2.5 Fallacies of Illicit Presumption

Fallacies of illicit presumption have the common characteristic of presuming the truth of some claim that is not warranted. The presumption is often tacit/implicit rather than explicitly stated. These arguments have a premise (again, often hidden) that is assumed to be true but is actually a controversial claim, which at best requires support that’s not provided, which at worst is simply false. We will look at six fallacies of illicit presumption.

2.5.1 Accident

This fallacy is the reverse of the hasty generalization, which is a fallacious inference from insufficient particular premises to a general conclusion. Accident, on the other hand, is a fallacious inference from a general premise to a particular conclusion. What makes it fallacious is an illicit presumption: a general rule in the premise is assumed, incorrectly,  to have no exceptions; the particular conclusion fallaciously inferred is one of the exceptional cases. Here’s a simple example to help make that clear:

One of the premises is the general claim that cutting people with knives is illegal. While this is true in almost all cases, there are exceptions—surgery among them. We pay surgeons lots of money to cut people with knives! It is therefore fallacious to conclude that surgeons should be arrested since they are an exception to the general rule. The inference only goes through if we presume, incorrectly, that the rule is exception-less.

Here’s a hypothetical example: Suppose someone volunteers at their child’s first-grade school class; they go in one day to read a book aloud to the children. As they’re all settling down on the floor, cross-legged in a circle, the parent realizes they cannot comfortably sit that way because of a .44 Magnum revolver tucked into their waistband. So they remove the piece and set it down on the floor in front of them, among the circled-up children. The teacher screams and calls the office, the police are summoned, and the parent is arrested. While being hauled out of the room, they protest: The Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees my right to keep and bear arms! This state has a ‘concealed carry’ law, and I have a license to carry that gun! Let me go!

The parent is committing the fallacy of Accident in this story. True, the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms; but that rule is not without exceptions. Similarly, concealed carry laws also have exceptions—among them being a prohibition on carrying weapons into elementary schools. The parent’s insistence on being released only makes sense if we presume, incorrectly, that the legal rules cited are without exception.

2.5.2 Begging the Question (Petitio Principii)

First things first: begging the question is not synonymous with raising the question; this is extremely common usage, but it is wrong. You might hear a newscaster say, The private jet belonging to the presidential hopeful was spotted today at the Indianapolis airport, which begs the question: ‘Will he choose Indiana Governor as a running mate?’ This is a mistaken usage of begs the question; the newscaster should have said raises the question instead.

Begging the question is a translation of the Latin petitio principii, which refers to the practice of asking (begging, petitioning) your audience to grant you the truth of a claim (principle) as a premise in an argument—but it turns out that the claim you’re asking for is either identical to, or presupposes the truth of, the very conclusion of the argument you’re trying to make.

In other words, when you beg the question, you’re arguing in a circle: one of the reasons for believing the conclusion is the conclusion itself! It’s a Fallacy of Illicit Presumption where the proposition being presumed is the very proposition you’re trying to demonstrate — that’s clearly an illicit presumption.

Here’s a stark example. If I’m trying to convince you that Britney Spears’ father is a profit-seeking opportunist (the conclusion of my argument is Jamie Spears is a profit-seeking opportunist), then I can’t ask you to grant me the claim Jamie Spears is a profit-seeking opportunist. The premise can’t be the same as the conclusion. Imagine a conversation:

And round and round we go. Circular reasoning; begs the question.

It’s not usually so blatant. Sometimes the premise is not identical to the conclusion but merely presupposes its truth. Why should we believe that the Bible is true? Because it says so right there in the Bible that it’s the infallible Word of God. This premise is not the same as the conclusion, but it can only support the conclusion if we take the Bible’s word for its own truthfulness, i.e., if we assume that the Bible is true. But that was the very claim we were trying to prove!

Sometimes the premise is just a re-wording of the conclusion. Consider this argument, a classic example, from Richard Whately’s Elements of Logic, 1827.

Replacing synonyms with synonyms comes down to Free speech is good for society because free speech is good for society. (This is not a good argument, though it is valid! P, therefore P is a valid form: if the premise is true, the conclusion must be; they’re the same.)

2.5.3 Loaded Question

Loaded questions are questions the very asking of which presumes the truth of some claim. Asking these can be an effective debating technique, a way of sneaking a controversial claim into the discussion without having outright asserted it.

The classic example of a loaded question is, Have you stopped beating your wife? Notice that this is a yes-or-no question, and no matter which answer one gives, one admits to beating his wife: if the answer is no, then the person continues to beat his wife; if the answer is yes, then he admits to beating his wife in the past. Either way, he’s a wife-beater. When a question itself presumes the truth of the claim, that makes it loaded.

