a late paper. She did the same thing last week. Yesterday, she also told someone that because his paper was late, she wouldn’t accept it. I’d better get my paper in on time.

EXERCISE 5.8 ANALYZING AN INDUCTIVE PARAGRAPH

Read the following inductive paragraph, written by student Pooja Vaidya, and answer the questions that follow it.

When my friend took me to a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys in Philadelphia, I learned a little bit about American football and a lot about the behavior of football fans. Many of the Philadelphia fans were dressed in green and white football jerseys, each with a player’s name and number on the back. One fan had his face painted green and wore a green cape with a large white E on it. He ran up and down the aisles in his section and led cheers. When the team was ahead, everyone joined in. When the team fell behind, this fan literally fell on his knees, cried, and begged the people in the stands to support the Eagles. (After the game, several people asked him for his autograph.) A group of six fans sat without shirts. They wore green wigs, and each had one letter of the team’s name painted on his bare chest. Even though the temperature was below freezing, none of these fans ever put on his shirt. Before the game, many fans had been drinking at tailgate parties in the parking lot, and as the game progressed, they continued to drink beer in the stadium. By the beginning of the second half, fights were breaking out all over the stadium. Guards grabbed the people who were fighting and escorted them out of the stadium. At one point, a fan wearing a Dallas jersey tried to sit down in the row behind me. Some of the Eagles fans were so threatening that the police had to escort the Dallas fan out of the stands for his own protection. When the game ended in an Eagles victory, the fans sang the team’s fight song as they left the stadium. I concluded that for many Eagles fans, a day at the stadium is an opportunity to engage in behavior that in any other context would be unacceptable and even abnormal.

1. Which of the following statements could you not conclude from this paragraph?

a. All Eagles fans act in outrageous ways at games.

b. At football games, the fans in the stands can be as violent as the players on the field.

c. The atmosphere at the stadium causes otherwise normal people to act abnormally.

d. Spectator sports encourage fans to act in abnormal ways.

e. Some people get so caught up in the excitement of a game that they act in uncharacteristic ways.

2. Paraphrase the writer’s conclusion. What evidence is provided to support this conclusion?

3. What additional evidence could the writer have provided? Is this additional evidence necessary, or does the conclusion stand without it?

4. The writer makes an inductive leap to reach the paragraph’s conclusion. Do you think this leap is too great?

5. Does this paragraph make a strong inductive argument? Why or why not?

Writing Inductive Arguments

Inductive arguments begin with evidence (specific facts, observations, expert opinion, and so on), draw inferences from the evidence, and reach a conclusion by making an inductive leap. Keep in mind that inductive arguments are only as strong as the link between the evidence and the conclusion, so the stronger this link is, the stronger the argument will be.

Inductive essays frequently have the following structure:

INTRODUCTION

Presents the issue

States the thesis

BODY

Presents evidence: facts, observations, expert opinion, and so on

Draws inferences from the evidence

Refutes the arguments against the thesis

CONCLUSION

Brings argument to a close

Concluding statement reinforces the thesis

EXERCISE 5.9 IDENTIFYING THE ELEMENTS OF AN INDUCTIVE ESSAY

The following essay includes all the elements of an inductive argument. After you read the essay, answer the questions on page 151, consulting the preceding outline if necessary.

PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE HUMANS

WILLIAM SALETAN

This essay appeared in Slate on September 2, 2006.

In 1894, Congress established Labor Day to honor those who “from rude nature have delvedⁱ and carved all the grandeur we behold.” In the century since, the grandeur of human achievement has multiplied. Over the past four decades, global population has doubled, but food output, driven by increases in productivity, has outpaced it. Poverty, infant mortality, and hunger are receding. For the first time in our planet’s history, a species no longer lives at the mercy of scarcity. We have learned to feed ourselves.

We’ve learned so well, in fact, that we’re getting fat. Not just the United States or Europe, but the whole world. Egyptian, Mexican, and South African women are now as fat as Americans. Far more Filipino adults are now overweight than underweight. In China, one in five adults is too heavy, and the rate of overweight children is 28 times higher than it was two decades ago. In Thailand, Kuwait, and Tunisia, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are soaring.

Hunger is far from conquered. But since 1990, the global rate of malnutrition has declined an average of 1.7 percent a year. Based on data from the World Health Organization and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, for every two people who are malnourished, three are now overweight or obese. Among women, even in most African countries, overweight has surpassed underweight. The balance of peril is shifting.

Fat is no longer a rich man’s disease. For middle- and high-income Americans, the obesity rate is 29 percent. For low-income Americans, it’s 35 percent. Among middle- and high-income kids aged 15 to 17, the rate of overweight is 14 percent. Among low-income kids in the same age bracket, it’s 23 percent. Globally, weight has tended to rise with income. But a study in Vancouver, Canada, published three months ago, found that preschoolers in “food-insecure” households were twice as likely as other kids to be overweight or obese. In Brazilian cities, the poor have become fatter than the rich.

Technologically, this is a triumph. In the early days of our species, even the rich starved. Barry Popkin, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, divides history into several epochs. In the hunter-gatherer era, if we didn’t find food, we died. In the agricultural era, if our crops perished, we died. In the industrial era, famine receded, but infectious diseases killed us. Now we’ve achieved such control over nature that we’re dying not of starvation or infection, but of abundance. Nature isn’t killing us. We’re killing ourselves.

You don’t have to go hungry anymore; we can fill you with fats and carbs more cheaply than ever. You don’t have to chase your food; we can bring it to you. You don’t have to cook it; we can deliver it ready-to-eat. You don’t have to eat it before it spoils; we can pump it full of preservatives so it lasts forever. You don’t even have to stop when you’re full. We’ve got so much food to sell, we want you to keep eating.

What happened in America is happening everywhere, only faster. Fewer farmers’ markets, more processed food. Fewer whole grains, more refined ones. More sweeteners, salt, and trans fats. Cheaper meat, more animal fat. Less cooking, more eating out. Bigger portions, more snacks.

Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut are spreading across the planet. Coca-Cola is in more than 200 countries. Half of McDonald’s business is overseas. In China, animal-fat intake has tripled in 20 years. By 2020, meat consumption in developing countries will grow by 106 million metric tons, outstripping growth in developed countries by a factor of more than five. Forty years ago, to afford a high-fat diet, your country needed a gross national product per capita of nearly $1,500. Now the price is half that. You no longer have to be rich to die a rich man’s death.

Soon, it’ll be a poor man’s death. The rich have Whole Foods, gyms, and personal trainers. The poor have 7-Eleven, Popeyes, and streets unsafe for walking. When money’s tight, you feed your kids at Wendy’s and stock up on macaroni and cheese. At a lunch buffet, you do what your ancestors did: store all the fat you can.

That’s the punch line: Technology has changed everything but us. We evolved to survive scarcity. We crave fat. We’re quick to gain weight and slow to lose it. Double what you serve us, and we’ll double what we eat. Thanks to technology, the deprivation that made these traits useful is gone. So is the link between flavors and nutrients. The modern food industry can sell you sweetness without fruit, salt without protein, creaminess without milk. We can fatten you and starve you at the same time.

“We evolved to survive scarcity.”

And that’s just the diet side of the equation. Before technology, adult men had to expend about 3,000 calories a day. Now they expend about 2,000. Look at the new Segway scooter. The original model relieved you of the need to walk, pedal, or balance. With the new one, you don’t even have to turn the handlebars or start it manually. In theory, Segway is replacing the car. In practice, it’s replacing the body.

In country after country, service jobs are replacing hard labor. The folks who field your customer service calls in Bangalore are sitting at desks. Nearly everyone in China has a television set. Remember when Chinese rode bikes? In the past six years, the number of cars there has grown from six million to 20 million. More than one in seven Chinese has a motorized vehicle, and households with such vehicles have an obesity rate 80 percent higher than their peers.

The answer to these trends is simple. We have to exercise more and change the food we eat, donate, and subsidize. Next year, for example, the U.S. Women, Infants, and Children program, which subsidizes groceries for impoverished youngsters, will begin to pay for fruits and vegetables. For 32 years, the program has fed toddlers eggs and cheese but not one vegetable. And we wonder why poor kids are fat.

The hard part is changing our mentality. We have a distorted body image. We’re so used to not having enough, as a species, that we can’t believe the problem is too much. From China to Africa to Latin America, people are trying to fatten their kids. I just got back from a vacation with my Jewish mother and Jewish mother-in-law. They told me I need to eat more.

The other thing blinding us is liberal guilt. We’re so caught up in the idea of giving that we can’t see the importance of changing behavior rather than filling bellies. We know better than to feed buttered popcorn to zoo animals, yet we send it to a food bank and call ourselves humanitarians. Maybe we should ask what our fellow humans actually need.

Identifying the Elements of an Inductive Argument

1. What is this essay’s thesis? Restate it in your own words.

2. Why do you think Saletan places the thesis where he does?

3. What evidence does Saletan use to support his conclusion?

4. What inductive leap does Saletan make to reach his conclusion? Do you think he should have included more evidence?

5. Overall, do you think Saletan’s inductive argument is relatively strong or weak? Explain.

ⁱ Dug

Recognizing Logical Fallacies

When you write arguments in college, you follow certain rules that ensure fairness. Not everyone who writes arguments is fair or thorough, however. Sometimes you will encounter arguments in which writers attack the opposition’s intelligence or patriotism and base their arguments on questionable (or even false) assumptions. As convincing as these arguments can sometimes seem, they are not valid because they contain fallacies—errors in reasoning that undermine the logic of an argument. Familiarizing yourself with the most common logical fallacies can help you to evaluate the arguments of others and to construct better, more effective arguments of your own.

