All right, I'd like to talk today about two fallacies that are not in the book but that
I think are common enough, especially in online arguing, that I'd like you to be familiar
with them.
You may have heard of these before.
The first of these is the motte and bailey fallacy.
[writing on chalkboard] The motte and bailey fallacy is, like all
fallacies it's an argument substitute, it's a play or a move that someone might make in
argumentation that is not legitimate from a logical point of view.
It comes from the name for a medieval castle and the courtyard surrounding it.
The motte is the keep, that's the fortified stronghold of the castle, and the bailey is
the courtyard, the more lightly defended ring of houses around it, or structures and buildings.
The motte and bailey fallacy works in this way.
[writing on chalkboard] First, the arguer asserts a controversial
claim or controversial interpretation [writing on chalkboard]
of a point of view that is likely to meet with objection, and then when challenged,
[writing on chalkboard] when challenged switch, without remarking
it, to defending a safe obvious or common-sense version of the claim, rather than the controversial one.
And then the third finishing move [writing on chalkboard]
This is the key [step] that really puts it over.
At the end of the argument, ideally after your adversary who challenged you in step
two has left, then you claim victory before all the world for your controversial claim.
“See, he wasn't able refute my controversial claim.”
This is a kind of bait and switch, a kind of substitution.
We think of it here, what's really happening is…
Can I draw a castle? I can draw a castle.
[writing on chalkboard] What this works upon is the audience’s failure
to distinguish between the safe and the controversial version of the two claims that are being made.
So we'll start out making a bailey claim in step one, some sort of radical claim.
[writing on chalkboard] “The Church has an obligation, morally,
in the interests of human dignity, it really must revise its moral theology on the issue
of homosexuality.”
Okay, that's clearly a bailey claim: it’s controversial, people will challenge it.
When I challenge it however, the arguer immediately retreats to the motte.
What's the motte claim that might be substituted for this?
“All I'm saying is that,” [writing on chalkboard]
All I'm saying is that gay people shouldn't be murdered.
Sheesh! How can you possibly oppose that?!”
I'm giving exaggerated versions of this.
So once then I concede, “Oh yes, I agree with the no murdering of gay people,” and
I go away, thinking we've had a successful… come to a successful agreement, we come rushing
back out and plant our rainbow flag of victory [laughter] and say, “Did you see that guy?
He was totally at a loss and unable to refute my (bailey) claim about the need to revise
the Church's moral theology.”
Okay. Has anybody seen this before?
Now that you have a name for it?
It's one of those things, when you see it, you begin to see it everywhere.
It seems to me that the key to the motte and bailey fallacy’s working is either the critic,
the challenger, or, because these things are conducted in public, the crowd surrounding them…
These are like the young men gathered, young men gathered around Socrates in the marketplace.
Remember, those were actually the source of trouble for him, politically.
The motte and bailey a fallacy assumes or requires a sort of implicit assumption by
the audience that the motte and bailey claims are just identical to each other, just two
different ways of saying the same thing.
Or the motte claim entails or logically requires the bailey claim.
In a motte and bailey fallacy, both of these assumptions are false.
To say this is not the same as to say this, and to say this is not even… just saying
this, the obvious, common sense, nobody-can-disagree- with-it claim, does not logically require this.
But notice that's exactly where I would need an argument to persuade me.
What else can I say about the motte and bailey argument?
One version of this might involve a kind of two-step, where, in retreating to the bailey,
I might, as the arguer, initially concede the bailey claim is sort of weak.
I retreat to my motte claim, and then once my disputant has left the field, come back
with my victory flag, and I also then reassert the bailey claim completely unaltered, as
though it were not even under dispute.
There is always a dishonesty involved in in fallacies.
This tends to rely upon people’s having a short attention span: not an… usually
a safe assumption on the internet.
And also the motte and bailey fallacy allows the arguer to claim that he's never actually
been refuted, as all we've seen is he's been driven from the bailey back into the motte,
but the motte claim itself is almost undeniable.
And since there's no actual argument that has happened, there's been no actual fighting
in the bailey, there’s just been retreat from the bailey, it looks like he can at least
pretend to have been victorious.
He may also claim that he's been, he was just defending the motte claim all the time.
There was just some sort of confusion on the part of the listener about the way it was expressed.
Or your arguer might claim that the critic is himself a fool or morally deficient for
rejecting or calling into question the obvious motte claim that everybody agrees with.
Examples? First off, do you think we know enough about this to recognize it?
A couple of tactics for responding to a motte and bailey fallacy.
