Think Again: How to Reason and Argue Read online

  THINK AGAIN

  THINK AGAIN

  How to Reason and Argue

  WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG

  Duke University

  Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.

  Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

  Published in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books Ltd,

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL

  © Walter Sinnott-Armstrong 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

  You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

  CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

  ISBN 978–0–19–062712–6

  eISBN 978–0–19–062714–0

  In gratitude to Stacey Meyers, Lisa Olds, Diane Masters, Dana Hall, and all of the unsung heroines who enable me to do what I want.

  CONTENTS

  Preface: Why I Wrote This Book

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: Our Cultural Rut

  How Did We Get Here?

  How Do We Get Out of Here?

  PART I: WHY TO ARGUE

  1. So Close and Yet So Far

  What Is Polarization?

  Are the Poles Moving Apart?

  Can’t We at Least Agree on the Facts?

  Do You Hate Your Opponents?

  Has the Epidemic Gone Global?

  2. Toxic Talk

  Can We Be Civil, Please?

  Who Doesn’t Like a Good Caricature?

  Are We All Crazy Clowns?

  Are Insults Funny?

  How Low Can We Go?

  Is Europe Civilized?

  How Much Is Too Much?

  3. The Sound of Silencing

  Why Try?

  Where Did You Hear That?

  Why Ask?

  So What?

  Isn’t Silence Soothing?

  4. What Arguments Can Do

  Who Is the Slave?

  Is There Any Hope?

  What Do We Get Out of Arguing?

  Learning

  Respect

  Humility

  Abstraction

  Compromise

  Where Do We Stand Now?

  INTERMISSION: FROM WHY TO HOW

  5. Why to Learn How to Argue

  Do You Want to Make a Deal?

  Will Your Wishes Come True?

  Can You Trust Representatives?

  Should You Turn Over a New Leaf?

  Can We Get Better?

  PART II: HOW TO ARGUE

  6. How to Spot Arguments

  How Much Would You Pay for an Argument?

  What Is an Argument?

  What Purposes Do Arguments Serve?

  When Is an Argument (Being Given)?

  7. How to Stop Arguments

  Can We Stop Soon?

  What If We Can’t Stop?

  How Can We Stop?

  Guarding

  Assuring

  Evaluating

  Discounting

  How Can Words Work Together?

  8. How to Complete Arguments

  Which Arguments Are Valid?

  When Is Validity Formal?

  What Makes Arguments Sound?

  What Are You Assuming?

  Do These Methods Scale Up?

  Without Argument

  Justification

  Explanation

  9. How to Evaluate Arguments

  Was Sherlock Holmes a Master of Deduction?

  What’s So Great about Deduction?

  How Strong Are You?

  How Do I Induce Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

  How Can Dates and Polls Go So Wrong?

  Generalization

  Application

  Why Did That Happen?

  Hussein’s Tubes

  PART III: HOW NOT TO ARGUE

  10. How to Avoid Fallacies

  What Do You Mean?

  Double Entendre

  Slip Sliding Away

  Can I Trust You?

  Attacking People

  Questioning Authority

  Have We Gotten Anywhere Yet?

  Is That All?

  11. How to Refute Arguments

  Does the Exception Prove the Rule?

  Is This Absurdity Made of Straw?

  What Is Just Like Arguing . . . ?

  Conclusion: Rules to Live By

  Notes

  Index

  PREFACE

  Why I Wrote This Book

  I have taught courses on reason and argument for over thirty-five years at Dartmouth College and now Duke University. Many students tell me that my courses have helped them in various areas of their lives. They motivate me to keep going.

  While my students learned to argue, the rest of the world lost that skill. The level of discourse and communication in politics and also in personal life has reached new lows. During election years, my course has always discussed examples of arguments during presidential debates. During the 1980s, I had no trouble finding arguments on both sides in the debates. Today all I find are slogans, assertions, jokes, and gibes but very few real arguments. I see dismissals, put-downs, abuse, accusations, and avoiding the issue more than actual engagement with problems that matter. There might be fewer protests in the streets today than in the 1960s, but there are still fewer serious attempts to reason together and understand each other.

  I could not help but conclude that our culture, like my students, could benefit from a strong dose of reason and argument. When I moved to Duke in 2010, I was offered a chance to reach a wider audience through the magical medium of MOOCs (that is, Massive Open Online Courses). With my friend, Ram Neta, I taught a MOOC (Think Again on the Coursera platform) that has attracted over 800,000 registered students from over 150 countries. This surprising response convinced me of a hunger around the world for learning how to reason and argue. Of course, not all of my students finished the course, much less learned how to argue well—but many did. My hope is that their new skills helped them understand and work together with their neighbors.