The following pages define and illustrate some logical fallacies that you should learn to recognize and avoid.

Begging the Question

The fallacy of begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident (or obvious) when it actually requires proof. A conclusion based on such assumptions cannot be valid. For example, someone who is very religious could structure an argument the following way:

MAJOR PREMISE

Everything in the Bible is true.

MINOR PREMISE

The Bible says that Noah built an ark.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, Noah’s ark really existed.

A person can accept the conclusion of this syllogism only if he or she accepts the major premise as self-evident. Some people might find this line of reasoning convincing, but others would not—even if they were religious.

Begging the question occurs any time someone presents a debatable statement as if it were true. For example, look at the following statement:

You have unfairly limited my right of free speech by refusing to print my editorial in the college newspaper.

This statement begs the question because it assumes what it should be proving—that refusing to print an editorial somehow violates a person’s right to free speech.

Circular Reasoning

Closely related to begging the question, circular reasoning occurs when someone supports a statement by restating it in different terms. Consider the following statement:

Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.

The conclusion of the preceding statement is essentially the same as its beginning: stealing (which is illegal) is against the law. In other words, the argument goes in a circle.

Here are some other examples of circular reasoning:

§ Lincoln was a great president because he is the best president we ever had.

§ I am for equal rights for women because I am a feminist.

§ Only someone who is deranged would carry out a school shooting, so he must be mentally ill.

All of the preceding statements have one thing in common: they attempt to support a statement by simply repeating the statement in different words.

The illustration shows a watermill with waterwheel and raised bridges for water to continuously run. The water on the raised bridges appears to run upward and then circle down. A margin note reads, Waterfall, by M. C. Escher. The artwork creates the illusion of water flowing uphill and in a circle. Circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion of an argument is the same as one of the premises.

Weak Analogy

An analogy is a comparison between two items (or concepts)—one familiar and one unfamiliar. When you make an analogy, you explain the unfamiliar item by comparing it to the familiar item.

Although analogies can be effective in arguments, they have limitations. For example, a senator who opposed a government bailout of the financial industry in 2008 made the following argument:

This bailout is doomed from the start. It’s like pouring milk into a leaking bucket. As long as you keep pouring milk, the bucket stays full. But when you stop, the milk runs out the hole in the bottom of the bucket. What we’re doing is throwing money into a big bucket and not fixing the hole. We have to find the underlying problems that have caused this part of our economy to get in trouble and pass legislation to solve them.

The problem with using analogies such as this one is that analogies are never perfect. There is always a difference between the two things being compared. The larger this difference, the weaker the analogy—and the weaker the argument that it supports. For example, someone could point out to the senator that the financial industry—and by extension, the whole economy—is much more complex and multifaceted than a leaking bucket.

This weakness highlights another limitation of an argument by analogy. Even though it can be very convincing, an analogy alone is no substitute for evidence. In other words, to analyze the economy, the senator would have to expand his discussion beyond a single analogy (which cannot carry the weight of the entire argument) and provide convincing evidence that the bailout was a mistake form the start.

Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)

The ad hominem fallacy occurs when someone attacks the character or the motives of a person instead of focusing on the issues. This line of reasoning is illogical because it focuses attention on the person making the argument, sidestepping the argument itself.

Consider the following statement:

Dr. Thomson, I’m not sure why we should believe anything you have to say about this community health center. Last year, you left your husband for another man.

The preceding attack on Dr. Thomson’s character is irrelevant; it has nothing to do with her ideas about the community health center. Sometimes, however, a person’s character may have a direct relation to the issue. For example, if Dr. Thomson had invested in a company that supplied medical equipment to the health center, this fact would have been relevant to the issue at hand.

The ad hominem fallacy also occurs when you attempt to undermine an argument by associating it with individuals who are easily attacked. For example, consider this statement:

I think your plan to provide universal health care is interesting. I’m sure Marx and Lenin would agree with you.

Instead of focusing on the specific provisions of the health-care plan, the opposition unfairly associates it with the ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, two well-known Communists.

Darwin is shown sitting next to another monkey and holding a mirror up to it. A margin note reads, Ad hominem attack against Charles Darwin, originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Creating a Straw Man

This fallacy most likely got its name from the use of straw dummies in military and boxing training. When writers create a straw man, they present a weak argument that can easily be refuted. Instead of attacking the real issue, they focus on a weaker issue and give the impression that they have effectively countered an opponent’s argument. Frequently, the straw man is an extreme or oversimplified version of the opponent’s actual position. For example, during a debate about raising the minimum wage, a senator made the following comment:

If we raise the minimum wage for restaurant workers, the cost of a meal will increase. Soon, the average person won’t be able to afford a cup of soup.

Instead of focusing on legitimate arguments against the minimum wage, the senator misrepresents an opposing argument and then refutes it. As this example shows, the straw man fallacy is dishonest because it intentionally distorts an opponent’s position in order to mislead readers.

Hasty or Sweeping Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)

A hasty or sweeping generalization (also called jumping to a conclusion) occurs when someone reaches a conclusion that is based on too little evidence. Many people commit this fallacy without realizing it. For example, when Richard Nixon was elected president in 1972, film critic Pauline Kael is supposed to have remarked, “How can that be? No one I know voted for Nixon!” The general idea behind this statement is that if Kael’s acquaintances didn’t vote for Nixon, then neither did most other people. This assumption is flawed because it is based on a small sample.

The photo shows a long line of soldiers in uniform holding bayonets in position and leaning forward. Each of them has the bayonet pressed against a straw man suspended by ropes from a bar. A bundle of sticks lies next to each soldier. A margin note reads, Soldiers practicing attacks against straw men.

Sometimes people make hasty generalizations because they strongly favor one point of view over another. At other times, a hasty generalization is simply the result of sloppy thinking. For example, it is easier for a student to say that an instructor is an unusually hard grader than to survey the instructor’s classes to see if this conclusion is warranted (or to consider other reasons for his or her poor performance in a course).

Either/Or Fallacy (False Dilemma)

The either/or fallacy (also called a false dilemma) occurs when a person says that there are just two choices when there are actually more. In many cases, the person committing this fallacy tries to force a conclusion by presenting just two choices, one of which is clearly more desirable than the other. (Parents do this with young children all the time: “Eat your carrots, or go to bed.”)

Politicians frequently engage in this fallacy. For example, according to some politicians, you are either pro-life or pro-choice, pro—gun control or anti—gun control, pro-stem-cell research or anti-stem-cell research. Many people, however, are actually somewhere in the middle, taking a much more nuanced approach to complicated issues.

Consider the following statement:

I can’t believe you voted against the bill to build a wall along the southern border of the United States. Either you’re for protecting our border, or you’re against it.

This statement is an example of the either/or fallacy. The person who voted against the bill might be against building the border wall but not against all immigration restrictions. The person might favor loose restrictions for some people (for example, people fleeing political persecution and migrant workers) and strong restrictions for others (for example, drug smugglers and human traffickers). By limiting the options to just two, the speaker oversimplifies the situation and attempts to force the listener to accept a fallacious argument.

Equivocation

The fallacy of equivocation occurs when a key term has one meaning in one part of an argument and another meaning in another part. (When a term is used unequivocally, it has the same meaning throughout the argument.) Consider the following old joke:

The sign said, “Fine for parking here,” so because it was fine, I parked there.

Obviously, the word fine has two different meanings in this sentence. The first time it is used, it means “money paid as a penalty.” The second time, it means “good” or “satisfactory.”

Most words have more than one meaning, so it is important not to confuse the various meanings. For an argument to work, a key term has to have the same meaning every time it appears in the argument. If the meaning shifts during the course of the argument, then the argument cannot be sound.

Consider the following statement:

This is supposed to be a free country, but nothing worth having is ever free.

In this statement, the meaning of a key term shifts. The first time the word free is used, it means “not under the control of another.” The second time, it means “without charge.”

Red Herring

This fallacy gets its name from the practice of dragging a smoked fish across the trail of a fox to mask its scent during a fox hunt. As a result, the hounds lose the scent and are thrown off the track. The red herring fallacy occurs when a person raises an irrelevant side issue to divert attention from the real issue. Used skillfully, this fallacy can distract an audience and change the focus of an argument.

Political campaigns are good sources of examples of the red herring fallacy. Consider this example from the 2016 presidential race:

I know that Donald Trump says that he is for the “little guy,” but he lives in a three-story penthouse in the middle of Manhattan. How can we believe that his policies will help the average American?

The focus of this argument should have been on Trump’s policies, not on the fact that he lives in a penthouse.

Here is another red herring fallacy:

She: I read that the Alexa virtual assistant records your conversations, even when it’s off. This is an invasion of privacy.

He: That certainly is a first-world problem. Think of all the poor people in Haiti. That should put things in perspective.

Again, the focus of the argument should be on a possible invasion of privacy, not on poverty in Haiti.