Strategic deployment of loaded yes-or-no questions can be an extremely effective debating technique. If you catch your opponent off-guard, they will struggle to respond to your question, since a simple yes or no commits them to the truth of the illicit presumption, which they want to deny. This makes them look evasive and shifty. And as they struggle to come up with a response, you can pounce on them: It’s a simple question. Yes or no? Why won’t you answer the question? It’s a great way to appear to be winning a debate, even if you don’t have a good argument. Imagine the following dialogue:

Combine this with the sort of subconscious appeal to force discussed earlier—yelling, finger-pointing, and so forth, and the host might come off looking like the winner of the debate, with his opponent appearing evasive, uncooperative, and inarticulate.

Another use for loaded questions is the particularly sneaky political practice of push polling. In a normal opinion poll, you call people up to try to discover what their views are about issues. In a push poll, you call people up pretending to be conducting a normal opinion poll, with interest only in discovering their views, but with a different intention entirely. You don’t want to know what their views are; you want to shape their views, to convince them of something. And you use loaded questions to do it.

A famous example of push-polling occurred during the Republican presidential primary in 2000. George W. Bush was the front-runner but was facing a surprisingly strong challenge from the upstart John McCain. After McCain won the New Hampshire primary, he had a lot of momentum. The next state to vote was South Carolina; it was very important for the Bush campaign to defeat McCain there and reclaim the momentum. So they conducted a push poll designed to spread negative feelings about McCain—by implanting false beliefs among the voting public. Pollsters called voters and asked, Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child? The aim, of course, is for voters to come to believe that McCain fathered an illegitimate black child. But he did no such thing. He and his wife adopted a daughter, Bridget, from Bangladesh.

A final note on loaded questions: there’s a minimal sense in which every question is loaded. The social practice of asking questions is governed by implicit norms. One of these is that it’s only appropriate to ask a question when there’s some doubt about the answer. So every question carries with it the presumption that this norm is being adhered to, that it’s a reasonable question to ask, and that the answer is not certain. One can exploit this fact, again to plant beliefs in listeners’ minds that they otherwise wouldn’t hold. In a particularly shameful bit of alarmist journalism, the cover of the July 1, 2016 issue of Newsweek asks the question, Can ISIS Take Down Washington? The cover is an alarming, eye-catching shade of yellow, and shows four missiles converging on the Capitol dome. The simple answer to the question, though, is no, of course not. There is no evidence that ISIS has the capacity to destroy the nation’s capital. But the very asking of the question presumes that it’s a reasonable thing to wonder about, that there might be a reason to think that the answer is yes. The goal is to scare readers (and sell magazines) by getting them to believe there might be such a threat.

2.5.4 False Choice

This fallacy occurs when someone tries to convince you of something by presenting it as one of a limited number of options and the best choice among those options. The illicit presumption is that the options are limited in the way presented; in fact, there are additional options that are not offered. The choice you’re asked to make is a false choice, since not all the possibilities have been presented.

Most frequently, the number of options offered is two. In this case, you’re being presented with a false dilemma. Some of us manipulate our kids with false choices routinely. For example, a young child of a manipulating parent loves cucumbers; they’re her favorite vegetable by far. There’s a rule at dinner that you must choose a vegetable to eat. Given her ’druthers, she’d choose cucumber every night. Carrots are pretty good, too; they’re the second choice. But more variety is better for her, so sometimes she’s told that there are no cucumbers and carrots and that the only two options are, for example, broccoli or green beans. That’s a false choice; with other options deliberately left outs. The false choice is a way of manipulating her into choosing green beans because it’s well known that she dislikes broccoli.

Politicians often treat us like children, presenting their preferred policies as the only acceptable choice among an artificially restricted set of options. We might be told, for example, that we need to raise the retirement age or cut Social Security benefits across the board; the budget can’t keep up with the rising number of retirees. Well, nobody wants to cut benefits, so we have to raise the retirement age. Bummer. But it’s a false choice. There are any number of alternative options for funding an increasing number of retirees: tax increases, re-allocation of other funds, means-testing for benefits, etc.

Liberals are often ambivalent about free trade agreements. On the one hand, access to American markets can help raise the living standards of people from poor countries around the world; on the other hand, such agreements can lead to fewer jobs for American workers in certain sectors of the economy (e.g., manufacturing). So what to do? Support such agreements or not? Seems like an impossible choice: harm the global poor or harm American workers. But it may be a false choice, as this economist argues.