One of the major Aristotelian commentators of antiquity, Alexander of Aphrodisias, used the term “Organon” (in ancient Greek: Ὄργανον, tool) to refer to the set of logical works and notes of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. One of these components of the Organon, the "Sophistic Lists", are a testimony to how ancient the reflection on argumentative fallacies. Aristotle identified two types of error in argumentative logic: fallacies "in dictione" (i.e. in the language) and "extra dictione" (i.e. outside the language).
Considering all the literature on the subject, including the most recent one, the number of classifications and schemes of argumentative fallacies increases dramatically. There is no agreement on how to classify them, but the doubt vanishes when it comes to listing them. In total we get to about a hundred main fallacies. The most recurrent ones, from which the others often derive, can already be found in the aforementioned treatise by Aristotle. Some of the misconduct committed during the debates between people, on TV, in newspapers, on social networks or even in person, are precisely the result of the application of one or more argumentative fallacies.
One of the authors to whom praise must be paid for his very exhaustive list, including detailed explanations and examples of as many as 110 logical fallacies, is Doctor Michael C. LaBossiere, professor of philosophy at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. The teacher began by identifying 42 fallacies, then enriched by another 30 incorrect arguments, until arriving at his latest work, the compendium of "110 Fallacies” (text available only in English).
To understand what an argumentative fallacy is, it is necessary to have clear in mind the concepts of "logic","reasoning"and "inference“. Let's start from the latter: inference (from the Latin in-ferre, literally to bring in) is the process through which a conclusion is derived from the premises. Reasoning is the set of mental processes with which these inferences are drawn, that is, the elaboration of new knowledge (the conclusions) starting from what is available (the premises). Logic is the mathematical-philosophical discipline that deals with describing the rules of correct reasoning, i.e. the conditions under which reasoning is correct, whatever the universe of discourse.
There are two main types of argumentation related to reasoning: deductive and inductive. In the first case a certain conclusion is derived from more generic premises, within which that conclusion is implicit. In deductive reasoning the conclusion does not add further information to that already contained in the premises, but makes it known. In the second case we start from particular cases to reach a conclusion whose scope is broader than the cases examined (generalization). The inductive conclusion expands the information contained in the premises and has a probabilistic nature.
Each type of reasoning corresponds to multiple fallacies, which can be classified as deductive or inductive fallacies, but it is important to point out that argumentative fallacies must not be confused with factual errors, that is, simply being wrong about the facts. The common denominator of all fallacies, however, is the fact that, through them, it is possible get the better of it on an interlocutor during a debate, without necessarily be right.
Let's now give an example of an argumentative fallacy, referring to other resources on the web to learn about it most possible fallacies, to have one classification scheme or for read about it from another source. Let's take a very recurring case: the scarecrow fallacy (straw man argument). This is a strategy aimed at incorrectly representing the opponent's argument, exaggerating it, reporting it in a caricatured way, but - in any case - moving the point of the question. In this way, words and concepts not expressed or used with another meaning, in another context, are put into the mouth of the interlocutor. The aim is to refute an easier thesis, perhaps where more than one cliché already exists. The result is that, in this way, the opposing theory is distorted and appears incorrect even to those who exposed it. At that point the defeat of the opponent is one step away since one's theory will now automatically appear more sensible and therefore the correct one.
Concrete example of argumentative fallacy
Screenwriting: “news on the percentage of young people who choose not to attend religion class in a public school”.
Interlocutor 1: “I am happy that young people are not forced, in choosing not to attend religion class, by any progressive law, but act of their own free will”
Interlocutor 2: “Forced? But what if you can write anything you want? Don't they force you to believe?”
In this case it is clear that the reference to the first interlocutor's constraint is related to the - undesirable - hypothesis of a progressive law that totally eliminates religion class, forcing the children to follow a different educational organisation, and yet interlocutor 2 moves the object of constraint precisely to interlocutor 1, as if he had claimed that he was not free to express what he thinks or, secondly, the constraint becomes that of religious confession.
Aristotle used two distinct terms for these incorrect reasonings: he called “paralogism” that argumentative fallacy in which the error was involuntary and “sophistry” the one in which it was possible to distinguish the desire to deceive the interlocutor in order to make him adhere to one's position. In both cases, the arguments are valid only formally, but are based on logical errors (non sequiturs), ambiguity and poor relevance to the central question.