The illustration shows a man walking along a dotted line, holding a dog by the leash, with the dog leading the man. The label pointing to the man reads, Person trying to follow the argument. The end of the dotted line shows a cat labeled, The actual issue being argued. The dog moves away from the line toward a fish on the other side of the line. The fish is labeled Red herring, a distraction not related to the argument.

Slippery Slope

The slippery-slope fallacy occurs when a person argues that one thing will inevitably result from another. (Other names for the slippery-slope fallacy are the foot-in-the-door fallacy and the floodgates fallacy.) Both these names suggest that once you permit certain acts, you inevitably permit additional acts that eventually lead to disastrous consequences. Typically, the slippery-slope fallacy presents a series of increasingly unacceptable events that lead to an inevitable, unpleasant conclusion. (Usually, there is no evidence that such a sequence will actually occur.)

We encounter examples of the slippery-slope fallacy almost daily. During a debate on same-sex marriage, for example, an opponent advanced this line of reasoning:

If we allow gay marriage, then there is nothing to stop polygamy. And once we allow this, where will it stop? Will we have to legalize incest—or even bestiality?

Whether or not you support same-sex marriage, you should recognize the fallacy of this slippery-slope reasoning. By the last sentence of the preceding passage, the assertions have become so outrageous that they approach parody. People can certainly debate this issue, but not in such a dishonest and highly emotional way.

You Also (Tu Quoque)

The you also fallacy asserts that a statement is false because it is inconsistent with what the speaker has said or done. In other words, a person is attacked for doing what he or she is arguing against. Parents often encounter this fallacy when they argue with their teenage children. By introducing an irrelevant point—“You did it too”—the children attempt to distract parents and put them on the defensive:

§ How can you tell me not to smoke when you used to smoke?

§ Don’t yell at me for drinking. I bet you had a few beers before you were twenty-one.

§ Why do I have to be home by midnight? Didn’t you stay out late when you were my age?

Arguments such as these are irrelevant. People fail to follow their own advice, but that does not mean that their points have no merit. (Of course, not following their own advice does undermine their credibility.)

Appeal to Doubtful Authority

Writers of research papers frequently use the ideas of recognized authorities to strengthen their arguments. However, the sources offered as evidence need to be both respected and credible. The appeal to doubtful authority occurs when people use the ideas of nonexperts to support their arguments.

Not everyone who speaks as an expert is actually an authority on a particular issue. For example, when movie stars or recording artists give their opinions about politics, climate change, or foreign affairs—things they may know little about—they are not speaking as experts; therefore, they have no authority. (They are experts, however, when they discuss the film or music industries.) A similar situation occurs with the pundits who appear on television news shows or whose ideas are posted on social media sites. Some of these individuals have solid credentials in the fields they discuss, but others offer opinions even though they know little about the subjects. Unfortunately, many people accept the pronouncements of these “experts” uncritically and think it is acceptable to cite them to support their own arguments.

How do you determine whether a person you read about or hear is really an authority? First, make sure that the person actually has expertise in the field he or she is discussing. You can do this by checking his or her credentials on the internet. Second, make sure that the person is not biased. No one is entirely free from bias, but the bias should not be so extreme that it undermines the person’s authority. Finally, make sure that you can confirm what the so-called expert says or writes. Check one or two pieces of information in other sources, such as a basic reference text or encyclopedia. Determine if others—especially recognized experts in the field—confirm this information. If there are major points of discrepancy, dig further to make sure you are dealing with a legitimate authority. Be extremely wary of material that appears on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, even if it is attributed to experts. Don’t use information until you have checked both its authenticity and accuracy.

A board fixed on a stand to the right of Amy Schumer reads, Schumer and Schumer: Enough is enough. A circle reading Gun violence is crossed out. A margin note reads, Comedian/actor Amy Schumer boosts her credibility on the issue of gun control by appealing with her cousin, Senator Charles Schumer.

Misuse of Statistics

The misuse of statistics occurs when data are misrepresented. Statistics can be used persuasively in an argument, but sometimes they are distorted—intentionally or unintentionally—to make a point. For example, a classic ad for toothpaste claims that four out of five dentists recommend Crest toothpaste. What the ad neglects to mention is the number of dentists who were questioned. If the company surveyed several thousand dentists, then this statistic would be meaningful. If the company surveyed only ten, however, it would not be.

Misleading statistics can be much subtler (and much more complicated) than the preceding example. For example, one year, there were 16,653 alcohol-related deaths in the United States. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 12,892 of these 16,653 alcohol-related deaths involved at least one driver or passenger who was legally drunk. Of the 12,892 deaths, 7,326 were the drivers themselves, and 1,594 were legally drunk pedestrians. The remaining 3,972 fatalities were nonintoxicated drivers, passengers, or nonoccupants. These 3,972 fatalities call the total number into question because the NHTSA does not indicate which drivers were at fault. In other words, if a sober driver ran a red light and killed a legally drunk driver, the NHTSA classified this death as alcohol-related. For this reason, the original number of alcohol-related deaths—16,653—is somewhat misleading. (The statistic becomes even more questionable when you consider that a person is automatically classified as intoxicated if he or she refuses to take a sobriety test.)

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (After This, Therefore Because of This)

The post hoc fallacy asserts that because two events occur closely in time, one event must cause the other. Professional athletes commit the post hoc fallacy all the time. For example, one major league pitcher wears the same shirt every time he has an important game. Because he has won several big games while wearing this shirt, he believes it brings him luck.

Many events seem to follow a sequential pattern even though they actually do not. For example, some people refuse to get a flu shot because they say that the last time they got one, they came down with the flu. Even though there is no scientific basis for this link, many people insist that it is true. (The more probable explanation for this situation is that the flu vaccination takes at least two weeks to take effect, so it is possible for someone to be infected by the flu virus before the vaccine starts working. In addition, no flu vaccine is 100 percent effective, so even with the shot, it is possible to contract the disease.)

Another health-related issue also illustrates the post hoc fallacy. Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) studied several natural supplements that claim to cure the common cold. Because the study showed that these products were not effective, the FDA ordered the manufacturers to stop making false claims. Despite this fact, however, many people still buy these products. When questioned, they say the medications actually work. Again, the explanation for this phenomenon is simple. Most colds last just a few days. As the FDA pointed out in its report, people who took the medications would have begun feeling better with or without them.

Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)

The non sequitur fallacy occurs when a conclusion does not follow from the premises. Frequently, the conclusion is supported by weak or irrelevant evidence—or by no evidence at all. Consider the following statement:

Megan drives an expensive car, so she must be earning a lot of money.

Megan might drive an expensive car, but this is not evidence that she has a high salary. She could, for example, be leasing the car or paying it off over a five-year period, or it could have been a gift.

Non sequiturs are common in political arguments. Consider this statement:

Gangs, drugs, and extreme violence plague today’s prisons. The only way to address this issue is to release all nonviolent offenders as soon as possible.

This assessment of the prison system may be accurate, but it doesn’t follow that because of this situation, all nonviolent offenders should be released immediately.

Scientific arguments also contain non sequiturs. Consider the following statement that was made during a debate on climate change:

Recently, the polar ice caps have thickened, and the temperature of the oceans has stabilized. Obviously, we don’t need to do more to address climate change.

Even if you accept the facts of this argument, you need to see more evidence before you can conclude that no action against climate change is necessary. For example, the cooling trend could be temporary, or other areas of the earth could still be growing warmer.

Bandwagon Fallacy

The bandwagon fallacy occurs when you try to convince people that something is true because it is widely held to be true. It is easy to see the problem with this line of reasoning. Hundreds of years ago, most people believed that the sun revolved around the earth and that the earth was flat. As we know, the fact that many people held these beliefs did not make them true.

The underlying assumption of the bandwagon fallacy is that the more people who believe something, the more likely it is to be true. Without supporting evidence, however, this form of argument cannot be valid. For example, consider the following statement made by a driver who was stopped by the police for speeding:

Officer, I didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone around me was going the same speed.

As the police officer was quick to point out, the driver’s argument missed the point: he was doing fifty-five miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone, and the fact that other drivers were also speeding was irrelevant. If the driver had been able to demonstrate that the police officer was mistaken—that he was driving more slowly or that the speed limit was actually sixty miles an hour—then his argument would have had merit. In this case, the fact that other drivers were going the same speed would be relevant because it would support his contention.

Since most people want to go along with the crowd, the bandwagon fallacy can be very effective. For this reason, advertisers use it all the time. For example, a book publisher will say that a book has been on the New York Times best-seller list for ten weeks, and a pharmaceutical company will say that its brand of aspirin outsells other brands four to one. These appeals are irrelevant, however, because they don’t address the central questions: Is the book actually worth reading? Is one brand of aspirin really better than other brands?

EXERCISE 5.10 IDENTIFYING LOGICAL FALLACIES

Determine which of the following statements are logical arguments and which are fallacies. If the statement is not logical, identify the fallacy that best applies.

1. Almost all the students I talked to said that they didn’t like the senator. I’m sure he’ll lose the election on Tuesday.

2. This car has a noisy engine; therefore, it must create a lot of pollution.

3. I don’t know how Professor Resnick can be such a hard grader. He’s always late for class.

4. A vote for the bill to limit gun sales in the city is a vote against the Second Amendment.

5. It’s only fair to pay your fair share of taxes.

6. I had an internship at a government agency last summer, and no one there worked very hard. Government workers are lazy.

