There’s got to be some formal recognition of the fallacy already, but it comes up often enough when Daniel and I discuss issues, so I thought I’d lay it out here. I’ll call it “the fallacy of gravity as a mechanism of consciousness.” One might also call it the “ignorance is bliss, so don't rock the boat” fallacy.
Often people fall into this fallacy when rejecting a theory that is (or threatens to be) foundational in some sense, where acceptance would involve a radical change in one’s conception of reality. In response to such a theory a person fallaciously points out that, were it true, all hell would break loose. For example:
“Affirming Darwinian evolution would be devastating to morality and human commitment to charity or altruism”
“Affirming divine predestination would be devastating to human free will”
What’s wrong with this thinking is that, were Darwinian evolution or divine predestination the case, it would always have been the case. Any crisis that occurs following the acceptance of these facts is not then a result of the facts themselves, but rather a psychological result of certain peoples’ acceptance of them (conversely, the pre-crisis state of things might simply be psychological rather than objectively the case). It is not, then, an appropriate argument against evolutionary theory or predestination to say that affirming as much would threaten anything that wasn’t especially threatened before. It’s not as if people suddenly cease to have charitable feelings when evolutionary biology comes on the scene, or cease to act freely when predestination is indoctrinated. Nor are there any magically retroactive powers to these theories that will erase every free or moral act previously undertaken.
The reason why I call this “the fallacy of gravity as a mechanism of consciousness” has to do with a colorful and classic illustration from Looney Tunes. As Wile E. Coyote chased the Road Runner, he often found himself inadvertently running off of a cliff into thin air. In the cartoon, it was not until Coyote realized he was running across air that gravity took effect:
There are some pesky details of the physics of horizontal projectile motion that would confirm some aspects of Wile E. Coyote's experience. But the relevant point is that Coyote doesn't fall at all until he realizes that he has run off a cliff, regardless of whether he runs off the cliff with some velocity under his belt. And the spectacle ends up being funny because even children intuitively realize how silly this is. Unfortunately, adults often don't pick up on this rather obvious silliness when theory becomes personal and there is a perceived tension with one's standing conception of how things are.
This isn't to say that there is no useful reason to bring up devastating effects of accepting certain theories about reality, or that one can't reframe the objection to be more appropriate. The fallacious response might be better framed to say something like this:
"I take the moral state of things to be X, and evolutionary theory fails to adequately account for X"
"I take human free will to actually be the case and carry with it some burden of theoretical explanation, and the idea of divine predestination simply can't live up to that standard of explanation."
In these cases, we are at least on the right track in identifying a new theory's explanatory power as inadequate. Here at least we're pitting one theory against another and we can have a meaningful conversation about how best to explain what is the case. This is much different, however, than acting as if a theory can nullify something that already is the case. It can't. Things just are what they are, and they will continue to be that way. Theories change our understanding of things, but they don't change things outside of our understanding.
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Friday Night Music
9 hours ago
I agree. It's funny to even think of this as a "fallacy" - because it seems so illogical. In that sense it seems more like a "coping mechanism". But you're right - people do use these as actual arguments all the time. I recently linked to Christopher Hitchens on this blog, so the example he furnishes comes immediately to mind. Hitchens often (rightly) eviscerates his opponents for committing the first example fallacy about evolution that you provide, while in the next breath (wrongly) committing the second example fallacy about predestination that you offer! Sometimes he does a slightly better than average job at it, of course. He considers himself an "anti-theist" rather than just an "atheist", because while he does claim that he cannot disprove the existence of God, if such a God were to exist (and he doubts it), he rejects any desire to embrace or live under his authority. That moves the argument away from the "this can't be true because..." fallacy and towards a more tenable "I reject this because..." position.
ReplyDeleteRegardless - in the determination of truth these positions can obviously be a major impediment.
I would highlight the importance of the rephrasing you offer. There is good reason to be skeptical of radical new understandings simply for their radicalness, but I think the proper justification should be based more on what you might call "empirical inertia" than on "status quo nostalgia". If an entirely new theory came on the scene to displace evolution, we would be justified in some skepticism solely because of it's newness, not because of any psychic devastation, but because so much evidence has been piled up over so many decades in favor of evolution. That evidence could all be misinterpreted. The new theory could be correct. We should allow for the possibility. But I think skepticism based in empirical inertia is well justified.
I would also note the difference between truth and functionality.
ReplyDeleteWhile attachment to previous moral or social situations may not justify an argument about a proposition's truth, it could justify an argument about a proposition's functionality. Nationalism or patriotism, for example, could be considered largely artificial and ethically untenable. You don't have to even reject community cohesiveness to understand that there's a limit to which 300 million people can be legitimately considered a cohesive social unit. In that sense, nationalism in a lot of ways is built on an illusion. That may be a legitimate logical point, but one can believe that and still argue that nationalism or patriotism serves an important function in society, and therefore that the illusion should be preserved.
These distinctions - between truth and function - are legitimate distinctions to make even in light of the fallacy that Evan describes. But we should be careful with them, I think. I could imagine some cases where social functionality trumps the supression (or at least practiced ignorance) of truth. But I think the pursuit of truth is broadly enough recognized to be a paramount good that any argument of this sort should be very closely scrutinized.
And the fallacy really is one of taking functionality to be truth, I think. Some of the moralizing objections to evolutionary biology have taken this form, and on the reverse side, some of the moralizing "proofs" for the reasonableness of religion have taken this form as well. You're right that these arguments are useful, but only insofar as they are recognized to operate within the realm of function.
ReplyDeleteWhat might be worth thinking about is the extent to which theory, as an explanatory construct, itself falls into the category of "function". This may allow for a more interesting interaction than I've allowed here, and it would certainly get into some of the pragmatism that has been interesting to me over the past few months. But that's probably another post entirely.