Page 142 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 142
What Do We Know about the World?
So, in general, it seems that making the claim that someone who has
adopted or advocated a zero tolerance policy has committed a fallacy –
viz., the zero tolerance fallacy – is likely to have positive results. Either
the disagreement will be seen to be about ends rather than means, or if
the end is agreed upon and the means are what is disputed, then both
sides will turn to the issue of finding evidence to support their positions.
And, we can hope, the side with the strongest evidential support is the
one that will win that debate. Thus, we will be more likely to have zero
tolerance policies confined to those situations where they are somewhat
likely to accomplish what people hope they will.
6. Good Zero Tolerance Arguments10
I have been arguing that we need a new named fallacy, the zero tol-
erance fallacy. And I have been seeking to characterize that fallacy. But
one might think that I should have proceeded in a different way. Giv-
en that there are cases where there is good reason to adopt zero toler-
ance policies and given that there can be good arguments for adopting
such policies, it would, in those cases, seem that the logical way to pro-
ceed would be to characterize the structure of good or acceptable zero
tolerance arguments, and then to characterize zero tolerance fallacies
as cases that simply fail in some respect to live up to the standard of a
good zero tolerance argument. An analogy is with ad hominem argu-
ments. For years, indeed centuries, logicians have treated these simply
as fallacies. But since there are obviously perfectly good ad hominem ar-
guments, some have recently suggested that we should seek to establish
what makes good ad hominem arguments good while identifying those
ad hominem arguments which fail to live up to this (as yet not fully de-
veloped) standard as instances of the ad hominem fallacy. This approach
strikes me as potentially quite fruitful. My reason for not using it here is
that it will almost certainly involve more than can be accomplished in a
single short paper. On this very point, the analogy with ad hominem ar-
guments is again helpful: while we have many accounts of ad hominem
fallacies, we are still working towards a full account of what makes a suc-
cessful ad hominem argument a good one. (For an interesting attempt
along these lines, see Dahlman et al, 2011.) I would be extremely pleased
if, in addition to making the idea of a zero tolerance fallacy a popular
10 I am grateful to Leo Groake both for suggesting this approach and for pointing out the analogy that
I consider here. His “Logic: Informal” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a very useful
place to start thinking about these matters. (See in particular the sections titled “Fallacy Theory”
and “An Example: Ad Hominem,” as well as the literature Groake cites there.)
So, in general, it seems that making the claim that someone who has
adopted or advocated a zero tolerance policy has committed a fallacy –
viz., the zero tolerance fallacy – is likely to have positive results. Either
the disagreement will be seen to be about ends rather than means, or if
the end is agreed upon and the means are what is disputed, then both
sides will turn to the issue of finding evidence to support their positions.
And, we can hope, the side with the strongest evidential support is the
one that will win that debate. Thus, we will be more likely to have zero
tolerance policies confined to those situations where they are somewhat
likely to accomplish what people hope they will.
6. Good Zero Tolerance Arguments10
I have been arguing that we need a new named fallacy, the zero tol-
erance fallacy. And I have been seeking to characterize that fallacy. But
one might think that I should have proceeded in a different way. Giv-
en that there are cases where there is good reason to adopt zero toler-
ance policies and given that there can be good arguments for adopting
such policies, it would, in those cases, seem that the logical way to pro-
ceed would be to characterize the structure of good or acceptable zero
tolerance arguments, and then to characterize zero tolerance fallacies
as cases that simply fail in some respect to live up to the standard of a
good zero tolerance argument. An analogy is with ad hominem argu-
ments. For years, indeed centuries, logicians have treated these simply
as fallacies. But since there are obviously perfectly good ad hominem ar-
guments, some have recently suggested that we should seek to establish
what makes good ad hominem arguments good while identifying those
ad hominem arguments which fail to live up to this (as yet not fully de-
veloped) standard as instances of the ad hominem fallacy. This approach
strikes me as potentially quite fruitful. My reason for not using it here is
that it will almost certainly involve more than can be accomplished in a
single short paper. On this very point, the analogy with ad hominem ar-
guments is again helpful: while we have many accounts of ad hominem
fallacies, we are still working towards a full account of what makes a suc-
cessful ad hominem argument a good one. (For an interesting attempt
along these lines, see Dahlman et al, 2011.) I would be extremely pleased
if, in addition to making the idea of a zero tolerance fallacy a popular
10 I am grateful to Leo Groake both for suggesting this approach and for pointing out the analogy that
I consider here. His “Logic: Informal” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a very useful
place to start thinking about these matters. (See in particular the sections titled “Fallacy Theory”
and “An Example: Ad Hominem,” as well as the literature Groake cites there.)