7. It’s a clear principle of law that people are not allowed to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. By permitting protestors to hold a rally downtown, Judge Cohen is allowing them to do just that.

8. Of course this person is guilty. He wouldn’t be in jail if he weren’t a criminal.

9. Schools are like families; therefore, teachers (like parents) should be allowed to discipline their kids.

10. Everybody knows that staying out in the rain can make you sick.

11. When we had a draft in the 1960s, the crime rate was low. We should bring back the draft.

12. I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV. I recommend Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup.

13. Some people are complaining about public schools, so there must be a problem.

14. If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

15. All people are mortal. James is a person. Therefore, James is mortal.

16. I don’t know why you gave me an F for handing in someone else’s essay. Didn’t you ever copy something from someone else?

17. First, the government stops us from buying assault-style rifles. Then, it tries to limit the number of handguns we can buy. What will come next? Soon, they’ll try to take away all our guns.

18. Shakespeare was the world’s greatest playwright; therefore, Macbeth must be a great play.

19. Last month, I bought a new computer. Yesterday, I installed some new software. This morning, my computer wouldn’t start up. The new software must be causing the problem.

20. Ellen DeGeneres and Paul McCartney are against testing pharmaceutical and cosmetics products on animals, and that’s good enough for me.

EXERCISE 5.11 ANALYZING LOGICAL FALLACIES

Read the following essay, and identify as many logical fallacies in it as you can. Make sure you identify each fallacy by name and are able to explain the flaws in the writer’s arguments.

IMMIGRATION TIME-OUT

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

This essay is from Buchanan.org, where it appeared on October 31, 1994.

What do we want the America of the years 2000, 2020, and 2050 to be like? Do we have the right to shape the character of the country our grandchildren will live in? Or is that to be decided by whoever, outside America, decides to come here?

By 2050, we are instructed by the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, Chang Lin-Tin, “the majority of Americans will trace their roots to Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Pacific Islands.”

Now, any man or woman, of any nation or ancestry can come here—and become a good American.

We know that from our history. But by my arithmetic, the chancellor is saying Hispanics, Asians, and Africans will increase their present number of 65 million by at least 100 million in 60 years, a population growth larger than all of Mexico today.

What will that mean for America? Well, South Texas and Southern California will be almost exclusively Hispanic. Each will have tens of millions of people whose linguistic, historic, and cultural roots are in Mexico. Like Eastern Ukraine, where 10 million Russian-speaking “Ukrainians” now look impatiently to Moscow, not Kiev, as their cultural capital, America could see, in a decade, demands for Quebec-like status for Southern California. Already there is a rumbling among militants for outright secession. A sea of Mexican flags was prominent in that L.A. rally against Prop. 187, and Mexican officials are openly urging their kinsmen in California to vote it down.

If no cutoff is imposed on social benefits for those who breach our borders, and break our laws, the message will go out to a desperate world: America is wide open. All you need do is get there, and get in.

Consequences will ensue. Crowding together immigrant and minority populations in our major cities must bring greater conflict. We saw that in the 1992 L.A. riot. Blacks and Hispanics have lately collided in D.C.’s Adams-Morgan neighborhood, supposedly the most tolerant and progressive section of Washington. The issue: bilingual education. Unlike 20 years ago, ethnic conflict is today on almost every front page.

Before Mr. Chang’s vision is realized, the United States will have at least two official languages. Today’s steady outmigration of “Anglos” or “Euro-Americans,” as whites are now called, from Southern Florida and Southern California, will continue. The 50 states will need constant redrawing of political lines to ensure proportional representation. Already we have created the first “apartheid districts” in America’s South.

“Ethnic militancy and solidarity are on the rise.”

Ethnic militancy and solidarity are on the rise in the United States; the old institutions of assimilation are not doing their work as they once did; the Melting Pot is in need of repair. On campuses we hear demands for separate dorms, eating rooms, clubs, etc., by black, white, Hispanic, and Asian students. If this is where the campus is headed, where are our cities going?

If America is to survive as “one nation, one people,” we need to call a “time-out” on immigration, to assimilate the tens of millions who have lately arrived. We need to get to know one another, to live together, to learn together America’s language, history, culture, and traditions of tolerance, to become a new national family, before we add a hundred million more. And we need soon to bring down the curtain on this idea of hyphenated-Americanism.

If we lack the courage to make the decisions—as to what our country will look like in 2050—others will make those decisions for us, not all of whom share our love of the America that seems to be fading away.

EXERCISE 5.12 CORRECTING LOGICAL FALLACIES

Choose three of the fallacies that you identified in “Immigration Time-Out” for Exercise 5.11. Rewrite each statement in the form of a logical argument.

READING AND WRITING ABOUT THE ISSUE

How Free Should Free Speech Be?

The photo shows a large crowd of student protestors marching through the college gates holding a banner reading, Free Speech. One of the students is holding the U. S. flag.

Go back to page 127, and reread the At Issue box that gives background on how free free speech should be. As the following sources illustrate, this question has a number of possible answers.

As you read this source material, you will be asked to answer questions and to complete some simple activities. This work will help you understand both the content and the structure of the sources. When you are finished, you will be ready to write an argument—either inductive or deductive—that takes a new position on how free free speech should actually be.

SOURCES

THE CASE FOR CENSORING HATE SPEECH

SEAN MCELWEE

This essay originally appeared on the Huffington Post on July 24, 2013.

For the past few years speech has moved online, leading to fierce debates about its regulation. Most recently, feminists have led the charge to purge Facebook of misogyny that clearly violates its hate speech code. Facebook took a small step two weeks ago, creating a feature that will remove ads from pages deemed “controversial.” But such a move is half-hearted; Facebook and other social networking websites should not tolerate hate speech and, in the absence of a government mandate, adopt a European model of expunging offensive material.

Stricter regulation of internet speech will not be popular with the libertarian-minded citizens of the United States, but it’s necessary. A typical view of such censorship comes from Jeffrey Rosen, who argues in The New Republic that,

“. . . given their tremendous size and importance as platforms for free speech, companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter shouldn’t try to be guardians of what Waldron calls a ’well-ordered society’; instead, they should consider themselves the modern version of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s fractious marketplace of ideas—democratic spaces where all values, including civility norms, are always open for debate.”

This image is romantic and lovely (although misattributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously toed both lines on the free speech debate, instead of John Stuart Mill) but it’s worth asking what this actually looks like. Rosen forwards one example:

“Last year, after the French government objected to the hash tag ’#unbonjuif’—intended to inspire hateful riffs on the theme ’a good Jew . . .’—Twitter blocked a handful of the resulting tweets in France, but only because they violated French law. Within days, the bulk of the tweets carrying the hashtag had turned from anti-Semitic to denunciations of anti-Semitism, confirming that the Twittersphere is perfectly capable of dealing with hate speech on its own, without heavy-handed intervention.”

It’s interesting to note how closely this idea resembles free market fundamentalism: simply get rid of any coercive rules and the “marketplace of ideas” will naturally produce the best result. Humboldt State University compiled a visual map that charts 150,000 hateful insults aggregated over the course of 11 months in the U.S. by pairing Google’s Maps API with a series of the most homophobic, racist, and otherwise prejudiced tweets. The map’s existance draws into question the notion that the “Twittersphere” can organically combat hate speech; hate speech is not going to disappear from Twitter on its own.

The negative impacts of hate speech do not lie in the responses of third-party observers, as hate speech aims at two goals. First, it is an attempt to tell bigots that they are not alone. Frank Collins—the neo-Nazi prosecuted in National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie (1977)—said, “We want to reach the good people, get the fierce anti-Semites who have to live among the Jews to come out of the woodwork and stand up for themselves.”

The second purpose of hate speech is to intimidate the targeted minority, leading them to question whether their dignity and social status is secure. In many cases, such intimidation is successful. Consider the number of rapes that go unreported. Could this trend possibly be impacted by Reddit threads like /r/rapingwomen or /r/mensrights? Could it be due to the harassment women face when they even suggest the possibility they were raped? The rape culture that permeates Facebook, Twitter, and the public dialogue must be held at least partially responsible for our larger rape culture.

Reddit, for instance, has become a veritable potpourri of hate speech; consider Reddit threads like /r/nazi, /r/killawoman, /r/misogny, /r/killingwomen. My argument is not that these should be taken down because they are offensive, but rather because they amount to the degradation of a class that has been historically oppressed. Imagine a Reddit thread for /r/lynchingblacks or /r/assassinatingthepresident. We would not argue that we should sit back and wait for this kind of speech to be “outspoken” by positive speech, but that it should be entirely banned.

American free speech jurisprudence relies upon the assumption that speech is merely the extension of a thought, and not an action. If we consider it an action, then saying that we should combat hate speech with more positive speech is an absurd proposition; the speech has already done the harm, and no amount of support will defray the victim’s impression that they are not truly secure in this society. We don’t simply tell the victim of a robbery, “Hey, it’s okay, there are lots of other people who aren’t going to rob you.” Similarly, it isn’t incredibly useful to tell someone who has just had their race/gender/sexuality defamed, “There are a lot of other nice people out there.”