Then there is an argumentative fallacy which is most effective of all, even if all the others have not proved useful in bringing success in the debate to those who are not interested in a constructive examination but rather in being right. In this case it is very difficult to establish whether it is a paralogism or a sophistry, because evidently, those who use it are only interested in obtaining a benefit in terms of "last word" and therefore picks up every flaw hands down from one and the other modus operandi. We are talking about the so-called "Gish gallop" or "Gish gallop", that is, an argumentation technique that is based on overwhelming one's interlocutors with as many questions as possible left unanswered, but also apodictic statements, without regard for the accuracy or relevance of individual issues, often only incidental. The term was coined by the anthropologist Eugenie Scott and takes its name from the American biochemist Duane Gish, one of the most prominent members of the creationist movement (a doctrine that denies the evolution of living species), who frequently used this technique in his debates. Once again, this technique is easily traceable in Aristotle's Organon, ranging from “to be able to refute, one condition is undoubtedly the length of the speech; it is in fact difficult to dominate many objects with a single glance" to the "another condition is the speed in discussing“, to end in “a further condition is to present the questions alternately, whether for the same object one has several arguments at one's disposal, or whether one wants to prove a certain thing and also the opposite thing“. The Gish gallop leaves the interlocutors speechless, or rather: without knowing where to start. There are so many and unsubstantiated arguments brought up that it is natural to throw in the towel. And your opponent will have had the last word in the debate. Those who observe will notice greater confidence in the user of the Gish gallop, greater speed in exposition and a continuous use of rhetorical questions, left without an answer, as if to say: "the answer is obvious and it is the one I have in my pocket I".
In scientific popularization circles, the Gish gallop is considered the main lever of the so-called “mountain of shit” theory, a playful name given to an imaginary situation in which those who try to stem the phenomenon of Gish gallop would find themselves. The authorship of the name, given to this theory in the early 2000s, is by a brilliant blogger, Uriel Fanelli who, in a moment of frustration, developed this theory to explain why the debunking, the noble activity of unmasking false or biased news is inevitably destined to fail.
The key concepts of this theory are:
– those who spread nonsense orally, in print or online, need few tools (sometimes, none). THE Costs, in terms of time and money are relatively low (sometimes zero)
– the truths more simple are more complex from to demonstrate
– you can certainly debunk an unfounded thesis if you have the skills to do so, but the truth will only appear before those who have the same skills skills to understand it
– shoveling the “dialectical manure” produced by a false scholar always requires much, much more time, energy and money than it takes to generate that manure.
In 2013, some of these concepts were taken up by a computer programmer from Faenza, Alberto Brandolini who, inspired by reading "Slow and Fast Thoughts", by the Nobel Prize winner for economics Daniel Kahneman, made them popular throughout the world , in his personal synthetic formulation, known to all as “Brandolini's law"(Brandolini's law) or “bullshit asymmetry principle”: “the energy needed to refute nonsense is an order of magnitude greater than that needed to produce it”. The harbingers of this compliant observation can already be found in the writings of a French economist, Frederic Bastiat who, in 1845 – in his collection “Economic Sophisms” – stated: “our adversaries have an important advantage over us: they can, in a few words, expose an incomplete truth; while we need long and dry dissertations to show that it is incomplete”. And perhaps, even before (1786), the English clergyman George Horne he had made similar reflections in his “letters on lack of faith”: “Impertinence and ignorance can ask a question in three lines, to which the answer will cost thirty pages of learning and ingenuity. Once this is done, the same question will be asked triumphantly again next year, as if nothing had ever been written on the subject. […] people in general, for one reason or another, prefer short objections to long answers.”
One of the areas where it is easiest to find confirmation of the validity of the mountain of shit theory is that of the classics conspiracies of the Internet age: chemtrails, 11/XNUMX, the moon landing, the flat Earth, harmful vaccines, fake cancer cures (just to name a few). Generally, those who propagate these conspiracy theories, even when faced with experts with a solid academic background, always require the intervention of further explanations and, with the Gish gallop technique, involve other disciplines, other situations, other concepts ( not even all wrong) for which it is necessary to invest - right from economic point of view – such a quantity of resources that no one will ever deem it appropriate to invest in unraveling the problem.
The question now arises spontaneously: is there a way to defend yourself from the Gish gallop technique? Not really, but it can make life difficult for those who intend to use it or create an area within which it is not possible to resort to this stratagem. Eugenie Scott herself explains the best strategy, the first to use the term "Gish gallop". The anthropologist, former director of the National Center for Science Education in fact, he argues that, in general, it is much easier to use the Gish gallop in a free debate, compared to what happens in the context of a discussion in structured form (times to be respected, topics not to be discussed, people not to be involved, rules of conduct to be observed). Therefore this last form of organizing the discussion is always to be preferred in the presence of people who are not interested in a constructive debate, but rather in prevailing over the reasons of the other. Another strategy is to refute in advance the arguments commonly used by those who use this incorrect technique, before the opponent has the opportunity to "launch into a gallop".