[erasing chalkboard] One possible response…
[writing on chalkboard] …this works with many fallacies, is to simply
identify the two claims and note specifically how they are not equivalent to each other.
“First you said X and now you're saying Y,” we're going to come back and say, “Actually,
what about X?”
So making it clear that there are two claims that are being shuffled between, one tactic.
Another tactic might be… [writing on chalkboard]
…cut off the arguer’s retreat to the motte.
How would you do that?
(Student: By drawing them back out into the bailey.)
Draw them back out, I mean this is this is obviously a planned maneuver, just as if you're
defending a castle.
You skirmish in the courtyard then you withdraw behind the tall walls and just, you know,
shoot arrows or throw filth at people.
(Student: Would it make sense, when you’re retreating, couldn’t you say, I guess in
the example, let’s say you were saying something, why should the church change its moral theology?
But we're not we're not trying to murder people.
So basically cut him off before he even starts…)
You can say moral theology is not equivalent to murder.
This is where you see sometimes some rhetoric about gay rights.
Is that the fact that the church condemns certain activities as intrinsically disordered
(is) itself a source of violence or a provocation to violence against people?
I’d say wait, let's actually look at the facts of that.
I don't think it's going to stand up to critical examination.
You’re working against somebody's profound desire to actually work a motte and bailey
trick on you.
Sometimes calling it out, calling attention to what is happening, and the dishonesty and
bad faith of it, might be enough.
But if you can hold them in the courtyard you can actually say, “Let’s actually
dispute *this*, because this is not about moral theology.”
We can give other examples besides, including examples that people on our side might use.
Yes sir?
(Student: In the example you put, it seems like there's an assumed premise that's missing.
Would it be a useful thing to point out: “This is the assumed premise that you're leaving
out,” and if this is the assumed premise you’re leaving out, let’s talk about this
premise and why it’s… [unintelligible].)
This is a really good way of really responding to many different kinds of fallacies, is to
figure out what assumed premise would have to be true in order for this argument actually
function as an argument.
And then once you make that claim explicit, you can point out that it's obviously false
and nobody can accept it.
So what would that be in this case?
Something like: “Moral theology is killing people,” or “The way to stop people from
being killed is to change theology.”
“It's an odd claim, now that you actually put it that way.”
But I think we won't know whether that's just make sense it is true or false
What we don't want to get trapped in is the emotional associations of the very obvious
and generally acceptable motte claim.
Which is why probably your third option, which is to storm the motte, to simply just take
on the motte directly, is probably your worst option in terms of actually persuading people.
Yes sir?
(Student: Could you pull them out from motte, by … [unintelligible] …pull them back
to the bailey, essentially? Can I use the wooden rabbit?)
Yes, you can draw them out.
Of course, the wooden rabbit is a bad example of this type.
What you really want to do, and this is the case with most fallacies of diversion, you
say, “Wait, I thought we were arguing about *this*; why are you talking about *this* now?
I realize you’d really prefer to talk about that, because that's a place where you think
you're stronger, but I'd like to hear more premises about this: major/minor terms, I'd
like to hear some definitions and actually pin this down.”
This happens arguments about abortion all the time.
Where an argument about the Constitution and legal protections for persons suddenly becomes
an argument about the dignity of women or the equal economic prospects for women in
society, things like equal pay come up.
We sort of have some mission creep here, we’ve wandered from the central point which was this.
Now, if you think we can't address the central point without also addressing these other
points, then make an argument for that and we can expand the range of our argument.
But a lot of this depends on people simply not paying attention to the drift in the argument.
The way this works is that they get you to say yes to the motte claim, and then once
you've left, they claim that you really sort of implicitly admitted the truth of the bailey
claim as well.
It’s that third dishonest step, which is to claim victory for the controversial claim
on the strength of an argument about a rather different claim.
So pointing out the difference between these two would be another strategy.
Another thing about this, a lot of motte and bailey fallacies depend upon arguing the motte
claim in terms of very general or vague ideas that people would have generally positive
associations about, rather than debating specifics.
So the more specific you get, the more likely you are to be pulling somebody out, I think,
into their bailey.
The idea, I think, here is just simply to wear down the audience until they're tired
of hearing the dispute about these things.
This is another argument tactic, which is just sort of persuasion by exhaustion.
Eventually the people watching say, “I'm so confused, it seems like this guy just refuses
to admit this obviously true thing that I want to believe,” and then they give up
on the argument.
That’s another factor, that's a social factor to keep in mind.