Those who claim to “defend free speech” when they defend the right to post hate speech online, are in truth backwards. Free speech isn’t an absolute right; no right is weighed in a vacuum. The court has imposed numerous restrictions on speech. Fighting words, libel, and child pornography are all banned. Other countries merely go one step further by banning speech intended to intimidate vulnerable groups. The truth is that such speech does not democratize speech, it monopolizes speech. Women, LGBTQ individuals, and racial or religious minorities feel intimidated and are left out of the public sphere. On Reddit, for example, women have left or changed their usernames to be more male-sounding lest they face harassment and intimidation for speaking on Reddit about even the most gender-neutral topics.

Those who try to remove this hate speech have been criticized from left and right. At Slate, Jillian York writes, “While the campaigners on this issue are to be commended for raising awareness of such awful speech on Facebook’s platform, their proposed solution is ultimately futile and sets a dangerous precedent for special interest groups looking to bring their pet issue to the attention of Facebook’s censors.”

It hardly seems right to qualify a group fighting hate speech as an “interest group” trying to bring their “pet issue” to the attention of Facebook censors. The “special interest” groups she fears might apply for protection must meet Facebook’s strict community standards, which state:

While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or medical condition.

If anything, the groups to which York refers are nudging Facebook towards actually enforcing its own rules.

People who argue against such rules generally portray their opponents as standing on a slippery precipice, tugging at the question “what next?” We can answer that question: Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, and India all ban hate speech. Yet, none of these countries have slipped into totalitarianism. In many ways, such countries are more free when you weigh the negative liberty to express harmful thoughts against the positive liberty that is suppressed when you allow for the intimidation of minorities.

“Free speech isn’t an absolute right; no right is weighed in a vacuum.”

As Arthur Schopenhauer said, “the freedom of the press should be governed by a very strict prohibition of all and every anonymity.” However, with the internet the public dialogue has moved online, where hate speech is easy and anonymous.

Jeffrey Rosen argues that norms of civility should be open to discussion, but, in today’s reality, this issue has already been decided; impugning someone because of their race, gender, or orientation is not acceptable in a civil society. Banning hate speech is not a mechanism to further this debate because the debate is over.

As Jeremy Waldron argues, hate speech laws prevent bigots from, “trying to create the impression that the equal position of members of vulnerable minorities in a rights-respecting society is less secure than implied by the society’s actual foundational commitments.”

Some people argue that the purpose of laws that ban hate speech is merely to avoid offending prudes. No country, however, has mandated that anything be excised from the public square merely because it provokes offense, but rather because it attacks the dignity of a group—a practice the U.S. Supreme Court called in Beauharnais v. Illinois (1952) “group libel.” Such a standard could easily be applied to Twitter, Reddit, and other social media websites. While Facebook’s policy as written should be a model, it’s enforcement has been shoddy. Chaim Potok argues that if a company claims to have a policy, it should rigorously and fairly enforce it.

If this is the standard, the internet will surely remain controversial, but it can also be free of hate and allow everyone to participate. A true marketplace of ideas must co-exist with a multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-sexually oriented society, and it can.

AT ISSUE: HOW FREE SHOULD FREE SPEECH BE?

1. McElwee states his thesis at the end of paragraph 1. Should he have given more background information about the issue before stating his thesis? Why or why not?

2. What evidence does McElwee provide to support his thesis? Should he have provided more evidence? If so, what kind?

3. In paragraph 8, McElwee compares a victim of robbery to a victim of hate speech. How strong is this analogy? At what points, if any, does this comparison break down?

4. What opposing arguments does McElwee address? What other opposing arguments could he have addressed?

5. In paragraph 12, McElwee says, “People who argue against such rules generally portray their opponents as standing on a slippery precipice. . . .” What is the “slippery precipice” to which McElwee refers? Is this characterization accurate? Fair?

6. What are the major strengths of McElwee’s essay? What are its weaknesses? Overall, how effective is McElwee’s argument?

THE UNFREE SPEECH MOVEMENT

SOL STERN

This op-ed originally ran in the Wall Street Journal on September 24, 2014.

This fall the University of California at Berkeley is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, a student-led protest against campus restrictions on political activities that made headlines and inspired imitators around the country. I played a small part in the Free Speech Movement, and some of those returning for the reunion were once my friends, but I won’t be joining them.

Though the movement promised greater intellectual and political freedom on campus, the result has been the opposite. The great irony is that while Berkeley now honors the memory of the Free Speech Movement, it exercises more thought control over students than the hated institution that we rose up against half a century ago.

We early-1960s radicals believed ourselves anointed as a new “tell it like it is” generation. We promised to transcend the “smelly old orthodoxies” (in George Orwell’s phrase) of Cold War liberalism and class-based, authoritarian leftism. Leading students into the university administration building for the first mass protest, Mario Savio, the Free Speech Movement’s brilliant leader from Queens, New York, famously said: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. … And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

The Berkeley “machine” now promotes Free Speech Movement kitsch. The steps in front of Sproul Hall, the central administration building where more than 700 students were arrested on December 2, 1964, have been renamed the Mario Savio Steps. One of the campus dining halls is called the Free Speech Movement Cafe, its walls covered with photographs and mementos of the glorious semester of struggle. The university requires freshmen to read an admiring biography of Savio, who died in 1996, written by New York University professor and Berkeley graduate Robert Cohen.

Yet intellectual diversity is hardly embraced. Every undergraduate undergoes a form of indoctrination with a required course on the “theoretical or analytical issues relevant to understanding race, culture, and ethnicity in American society,” administered by the university’s Division of Equity and Inclusion.

How did this Orwellian inversion occur? It happened in part because the Free Speech Movement’s fight for free speech was always a charade. The struggle was really about using the campus as a base for radical politics. I was a 27-year-old New Left graduate student at the time. Savio was a 22-year-old sophomore. He liked to compare the Free Speech Movement to the civil-rights struggle—conflating the essentially liberal Berkeley administration with the Bull Connors of the racist South.

During one demonstration Savio suggested that the campus cops who had arrested a protesting student were “poor policemen” who only “have a job to do.” Another student then shouted out: “Just like Eichmann.” “Yeah. Very good. It’s very, you know, like Adolf Eichmann,” Savio replied. “He had a job to do. He fit into the machinery.”

I realized years later that this moment may have been the beginning of the 1960s radicals’ perversion of ordinary political language, like the spelling “Amerika” or seeing hope and progress in Third World dictatorships.

Before that 1964—65 academic year, most of us radical students could not have imagined a campus rebellion. Why revolt against an institution that until then offered such a pleasant sanctuary? But then Berkeley administrators made an incredibly stupid decision to establish new rules regarding political activities on campus. Student clubs were no longer allowed to set up tables in front of the Bancroft Avenue campus entrance to solicit funds and recruit new members.

The clubs had used this 40-foot strip of sidewalk for years on the assumption that it was the property of the City of Berkeley and thus constitutionally protected against speech restrictions. But the university claimed ownership to justify the new rules. When some students refused to comply, the administration compounded its blunder by resorting to the campus police. Not surprisingly, the students pushed back, using civil-disobedience tactics learned fighting for civil rights in the South.

The Free Speech Movement was born on October 1, 1964, when police tried to arrest a recent Berkeley graduate, Jack Weinberg, who was back on campus after a summer as a civil-rights worker in Mississippi. He had set up a table on the Bancroft strip for the Berkeley chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Dozens of students spontaneously sat down around the police car, preventing it from leaving the campus. A 32-hour standoff ensued, with hundreds of students camped around the car.

“But others had mastered the new world of political theater, understood the weakness of American liberalism, and soon turned their ire on the Vietnam War.”

Mario Savio, also back from Mississippi, took off his shoes, climbed onto the roof of the police car, and launched into an impromptu speech explaining why the students had to resist the immoral new rules. Thus began months of sporadic protests, the occupation of Sproul Hall on December 2 (ended by mass arrests), national media attention, and Berkeley’s eventual capitulation.

That should have ended the matter. Savio soon left the political arena, saying that he had no interest in becoming a permanent student leader. But others had mastered the new world of political theater, understood the weakness of American liberalism, and soon turned their ire on the Vietnam War.

The radical movement that the Free Speech Movement spawned eventually descended into violence and mindless anti-Americanism. The movement waned in the 1970s as the war wound down—but by then protesters had begun their infiltration of university faculties and administrations they had once decried. “Tenured radicals,” in New Criterion editor Roger Kimball’s phrase, now dominate most professional organizations in the humanities and social studies. Unlike our old liberal professors, who dealt respectfully with the ideas advanced by my generation of New Left students, today’s radical professors insist on ideological conformity and don’t take kindly to dissent by conservative students. Visits by speakers who might not toe the liberal line—recently including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Islamism critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali—spark protests and letter-writing campaigns by students in tandem with their professors until the speaker withdraws or the invitation is canceled.

On October 1 at Berkeley, by contrast, one of the honored speakers at the Free Speech Movement anniversary rally on Sproul Plaza will be Bettina Aptheker, who is now a feminist-studies professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Writing in the Berkeley alumni magazine about the anniversary, Ms. Aptheker noted that the First Amendment was “written by white, propertied men in the 18th century, who never likely imagined that it might apply to women, and/or people of color, and/or all those who were not propertied, and even, perhaps, not citizens, and/or undocumented immigrants. … In other words, freedom of speech is a Constitutional guarantee, but who gets to exercise it without the chilling restraints of censure depends very much on one’s location in the political and social cartography. We [Free Speech Movement] veterans were too young and inexperienced in 1964 to know this, but we do now, and we speak with a new awareness, a new consciousness, and a new urgency that the wisdom of a true freedom is inexorably tied to who exercises power and for what ends.” Read it and weep—for the Free Speech Movement anniversary, for the ideal of an intellectually open university, and for America.