  The book that you have in your hands (or on your screen?) is another step in that direction. My goal is to show what arguments are and what good they can do. This book is not about winning arguments or beating opponents. Instead, it is about understanding each other and appreciating strong evidence. It teaches logic instead of rhetorical tricks.

  Although this book began as a manual on how to argue, I realized that I also needed to start by explaining why people should argue. That motivational discussion then grew into Part I: Why Argue? The lessons on how to argue then became Part II, complemented by an overview of how not to argue in Part III. By the end of the book, I hope that you will be both willing and able to argue and assess arguments as well as to provide motivation and a model for others to join you in constructive engagement. These skills can improve not only your life but also our shared society.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to everyone who has a
rgued with me over many years. I have learned from you all. I learned the most from Robert Fogelin. I could not have asked for a more inspiring mentor, collaborator, and friend. I also thank Addison Merryman for research assistance, and my editors—Casiana Ionita at Penguin Press and Peter Ohlin at Oxford University Press—for their encouragement and detailed suggestions. I benefited from discussions of these topics with Leda Cosmides, Molly Crockett, Alexa Dietrich, Mike Gazzaniga, Shanto Iyengar, Ron Kassimir, Michael Lynch, Diana Mutz, Nate Persily, Liz Phelps, Steve Sloman, John Tooby, and Rene Weber. For helpful comments on the manuscript, I thank Aaron Ancell, Alice Armstrong, Esko Brummel, Jordy Carpenter, Rose Graves, Kyra Exterovich-Rubin, Sandra Luksic, J. J. Moncus, Hannah Read, Sarah Sculco, Gus Skorburg, Valerie Soon, Jesse Summers, and Simone Tang.

  This book project received generous financial support from Bass Connections at Duke University, the Social Science Research Council, and a subaward agreement from the University of Connecticut with funds provided by Grant No. 58942 from John Templeton Foundation. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of UConn, John Templeton Foundation, or any funder.

  INTRODUCTION

  Our Cultural Rut

  CALAMITIES THREATEN OUR WORLD: War is constant. Terrorism is common. Migrants seek refuge. Poverty is extreme. Inequality is growing. Racial tensions are rising. Women are mistreated. Climate change is looming. Diseases are running rampant. Health costs are soaring. Schools are deteriorating. The news leaves us overwhelmed and depressed.

  These crises are gigantic in scope and scale. Because of their immensity, none of these problems can be solved without widespread cooperation. Indeed, real solutions require collaboration among diverse groups of people with conflicting beliefs and values. It’s not just that warmongers need to stop fighting, racists need to stop discriminating, and ignorant fools need to learn basic facts. In addition, those of us who are neither warmongers nor racists nor fools need to work together despite our differences and disagreements. The refugee problem cannot be solved unless a number of countries with disparate goals and assumptions agree on the nature of the problem and its solution and then come together to convince everyone to do their share. The problem of climate change cannot be solved unless countries all over the world agree that there is a problem and then curtail their production of greenhouse gasses. Terrorism cannot be exterminated until every nation denies terrorists safe haven. It will never be enough for one person or even one country to decide what to do and then do it alone. They also need to convince many others to go along.

  That much is obvious. What is not so obvious is why smart and caring people do not just do it. Why don’t they work together to solve their common problems? Contemporary science gives us remarkable powers to learn, to communicate, and to control our futures. Yet we fail to use these abilities for good. So little gets done when so much is at stake! These same problems are bad for everyone on both sides of these disputes, even if some unfortunate groups are harmed much more than others. Nonetheless, politicians from various countries and indeed politicians within the same country quibble instead of cooperating, undermine instead of supporting, interrupt instead of listening, and draw lines in the sand instead of proposing compromises that could gain mutual agreement. Politicians add to the problems instead of solving them—or they propose solutions that they know will be rejected immediately by their opponents. Some exceptions—notably the Paris Accord on climate change—show how countries could work together, but such cooperation is all too rare.

  Not only in politics. Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, smart phones, and the Internet make it much easier than ever before to communicate around the globe, and many people do spend a lot of time talking with friends. Nonetheless, these exchanges almost always occur within bubbles of allies with similar worldviews. Moreover, discourse has reached new lows on the Internet. Complex issues are reduced to 280-character tweets or shorter hashtags and slogans. Even thoughtful tweets and blog posts are often greeted with contempt, gibes, humor, and abuse by Internet trolls. Moderate opinions encounter immoderate insults that masquerade as wit and spread willful misinterpretation of opponents. The Web makes it easier for large numbers of critics to attack quickly, viciously, and thoughtlessly. This new medium and culture reward bluster instead of modesty and leave little incentive to be caring or careful, fair or factual, trustworthy or thoughtful. Rhetoric gains likes. Reason receives dislikes. The medium that should be our tool shapes our actions and goals.

