Interchange, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1990), 67-69

A Reponse to John McMurtry: The Unspeakable in Pursuit of the Unsayable Wesley Cragg J a m e s A. F o r d Laurentian University

A fallacy, quite simply, is a breach of a rule of legitimate argument. Thus we have the formal fallacies, those having to do with violations of the known, and clear-cut, rules of deductive inference. And then we have the so-called "material" or "informal" fallacies, those which have something to do, not merely with the logical form or structure of an argument, but with its subject matter as well. Given a certain embarrassment conceming talk about "rules" when no one as yet may have been able to cite, or formulate, a desiderated rule, one might say that rules of inference are what fallacies are breaches of. The point here is that it may be easier to identify a fallacy than to cite its corresponding rule. Nevertheless, if a fallacy has occurred, something has gone wrong with an argumenL In a broader and more widely accepted sense of the term, a fallacy is not just any blunder in argument, but one that possesses a degree of persuasiveness. Thus one might be tempted to maintain that Charlie has to be a bachelor, given that he's currently unmarried and that all bachelors are unmarried, Alternatively one might insist that Charlie's present testimony must be false, given that he's a notorious liar. Fallacyhunting has become a popular indoor pastime over the last 15 to 20 years. The complexities of modem formal (or "mathematical") logic have little appeal for some philosophers. Outside the areas of philosophy of science and mathematics, one may wonder whether it is really necessary to master G0del's intricacies. For example, is he of any help in getting on with the task of deciding whether or not abortion, say, is a Bad Thing? The search for informal fallacies, however, has much to recommend it. No hardwon technical expertise is required and, by contrast with the well-charted regions of deduction, the Realm of the Fallacies is terra incognita. No matter how diligently Aristotle, or Jones, has quested about, there is always more exploration t o b e done. Results to date may, on an optimistic view, be consistent; they cannot on any account be deemed complete. One may be bothered by the fact that a particular argument has a fishy smell to it. But to be able to say with a degree of precision what is wrong with the argument and, in favourable circumstances, to give the piece of misreasoning a label is to direct a beam of light into the surrounding darkness. This is an entirely laudable, if sometimes boring, endeavour m one that has acquired comparatively recently a degree of importance and an air of respectability. John McMurtry's paper seems to be an attempt to cash in on this fashionable respectability. Thought-control and the suppression of free speech have been around for a lamentably long time; in some parts of the world they are more prevalent, or more noticeable, than in others. Another truism is that the most fundamental assumptions underlying our various beliefs are seldom explicitly acknowledged or stated. At least part of the task of philosophy is to bring these presuppositions to light; and as we all know, this can be an

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arduous undertaking. McMurtry's basic contention is that some ideologies, both in the West and in less technologically developed parts of the world, are regarded as sacrosanct by their adherents, who then conspire to prevent discussion of their fundamental assumptions and values. The issue is censorship on a grand scale: powerful interest groups screen or filter ideas intended for mass consumption. This view is hardly novel the works of Huxley and Orwell have made us long familiar with it. What is new, however, is McMurtry's attempt to recast the problem as falling within the scope of fallacy theory. He implies that the nature of the problemhas only imperfectly been understood because of the existence of a hitherto unacknowledged fallacy - - the perversion of soundreasoning through the suppression of ideas. The difficulty, he thinks, lies not with a substantive social phenomenon requiring first-order social analysis and criticism; rather it has to dowith defects in human reasoning, the remedy for which is some sort of logical analysis. What exactly is McMurtry's putative fallacy? Admittedly not all bits of crooked reasoning need have a special name or label; but in this case it seems not unreasonable to opt for a variation of ad baculum. Notoriously, force or the threat of force can derail an argument in various ways. Furthermore, coercion need not be physical-- some of the techniques used in advertising, for example, are designed to persuade without the knowledge or consent of the customer. This, surely, is an instance of the use of force less crude than being held at gunpoint, no doubt, but likely far more efficacious. Analogously, it could be argued, the efforts of governments and media to suppress the knowledge and discussion of sensitive ideas and issues is a form of coercion - - blatant in some cases, more insidious in others. Nevertheless, open and reasonable discussion is not allowed to proceed. We have here, it would seem, a classic case of ad baculum. At this point an embarrassment can be raised. It has been argued by John Woods and Douglas Walton ( 1982) that ad baculum is not, properly speaking, a fallacy. Their reason is that, for a fallacy to occur, there must be an argument present and that this argument must be a fallacious one. In McMurtry's case where is the argument? The whole thrust of his charge is that lame media do their best not to allow certain types of arguments to get started, or they attempt to burke them should they show signs of life. On this view, McMurtry's fallacy in no fallacy at all. It is of course open to McMurtry to reply along the following lines. What's in a name, in effect? If threats or the use of force are used to censor free debate and succeed in precluding the discussion of doctrinally sensitive issues, no fallacy strictly speaking need have occurred. But this does not mean that underhanded tricks are not being used in connection with arguments. Not all logical dirty pool need involve fallacies in a narrow sense of that term. If arguments are not allowed to be mooted, or if attention is turned away from them in the event that they do make an appearance, this can be as effective in keeping a population docile and uninformed as presenting it with identifiable logical howlers - - perhaps more so. What then is the remedy? There is a tendency among philosophers working in the area of"informal" logic to adopt a line rather similar to the ancient superstition that, if one calls the Devil by His right name, He will disappear, or at any rate cease to be a menace. Ifa fallacy or some otherillegitimate gambit is identifiedand drawn to people's attention, so the story goes, all will be well. Sweet reason will prevail and the argument will be straightened out to everyone's satisfaction. Admittedly, this is a bit of a burlesque, but it does bring home the point that the mere identification of a fallacy does not automatically correct the abuse in question. A person might simply reply, "So what?" and continue merrily on his fallacious way. To recognize a good (or an evil) is not necessarily