AT ISSUE: HOW FREE SHOULD FREE SPEECH BE?

1. In your own words, summarize Stern’s thesis. Where does he state it?

2. At what point (or points) in the essay does Stern appeal to ethos? How effective is this appeal?

3. In paragraph 4, Stern says, “The Berkeley ’machine’ now promotes Free Speech Movement kitsch.” First, look up the meaning of kitsch. Then, explain what Stern means by this statement.

4. Stern supports his points with examples drawn from his own experience. Is this enough? What other kinds of evidence could he have used?

5. In paragraph 5, Stern says that every undergraduate at Berkeley “undergoes a form of indoctrination.” What does he mean? Does Stern make a valid point, or is he begging the question?

6. Why does Stern discuss Bettina Aptheker in paragraphs 15—16? Could he be accused of making an ad hominem attack? Why or why not?

ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND CAMPUS SPEECH CODES

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS

This code came out of a June 1992 meeting of the American Association of University Professors.

Freedom of thought and expression is essential to any institution of higher learning. Universities and colleges exist not only to transmit existing knowledge. Equally, they interpret, explore, and expand that knowledge by testing the old and proposing the new.

This mission guides learning outside the classroom quite as much as in class, and often inspires vigorous debate on those social, economic, and political issues that arouse the strongest passions. In the process, views will be expressed that may seem to many wrong, distasteful, or offensive. Such is the nature of freedom to sift and winnow ideas.

“On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden.”

On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful or disturbing that it may not be expressed.

Universities and colleges are also communities, often of a residential character. Most campuses have recently sought to become more diverse, and more reflective of the larger community, by attracting students, faculty, and staff from groups that were historically excluded or underrepresented. Such gains as they have made are recent, modest, and tenuous. The campus climate can profoundly affect an institution’s continued diversity. Hostility or intolerance to persons who differ from the majority (especially if seemingly condoned by the institution) may undermine the confidence of new members of the community. Civility is always fragile and can easily be destroyed.

In response to verbal assaults and use of hateful language some campuses have felt it necessary to forbid the expression of racist, sexist, homophobic, or ethnically demeaning speech, along with conduct or behavior that harasses. Several reasons are offered in support of banning such expression. Individuals and groups that have been victims of such expression feel an understandable outrage. They claim that the academic progress of minority and majority alike may suffer if fears, tensions, and conflicts spawned by slurs and insults create an environment inimical to learning. These arguments, grounded in the need to foster an atmosphere respectful of and welcome to all persons, strike a deeply responsive chord in the academy. But, while we can acknowledge both the weight of these concerns and the thoughtfulness of those persuaded of the need for regulation, rules that ban or punish speech based upon its content cannot be justified. An institution of higher learning fails to fulfill its mission if it asserts the power to proscribe ideas—and racial or ethnic slurs, sexist epithets, or homophobic insults almost always express ideas, however repugnant. Indeed, by proscribing any ideas, a university sets an example that profoundly disserves its academic mission. Some may seek to defend a distinction between the regulation of the content of speech and the regulation of the manner (or style) of speech. We find this distinction untenable in practice because offensive style or opprobrious phrases may in fact have been chosen precisely for their expressive power. As the United States Supreme Court has said in the course of rejecting criminal sanctions for offensive words: Words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force. We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated. The line between substance and style is thus too uncertain to sustain the pressure that will inevitably be brought to bear upon disciplinary rules that attempt to regulate speech. Proponents of speech codes sometimes reply that the value of emotive language of this type is of such a low order that, on balance, suppression is justified by the harm suffered by those who are directly affected, and by the general damage done to the learning environment. Yet a college or university sets a perilous course if it seeks to differentiate between high-value and low-value speech, or to choose which groups are to be protected by curbing the speech of others. A speech code unavoidably implies an institutional competence to distinguish permissible expression of hateful thought from what is proscribed as thoughtless hate. Institutions would also have to justify shielding some, but not other, targets of offensive language—not to political preference, to religious but not to philosophical creed, or perhaps even to some but not to other religious affiliations. Starting down this path creates an even greater risk that groups not originally protected may later demand similar solicitude—demands the institution that began the process of banning some speech is ill equipped to resist.

Distinctions of this type are neither practicable nor principled; their very fragility underscores why institutions devoted to freedom of thought and expression ought not adopt an institutionalized coercion of silence.

Moreover, banning speech often avoids consideration of means more compatible with the mission of an academic institution by which to deal with incivility, intolerance, offensive speech, and harassing 'margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:41.0pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>1. Institutions should adopt and invoke a range of measures that penalize conduct and behavior, rather than speech, such as rules against defacing property, physical intimidation or harassment, or disruption of campus activities. All members of the campus community should be made aware of such rules, and administrators should be ready to use them in preference to speech-directed sanctions.

2. Colleges and universities should stress the means they use best—to educate—including the development of courses and other curricular and co-curricular experiences designed to increase student understanding and to deter offensive or intolerant speech or conduct. Such institutions should, of course, be free (indeed encouraged) to condemn manifestations of intolerance and discrimination, whether physical or verbal.

3. The governing board and the administration have a special duty not only to set an outstanding example of tolerance, but also to challenge boldly and condemn immediately serious breaches of civility.

4. Members of the faculty, too, have a major role; their voices may be critical in condemning intolerance, and their actions may set examples for understanding, making clear to their students that civility and tolerance are hallmarks of educated men and women.

5. Student personnel administrators have in some ways the most demanding role of all, for hate speech occurs most often in dormitories, locker-rooms, cafeterias, and student centers. Persons who guide this part of campus life should set high standards of their own for tolerance and should make unmistakably clear the harm that uncivil or intolerant speech inflicts.

To some persons who support speech codes, measures like these—relying as they do on suasion rather than sanctions—may seem inadequate. But freedom of expression requires toleration of “ideas we hate,” as Justice Holmes put it. The underlying principle does not change because the demand is to silence a hateful speaker, or because it comes from within the academy. Free speech is not simply an aspect of the educational enterprise to be weighed against other desirable ends. It is the very precondition of the academic enterprise itself.

AT ISSUE: HOW FREE SHOULD FREE SPEECH BE?

1. The writers of this statement rely primarily on deductive reasoning. Construct a syllogism that includes the selection’s major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.

2. At what audience is this statement aimed—students, instructors, administrators, or the general public? How do you know?

3. What problem do the writers address? Where do they present their solution?

4. In paragraph 5, the writers discuss the major arguments against their position. Why do they address opposing arguments so early in the selection? How effectively do the writers refute these arguments?

5. Paragraph 7 is followed by a numbered list. What information is in this list? Why did the writers decide to set it off in this way?

6. What do the writers mean when they say that free speech “is the very precondition of the academic exercise itself” (para. 8)?

INTIMIDATION IS THE NEW NORMAL

JONATHAN HAIDT

This essay first appeared in the Washington Post on February 20, 2015.

Images of fires, fireworks, and metal barricades crashing through windows made for great television, but the rioters who shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’s talk at the University of California at Berkeley didn’t just attack property. Fewer cell phone cameras captured the moments when they punched and pepper-sprayed members of the crowd, particularly those who seemed like they might be supporters of Yiannopoulos or Donald Trump.

Although the violence on February 1 was clearly instigated by outside agitators—“black bloc” anarchists who show up at events with their faces masked—at least some of the people behind the masks were Berkeley students who thought it was morally permissible to use violence to stop a lecture from taking place. As one student wrote afterward, “Violence helped ensure the safety of students.” Another asked, “When the nonviolent tactics [for stopping the talk] have been exhausted—what is left?”

Still, it was easy for the academic community to think of the riot as a special case. After all, Yiannopoulos is a professional troll. He came to campus to provoke, not to instruct. And he had exposed vulnerable individuals to danger before, as when he posted the name and photo of a trans woman on-screen while he mocked her.

A month later, on March 2, the violence was harder to justify. After students shouted down Charles Murray’s attempt to give a lecture at Middlebury College, he was moved to a locked room in the student center from which his talk was live-streamed. Angry students pounded on the walls and pulled fire alarms to disrupt the broadcast. As Murray and his faculty host—Allison Stanger, a political-science professor—left the building, they were blocked by an “angry mob” (Stanger’s words) including both students and nonstudents. As Stanger and Murray tried to push their way through, with the help of two security guards, several people grabbed and pulled at them, sending her to the hospital with whiplash and a concussion. Stanger later wrote that she had feared for her life.

Perhaps because it was a professor who was injured, Middlebury students did not defend the use of violence in the way that some Berkeley students had. But even the students’ coordinated effort to silence Murray is harder to justify than the effort to silence Yiannopoulos. Murray is mild-mannered, came with co-sponsorship from the political-science department, and was there not to provoke but to talk about an issue that is central to students’ moral and political concerns: social and economic inequality. When two psychologists, Wendy Williams and Stephen Ceci, asked 70 professors at various colleges to assess the political leaning of Murray’s speech—given to them as a transcript with no source attributed—they rated it as “middle of the road,” leaning neither left nor right.