  This dark picture is not always accurate, of course, but it is too accurate too often. And many of these disparate problems stem largely from the same source: a lack of mutual understanding. Sometimes people avoid talking with each other. Even when they do talk, there is little communication of ideas on important issues. As a result, they cannot figure out why other people believe what they say. Politicians cannot work together, at least partly because they do not understand each other. Opponents will never agree to bear their share of the burden if they do not understand why that burden needs to be carried.

  This lack of understanding might sometimes result from incommensurable world views or conflicting assumptions that prevent mutual comprehension. However, political opponents too often do not even try to understand each other, partly because they see no personal or political gain in reaching out and being fair. Indeed, they often have strong incentives neither to reach out nor to be fair. Tweeters and bloggers go wild on the Internet, because their goal is to gain likes for their jokes and gibes. They receive few such rewards on the Internet from balanced attempts to see the other side in contentious debates. Why should they try to understand their opponents when they think that they are bound to fail and get nothing in return for their attempts? Admittedly, many interesting and insightful conversations do occur on Twitter and the Internet, but the huge number of lurking trolls scares off many potential contributors.

  When they give up on understanding, they turn to willful misunderstanding and misinterpretation. People on both sides of divisive disputes repeatedly put words into each other’s mouths and then retort or snort, “I cannot imagine why they think that.” Of course, they cannot imagine why their rivals think that, because they formulated their rivals’ views in that way precisely to make those views look silly. They know or should know that they are misrepresenting their opponents, but they do not care. Their goals are not to convince opponents or appreciate their positions. They seek only to amuse their allies by abusing their opponents.

  These attitudes undermine respect, connection, and cooperation. You hold your position. I hold mine. I cannot comprehend how you could be so blind. You have no idea why I am so stubborn. I do not respect your views. You return the favor. We abuse and come to despise each other. I do not want to meet with you. You do not want to deal with me. I refuse to compromise. So do you. Neither of us is open to any possibility of cooperation. No progress is made. Sad!

  HOW DID WE GET HERE?

  How did we fall into this cultural hole? How can we climb out? The full story is complex, of course. Anything as widespread and intricate as a culture is bound to have many aspects and influences. These issues should not be oversimplified, but it would be overwhelming to try to discuss all of its complications at once. Consequently, this short book will emphasize and explore only one part of the problem. I focus on this one bit, because it is often overlooked, because it is fundamental, because it lies within my expertise, and because each of us can do something about it in our personal lives instead of having to wait for politicians and cultural leaders to act. We can all start to work on the problem right now.

  My answer is that many people have stopped giving reasons of their own and looking for reasons for opposing positions. Even when they give and receive reasons, they do so in a biased and uncritical way, so they fail to understand the reasons on each side of the issue. These people claim too often that their stance is so obvious that anyone who knows what they are talking about
will agree with them. If so, opponents must not know what they are talking about. Even before their opponents start talking, these people feel confident that those on the opposing side must all be deeply confused or misinformed or even crazy. They disparage their opponents as so silly that they cannot have any reason at all on their side. Then they cynically assume that reasoning won’t do any good anyway, because their opponents are driven only by emotions—fear, anger, hatred, greed, or blind compassion—and do not care about truth or about the same values that matter to them. As a result, elections are decided by who gets out the most voters and perhaps by who creates the most rousing or humorous advertisements and slogans instead of by who gives the strongest reasons for their policies. This strategy cannot help us climb out of our rut.

  We need to state and understand arguments on both sides. We need to offer our reasons to our opponents and demand their reasons from them. Without exchanging reasons, we cannot understand each other. Without understanding, we cannot figure out how to compromise or cooperate with each other. Without cooperation, we cannot solve our problems. Without solving our problems, we will all be worse off.

  HOW DO WE GET OUT OF HERE?

  This analysis of the problem suggests a solution. We all need to communicate more and in better ways. One crucial step is to assert less and question more. The most useful questions ask why we believe what we do and how our proposals would work. These questions ask for reasons of different kinds, so we especially need to learn how to ask each other for reasons. Still, questions are not enough by themselves. Asking for reasons won’t help if nobody can answer. Answers take the form of arguments that express our reasons. Thus, we need to learn how to give appropriate arguments when asked, how to appreciate arguments that others give us, and how to spot weaknesses in our own arguments as well as in arguments on the other side. I will try to begin to teach some of these lessons in the following pages.