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to act on this recognition. Presumably McMurtry's point is that greater public awareness of taboo issues will break the stranglehold of media conspiracy and there with their ability to control our thoughts along acceptable lines. But this, surely, will depend to a large extent upon the sort of society in which we live. Discussion may occur, but it may have to occur in a furtive, underground manner, as it did in Stalin' s Russia. As regards practical social reform, little may be hoped for, given the apparatus of State repression. The author presents what he thinks are 30 examples of ideas considered dangerous by the mass media of the English-speaking world. These constitute a mixed bag, but all are familiar - - some depressingly so. If McMurtry's basic claim were true, it would be surprising that his allegedly verboten issues should be so well known by so many people. The only one that has a degree of novelty to it is the proposition that major American corporations produced military supplies for Nazi Germany while the U.S. was at war with the Third Reich. How were such supplies delivered, given that the Battle of the Atlantic was in full fury at that time? Did the occasional ship break away from a Murmansk convoy and headinto Kiel or Hamburg? Or were supplies delivered to neutral countries and from there sent to Germany? Perhaps McMurtry's 30 propositions are not all intended to be true but merely unpopular with the Capitalist Establishment and hence proscribed by that Establishment's tame press. A point of considerable importance is the following. The author seems to equivocate in his statement of his basic thesis. What is at issue are ideas that contradict fundamental social-structural facts of a given society. Sometimes McMurtry speaks of the mass media, yet at other times his focus is on the domain of public discourse. These two are quite distinct and nothing but confusion can result if they are muddled up. As an illustration of this point, an article appeared not too long ago in The Canadian Forum entitled, "The Media n Manufacturing our Consent" (Richardson, 1989). The topic is identical with that canvassed by McMurtry, but the author of the Forum article confined his attention (rightly) to the mass media and their machinations. Furthermore, the problem is set out clearly and thoroughly, without benefit of fallacy theory and related gimmicry. As has been said above, all of McMurtry's "Thirty Examples" (with the possible exception of U.S. military aid to the Third Reich) are regular topics of public discussion in Canada. They are commonplaces in university classes and in periodicals such as Queen's Quarterly, The Canadian Forum, and The United Church Observer. Nothing new or startling here. In sum, it is our contention that what McMurtry calls a fallacy is really not one, that logical theory is not the proper area of philosophy in which to search for solutions to the problems under discussion, and that what is deemed "unspeakable" is frequently heard and debated in a variety of forums, at least in this country. In the present context, fallacyhunting sheds more darkness than light; and the upshot of McMurtry's unorthodox approach is simply to repeat in a misleading manner what others have said better. What is wanted is substantive social analysis and criticism, not an excursion into informal logic.

References Richardson, B. (1989, September).The media, manufacturing our consent.The CanadianForum, LXVIII(781), 5-6. Woods, L, & Walton, D. (1982). Argument: The logic of the fallacies. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ry~son.