But for many students and professors, what Murray intended to say was not relevant. The Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled him a “white supremacist” on the basis of his writings, and that was sufficient for many to believe that they had a moral duty to deny a platform to him. So perhaps Murray was a special case, too—some said his mere presence, like Yiannopoulos’s at Berkeley, posed a direct danger to students. (I urge readers to see Murray’s line-by-line corrections of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s entry on him, then read some of his writings and decide for themselves.)

A month after the Middlebury fracas came the Heather Mac Donald shout-down at Claremont McKenna College. But this was no special case. Mac Donald is a typical campus speaker—a journalist and political commentator who wrote a book challenging prevailing wisdom on a matter of current concern.

In her 2016 book, The War on Cops, she argued that overstated claims about systemic racism among police officers have led police departments in some cities to adopt less assertive tactics, which has led to increased crime, including higher rates of murder, particularly of black men. Her thesis, popularly known as “the Ferguson effect,” has been hotly debated, but as the left-leaning sociologist Neil Gross summarized the state of play last September, “there is now some evidence that when all eyes are on police misconduct, crime may edge up. Progressives should acknowledge that this idea isn’t far-fetched.”

Yet because Mac Donald challenged the dominant narrative and criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, some students at Claremont McKenna decided that she, too, must be denied a platform. They mobilized a mass action via Facebook with a call to “show up wearing black” and “bring your comrades, because we’re shutting this down.” A mob outside the auditorium, estimated at around 300 people, prevented anyone from entering the building. The college decided to stream Mac Donald’s talk live from the nearly empty hall as hundreds of protesters pounded on the windows. Immediately afterward, she was whisked away through a kitchen exit by the campus police in an unmarked car.

What are we to make of this? There were no reports of violence or property damage. Yet this event is potentially more ominous than the Berkeley and Middlebury violence, for we are witnessing the emergence of a dangerous new norm for responding to speakers who challenge campus orthodoxy. Anyone offended by the speaker can put out a call on Facebook to bring together students and locals, including “antifa" (antifascist) and black-bloc activists who explicitly endorse the use of violence against racists and fascists. Because of flagrant “concept creep,” however, almost anyone who is politically right of center can be labeled a racist or a fascist, and the promiscuous use of such labels is now part of the standard operating procedure. The call to shut down Mac Donald’s talk asserted, without evidence, that her agenda is “racist, anti-Black, capitalist, imperialist, [and] fascist.” As with accusations of witchcraft in earlier centuries, once such labels are attached to someone, few will dare to challenge their accuracy, lest they be accused of the same crimes.

It is crucial to note that at all three colleges—Berkeley, Middlebury, and Claremont McKenna—the crowd included a mix of students and locals, some wearing masks. It is therefore no longer possible to assume that a crowd on a college campus will be nonviolent, as crowds of protesting students were in the fall of 2015. What would have happened to Mac Donald had she tried to enter or exit through the main entrance, without a police escort? From now on, any campus speaker who arouses a protest is at risk of a beating. Can this really be the future of American higher education?

I do not doubt that many students face indignities and insults because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or ability status. I respect students who take actions motivated by their concern for their fellow students. But these actions reflect choices that have far-reaching and potentially damaging consequences. First, there is the decision to appraise events in ways that amplify their harmfulness. A common feature of recent campus shout-downs is the argument that the speaker “dehumanizes” members of marginalized groups or “denies their right to exist.” No quotations or citations are given for such strong assertions; these are rhetorical moves made to strengthen the case against the speaker. But if students come to believe that anyone who offends them has “dehumanized" them, they are setting themselves up for far greater vulnerability and isolation. Life, love, and work are full of small offenses and misunderstandings, many of which will now be experienced as monstrous and unforgivable.

“It is no longer possible to assume that a crowd on a college campus will be nonviolent.”

Second, students in the past few years have increasingly opted for collective action to shut down talks by speakers they dislike, rather than taking the two traditional options available to all individuals: Don’t go to the talk, or go and engage the speaker in the question-and-answer period. The decision to turn so many events into collective moral struggles has profound ramifications for the entire college. Everyone is pressured to take sides. Administrators are pressured to disinvite speakers, or at least to condemn their scholarship and morals while reluctantly noting their right to speak. Petitions are floated, and names of signers (and abstainers) are noted.

The human mind evolved for violent intergroup conflict. It comes easily to us, and it can be so emotionally rewarding that we have invented many ways of engaging in it ritually, such as in team sports. But the tribal mind is incompatible with scholarship, open-minded thinking, toleration of dissent, and the search for truth. When tribal sentiments are activated within an academic community, some members start to believe that their noble collective ends justify almost any means, including the demonization of inconvenient research and researchers, false accusations, character assassination, and sometimes even violence. Anyone not with the movement is against it, and its enemies—students, faculty members, administrators—are often intimidated into acquiescence. This is how professors and students are increasingly describing their campus climate, at least at elite four-year residential colleges.

What can be done to change course? College professors, more than anyone else in the country, have a professional duty to speak up for the freedom of scholars, authors, and journalists to present unpopular ideas, theories, and research findings, free from intimidation and harassment. The next time an unpopular speaker is invited to campus, professors should talk to their classes about the norms of the academy, the benefits of having one’s cherished ideas challenged, and the impropriety of making slurs and ad hominem arguments. Then they should attend the event themselves—especially if they dislike the speaker.

But while professors are best placed to act as role models, it is only administrators who can set and enforce rules. At New York University, where I teach, the policy on protests is detailed and reasonable. It allows silent protests and brief outbursts within the lecture hall, but it states clearly that “chanting or making other sustained or repeated noise in a manner which substantially interferes with the speaker’s communication is not permitted.” Most colleges have such policies, but they are rarely enforced, even after the college president offers fine words about freedom of speech. From now on, administrators must ensure that any students who violate protest policies will be disciplined or expelled. There must be zero tolerance for mob rule, intimidation of speakers, and intimidation of political minorities among students as well as faculty members. Alumni can help by making it clear that they will give no further funds to colleges that permit students to shout down speakers with impunity.

And finally, when responsible campus leaders all fail to create a campus where diverse perspectives can be heard and discussed, students who desire such a campus must stand up and make their wishes known. There are encouraging signs on this front. In the wake of the unexpected outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the editors of Harvard’s main student newspaper called on administrators and faculty members to “take active steps to ensure that students of all political stripes feel comfortable voicing their ideas, especially in the classroom.” More recently, Northwestern University became the first in the country whose student government passed a resolution calling on the administration to promote viewpoint diversity and to enforce its policies against disruptive protests.

This year may become a turning point in the annals of higher education. It may be remembered as the year that political violence and police escorts became ordinary parts of campus life. Or it may be remembered as the year when professors, students, and administrators finally found the moral courage to stand up against intimidation, even when it is aimed at people whose ideas they dislike.

AT ISSUE: HOW FREE SHOULD FREE SPEECH BE?

1. Haidt begins his essay by devoting eight paragraphs to discussing three violent protests. How does this discussion set the stage for the rest of the essay?

2. At the end of paragraph 6, Haidt urges readers to do some research into Charles Murray’s writings and then “decide for themselves” if his presence poses a danger to students. Why doesn’t Haidt supply this information? What does he hope to gain by telling people to “decide for themselves”?

3. Is Haidt’s argument primarily inductive or deductive? Why do you think he chose the strategy that he uses?

4. Does Haidt ever establish that the situation he describes is widespread enough to be a problem? Could he be accused of setting up a straw man? Explain.

5. Haidt begins paragraph 15 by asking a question. What is the function of this question?

6. What does Haidt want to accomplish with his essay? Is his purpose to convince readers of something? To move them to action? What is your reaction to his essay?

TALKING PAST EACH OTHER ON FREE SPEECH

LAURIE ESSIG

College free-speech controversies, I fear, will rage on because opposing sides talk past each other.

On one side are those who insist that speech is simply free—no ifs, ands, or buts. These are often the same people who insist that markets are free, disregarding, in both arenas, that society isn’t made up only of individuals but also of structures and histories that give advantage to the elite while oppressing poor people and ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual minorities.

Those most disadvantaged by so-called free speech insist that we consider its costs, and they see certain ideas as acts of symbolic violence. They consider blocking it a form of self-defense. When hate crimes are on the rise, when anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiment is in the wind, to tolerate bigotry is to invite brutalization, the reasoning goes.

In fact, everyone—right, left, and center—can see the costs of speech when it is directed at them and their sense of safety in the world.

After all, if the right really believes we should all be hearty enough to consider views we find abhorrent, why did it cast off one of its media darlings? Free speech was the right’s mantra with regard to its golden boy Milo Yiannopoulos, whose tweets were so racist and misogynist that he was kicked off Twitter. When he came to Berkeley on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour, students protested, black-bloc agitators rioted, and the right-wing Twittersphere went ballistic over those “precious snow-flake” students too fragile to bear his provocations.