(Student: So, for a public debate should the bailey claim be made and just titled, the
debate, like if someone's going to argue about gun control, and then the whole debate they’re
using the motte expression, they win the debate, then they go back to the title…)
It very well could be.
I mean this is where titles matter, labels matter.
You could find a sort of motte and bailey inside of that.
Gun control is another place where you'll sometimes find bait and switch arguments,
on both sides; I don’t want to suggest it is just coming from one side.
Where… the thing to look for is an easy, obvious, common sense interpretation, and
a controversial, actually-winning-some-points interpretation, and the tendency to shuffle
between them, so that you never quite… so that attacks on one are diverted towards the other.
“How could you challenge my motte claim?” and then, when you back off, assert the bailey
claim again as though it were identical to it.
It seems to me the weak point of this is precisely the non-identity of the relationship between
the two claims.
Once you pin them down and show that they’re not identical, that can help you.
Examples of these just with a couple of minutes left.
[writing on chalkboard] …one that might be made by Christians, since
no particular group has a monopoly on bad arguments.
One might argue a controversial bailey claim, “God acts in history, God has providential
activity or guides his people, speaks to people in prophecy, becomes incarnate, or works miracles,”
or any number of versions of this.
But I could then, when challenged on this by an atheist who says, “Wait a minute,
how can we know that?”
I might fall back to the position of simply saying,
[writing on chalkboard] “‘God’ simply is another name for order
and beauty in the universe, and you believe the universe is an orderly place, don't you?”
And then once they've conceded “well yes, there is an order to the universe, and there
is such a thing as beauty,” I then immediately come back, ideally after he's left and can't
speak up anymore, and say, “Did you see how I showed him, how he was completely speechless
when I asserted that God acts providentially or works miracles in history?”
The dishonesty here comes in the switching between the two claims which are not identical.
So you see how this could serve as a motte, relative to this?
I've seen Paul Tillich make that… he doesn’t make this claim, but the mid twentieth century
theologian Paul Tillich used to conduct what I called “conversion by definition.”
Where he would say God is simply a name that we give to a certain kind of orderliness in
the universe, so if you believe in orderliness in the universe you automatically believe
in God even though you're not quite aware of it.
That seems to me to be the motte part of a motte and bailey move.
You can also take a bailey claim about say, some kind of quack medicine.
Does everybody know what I mean by that?
[writing on chalkboard] (Student: What does it mean?)
False, pseudoscience, some sort of weird… crystals or something, maybe crystals can
cure your cancer.
I’ll give you a purple crystal and a blue crystal and you wear them next to the tumor
and the tumor will disappear.
Quack science. So you say: “It could work! It might work.”
But then I present you with evidence, this is me attacking you in your bailey, I say,
“Wait a minute, all sorts of evidence that this stuff is completely… it has completely
no effect, no medical trials have been able to reproduce any sort of effect.”
And then you come back to your motte claim, [writing on chalkboard]
“Well, there are some people who just need hope.
They just need… maybe there's a placebo effect that could work.
People just need to have the ability to hope that there might be some cure where traditional
medicine has failed.
And so why are you trying to deprive people of hope? You monster!” [laughter]
This is the motte claim.
And I say, “Well, you know, I think people should have… be free to try some experimental
treatments if there's no hope left for conventional treatments.”
And then I’m back to doing my victory lap for the sake of my…
“See! He actually couldn't refute me when I said that there's a possibility that pseudoscientific
crystals, etc. might have medical effects.”
The same thing here: “Vaccines cause autism.”
When I say, “Wait, no they don't,” you say “Well, people should be free to decide
whether or not to vaccinate their children.”
“Well yes, of course…”
Well, maybe they should, and that's actually debatable that itself even to some degree,
for some definitions.
And then back to: “Yeah, see, I won.”
Or any particular goal of, say, the feminist movement.
Equal pay, affirmative action for women, that’s the bailey claim.
And then when challenged on that, or getting deep into the weeds of argument on that, say
“Well, feminism is just the view that women are human beings!
You don't disagree with that, do you?”
That’s the motte claim.
Shuffling back and forth.
So that's motte and bailey.
I didn’t get a chance to talk about Kafkatraps today.
Any questions about motte and bailey?
The other type of fallacy that I might either talk about Friday, or since we need to do
wrap up for the course, I may not talk about it, perhaps I’ll do a video on it, I’ve
got about five pages here, is called the Kafkatrap.
And I'll say more about that perhaps very briefly, or in a video that I'll send you
a link to for your own edification.
Any questions before we go?
Thank you guys for your time today.
[Music]