But free speech, as it turns out, applies only when it doesn’t touch on matters one holds especially dear. The right became its own precious snow-flake when Yiannopoulos talked about teenaged boys as sexual subjects who could consent to sex with adult men. When his words undermined the idea that teenagers are children and that children are innocent, the “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me” camp screamed “Shut him down,” and shut him down it did: Yiannopoulos was forced to part ways with Breitbart News, disinvited to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and lost his book deal with Simon & Schuster.

Targets of rhetoric like Yiannopoulos’s reasonably insist that we acknowledge symbolic violence not only in raucous provocations but in seemingly polite racist, sexist, or homophobic opining as well. Recently the very polite Charles Murray was invited by a student group to speak at Middlebury College, where I teach. His 1994 book with Richard J. Herrnstein, The Bell Curve, posited a racial basis of intelligence as measured through IQ tests. The authors used spurious correlations, as well as a highly problematic measure of intelligence, to trot out old, eugenicist arguments that have oft been debunked.

When Murray came to Middlebury in 2007 to discuss his research, according to some alumni of color, it felt pretty awful to sit in a room and have your intelligence and, by extension, your right to be at Middlebury, publicly debated. Many said they wished they had been more forceful in protesting Murray’s presence then.

So this time, more than 450 alumni and over 70 faculty members (including me) spoke up. We asked the political-science department to withdraw its cosponsorship of the event, or to at least make it a panel-type discussion so that Murray’s views might be contested. We also asked President Laurie Patton not to introduce him.

We weren’t trying to block Murray from speaking. We were seeking some recognition that words can and do hurt, that they can be a form of symbolic violence, the sort pretty obvious to faculty, students, and staff of color, who are already told, in a million small ways, that they don’t belong at Middlebury. They can be made fun of in Halloween costumes or “thug”-themed parties where white bros wear baggy jeans and carry malt liquor, casually using the N-word and laughing if anyone is offended. The white bros “belong” at Middlebury, you see. Many of them have relatives, parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents who went to Middlebury or places like it. No one ever debates their intelligence, no matter how little of it they display.

The Murray event’s organizers encouraged us to debate his ideas and to counter his eugenicist arguments with evidence and pointed questions. To be fair, many at Middlebury, including the president and the political-science faculty, were worried about censorship and committed to the idea that we must be able to hear ideas we find disagreeable. For people who feel threatened in the current political climate, however, polite debate about disagreeable ideas is a luxury they can no longer afford. We live in dangerous times, when immigrants fear expulsion and hate crimes are on the rise. Personal vulnerability drowns out the fear of censorship.

By the time Murray arrived on campus, the mood was explosive. Protesters shut down his talk, and Allison Stanger, a political-science professor moderating Murray’s appearance, was injured, although the circumstances around that are still murky.

Since then commentators in the Atlantic, the New York Times, and else-where have attacked Middlebury for being against free speech. We receive emails and tweets calling us “brown-shirts” who seek to “muzzle” speakers. As I write this, my program, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, is being trolled on Twitter by Murray’s American Enterprise Institute colleague Christina Hoff Sommers. The right-wing website The Daily Wire suggests ludicrously that our curriculum is the reason “many leftist students felt compelled not only to disrupt Murray’s speech, but also to rationalize the use of violence to combat ideas that they did not agree with.” This is the sort of free speech the right loves: It targets feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and queer scholars in ways that are intimidating and designed to shut us up. It calls our courses “categorically insane.”

The notion that our curriculum incited violence isn’t just wrong, it’s slanderous. But categorical insanity, differently read, is closer to the truth, for our curriculum does teach students to be critical thinkers, to question dominant ideologies and “common sense.” The commonsensical notion that speech is free, for instance, and that we all enter fields of speech as equals is certainly a category of inquiry within our program. That must seem incomprehensible, or “insane,” to those who do not want to question why things are the way they are. We expect our students to experience “category crisis” when looking from new vantage points at prevailing ways of seeing.

It is this sort of “categorical insanity,” in fact, that might just extricate us all from the speech quagmire. That kind of analysis shows that our ways of seeing the world are shaped by our circumstances: race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and so on. When people on the right say they feel their traditions and livelihoods are threatened, I don’t question the strength of their feelings. When those on the left no longer want to bear the pain of having their human worth debated, I recognize their outrage. When those in the middle acknowledge that ostensibly free speech has costs, but that censorship is too high a price to ever pay, I trust their sincerity as well, and I agree with them.

“If we can’t untie these infinite knots, maybe we can at least remember how to live together.”

Surely Christina Hoff Sommers, a former philosophy professor, understands the nature and value of such category analysis. A free-speech advocate, as I am, she can no doubt find a critique of my department more articulate and empathetic than her tweeted “Oy vey.”

I am a card-carrying member of the free-speech absolutist ACLU. I also believe that when institutions support even polite racism and misogyny, they aggravate deep, ancient wounds, symbolically excluding those who have been historically excluded for many generations. I am truly concerned, too, about censorship, since when it is backed by the state it is usually targeted against the likes of me, not Charles Murray.

This queer inability, this refusal to be labeled, requires that I live with unresolvable contradictions. So must we all. Neither Middlebury nor any other college can resolve them. Trite appeals to civility won’t resolve them either, nor will columnists’ scolds nor acts of violence.

But if we can’t untie these infinite knots, maybe we can at least remember how to live together. Academe, and thoughtful people outside it, can begin to acknowledge not just intellectual but also circumstantial ways of perceiving speech.

Whether you’re on the right or the left or in the topsy-turvy anxious middle, take a breath. Recognize the vastness of the gaps between us. Recognize too the humanity and the life experiences of those you fear and scorn. Knowing that we understand speech, its costs and its freedoms, in radically different ways isn’t a tidy fix, but it is at least a first step toward actually hearing one another.

AT ISSUE: HOW FREE SHOULD FREE SPEECH BE?

1. Throughout her essay, Essig accepts certain ideas as self-evident. What are they? Do you agree with her? Explain.

2. In paragraph 1, Essig says that the two sides to the free speech debate “talk past each other.” What are two sides of the debate? Could Essig be accused of committing the either/or fallacy? Why or why not?

3. Does Essig appeal mainly to logos, pathos, or ethos? Explain.

4. Do Essig’s sympathies lie with the protestors or those who wanted to give Charles Murray a platform for his ideas? How do you know? Why does Essig mention Christina Hoff Summers?

5. In her essay, Essig says that she is concerned about censorship because it is usually targeted against people like her. What does she mean? How do you know?

6. Essig concludes by saying the problem she has defined cannot be easily solved. Does this concession undercut her argument in any way? Explain.

VISUAL ARGUMENT: FOOTBALL PLAYERS KNEELING

AT ISSUE: HOW FREE SHOULD FREE SPEECH BE?

1. What point is this visual making? What course of action do you think it is advocating?

2. What visual elements are included in this picture? How does the arrangement of the people help the visual make its point?

3. How does this visual create an emotion appeal? Does it also appeal to logos and to ethos? Explain.

4. Write a caption for this visual that communicates its main point. Do you think that taking a knee at a football game is a legitimate form of protest? Do you think this type of protest reinforces or undermines our constitutional right to free speech? Explain.

TEMPLATE FOR WRITING A DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT

Write a one-paragraph deductive argument in which you argue against your school imposing speech codes. Follow the template below, filling in the blanks to create your argument.

One of the basic principles of the United States government is the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. With few exceptions, all Americans

. In college

.

For example,

. By having the right to express themselves freely,

. Therefore,

.

Not everyone agrees with this view, however. Some people argue that

. This argument misses the point. When a university limits the speech of some students because others may be upset by their comments,

.

For this reason, colleges should

.

TEMPLATE FOR WRITING AN INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT

Write a one-paragraph inductive argument in which you argue in favor of your school imposing speech codes. Follow the template below, filling in the blanks to create your argument.

The number of students demanding protection from distasteful ideas is growing yearly.

Some students complain that

. These students want

.

A number of studies have shown that so-called safe spaces and trigger warnings go a long way toward calming students’ fears and creating a hospitable learning environment. For example, some students

. As a result,

. The best way for colleges to deal with this problem is to

.

Free speech advocates, however, argue that

. Although this may be true,

.

For this reason, it would make sense to

EXERCISE 5.13 REVISING YOUR ARGUMENT PARAGRAPHS

Interview several of your classmates as well as one or two of your instructors about how free free speech should be. Then, revise the deductive and inductive arguments you wrote using the preceding templates so that they include some of these comments.

EXERCISE 5.14 WRITING DEDUCTIVE OR INDUCTIVE ARGUMENTS

Write an essay in which you take a position on the question, “Should Universities Be Able to Place Limits on Free Speech?” Make sure that your essay is organized primarily as either a deductive argument or an inductive argument. Use the readings on pages 166—185 as source material, and be sure to document all information that you get from these sources. (See Chapter 10 for information on documenting sources.)

EXERCISE 5.15 CHECKING FOR FALLACIES

Review the logical fallacies discussed on pages 162—163. Then, reread the essay you wrote for Exercise 5.14, and check to see if it contains any fallacies. Underline any fallacies you find, and identify them by name. Then, rewrite each statement so it expresses a logical argument. Finally, revise your draft to eliminate any fallacies you found.

EXERCISE 5.16 REVIEWING THE FOUR PILLARS OF ARGUMENT

Review the four pillars of argument discussed in Chapter 1. Does your essay include all four elements of an effective argument? Add anything that is missing. Then, label the key elements of your essay.