The Straw Man

The Straw Man The nice thing about the process of rational reconstruction is that the principle of charity is built right into it. Everything you have learned so far: the discernment of rationales, the distinction between argument and explanation, the judicious interpretation of reasons and conclusions, and the careful articulation and attribution of principles is about respecting the principle of charity. By contrast, people who don't know how to do rational reconstruction, or who don't have the patience for it, will often base their assessments of reasoning on uncharitable interpretations. This is a common interpretive error, and is traditionally characterized metaphorically as "creating a straw man." A non metaphorical straw man is otherwise known as a scarecrow. A scarecrow scares crows because most crows are dumb enough to think that it is a real man. Similarly, a logical straw man is a dumbed down interpretation of what someone has said. But, like a scarecrow, it is similar enough to the real thing that uneducated, uninformed, and inattentive people won't notice. So, just like one of the brighter crows might win the admiration of his comrades by pecking the eyes off of a scarecrow, someone who traffics in straw man interpretations can appear to be refuting someone's reasoning, when he is really just misrepresenting it. Everyone uses the straw man method of interpretation once in a while. Like most logically problematic practices, it has its practical uses. For example, if you are forced to engage the mind of someone who offends you, you'll naturally be disinclined to spend much mental energy on charitable interpretations of his reasoning. If you can save some time by dispatching it with a straw man, you may just do it. Consider: Example 1 • • Butch: I frankly don't understand why we have to pay taxes to support freeloaders. I bust my hump for my measly paycheck, and I don't appreciate having to hand a big chunk of it over every month to people who just won't work. Barb: You bet. If people are sick or hungry and they don't have the money of family support to take care of themselves, that's just too bad. Good riddance I say. Here Barb's ironic response simply dismisses anything reasonable that Butch could have been saying, and implicitly exaggerates Butch's remarks as if he doesn't want to even help people who are truly in need. A careful rational reconstruction wouldn't have allowed that, of course, but Barb was apparently offended by Butch's callous disregard for poor people, so she chucked the principle of charity and reached for a straw man. The problem, of course is that sometimes you will be offended by or impatient with reasoning that you probably ought to be taking seriously. Even Butch's poorly formulated argument above has some merit. After all, why should Butch have to support people who won't work? That's actually not an easy question to answer. (The answer, by the way, is that we probably shouldn't. But we do need a system that supports people who can't work, and since any such system is going to be abused, we inevitably will end up supporting a small percentage of people who won't work.) One of the most famous examples of a straw man gone bad occurred during an 1860 debate between Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford and Thomas Huxley, a disciple of Darwin. Like many people who are offended by Darwin's theory of evolution, Wilberforce created a straw version that allowed him to pose to Huxley the question whether he was related to apes by his mother's side or his father's. Huxley replied: A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real points at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice. Although straw man is usually defined in terms of producing weak interpretations of what people say or believe, the idea also extends easily to producing weak characterizations of what people do as well. The mechanism is the same. Just mischaracterize the behavior in a way that makes it easy to criticize. Example 2 I don't believe in using corporal punishment on children. You can't just whack the crap out of a kid every time he does something wrong. Kids who experience that learn that the best way to solve problems with other people is by using physical violence. Of course, what this person is saying makes some sense. The problem with it is that it mischaracterizes the practice of corporal punishment in terms of its most extreme form. Most people who believe in capital punishment wouldn't subscribe to using it all the time, or even most of the time. The Definition of Straw Man All of the logical errors we discuss will be given very precise definitions. Based on this definition, we will also provide a method of identification, which we will abbreviate as MOI. You should follow the MOI anytime you try to identify an error of a particular kind. Straw Man Definition: Attempting to discredit a view or practice by criticizing a weak version of it or the reasoning given in support of it. MOI: Identify both the original view and the weak version of that view. Show (a) why the weak version is a version of the view and (b) why it is weak. Here are some more examples of straw men, properly identified. Example 3 • • Barb: Hey Butch, I feel sick this morning. Would you tell the teacher so I can make up the test next week? Butch: (later, to the teacher Mayes) "Oh, by the way, Bar didn't come to class because she didn't feel like taking the test today." Analysis Butch commits a straw man against Barb by misrepresenting her reasoning in a weakened form. The original reason Barb gave for not going to class is that she felt sick. Butch presents a weak form of the reason by saying that Barb didn't feel like taking the test today. This is weak because it suggests something that is not true, namely that she was not sick, but simply unprepared for the test. Example 4 • • Butch: Girls tend to be way more concerned about their personal appearances than men in my opinion. I mean virtually all cosmetic products are made for women. And they wear all sorts of really uncomfortable stuff like high heels and g-strings just because it makes them look better to men. Barb: I think that's a bunch of crap. I hardly wear any makeup, and I know lots of men who spend more than I do on their hair. Analysis Barb commits a straw man against Butch by misrepresenting his reasoning in a weakened form. Barb's response constitutes a refutation only if we interpret Butch as saying that all women are more concerned with their looks than men. But Butch only says that women tend to be more concerned with their looks, which allows that there will be exceptions. Barb's version is weaker than Butch's actual version because it can be refuted simply by pointing out one exception. Example 5 • • • Butch: I am so pissed. Those construction workers across the street keeping hooting at me when I'm watering my yard. Barb: Well, maybe they'd stop it if you weren't always prancing around in your Speedo. Butch: How can you say that? I have a right to be comfortable in my own yard! Analysis Butch commits a straw man against Barb by misrepresenting her statement in a weakened form. Barb tells Butch that he should not wear his Speedo if he prefers not to be taunted. Barb did not tell him not to wear his Speedo at all or that he had no right to wear it. Example 6 • Shelly: You know what I hate is when you run your ass off to catch the bus, yelling for the bus driver to wait, and just when you get there the driver slams the door shut and just takes off! That's happened to me so many times, I just can't help but believe they enjoy doing it. I mean, like, is it part of their training or something, to just piss their patrons off in as many ways as possible? Analysis Shelly here misrepresents a practice in a way that makes it easy to criticize. She suggests that bus drivers are trained to do things that make their customers angry, when in fact they are trained simply to stay on schedule. Example 7 • • Samantha: Baldy hasn't eaten in over a week. I just checked his temperature and he's got a 108° fever. Derrick, I really think we need to take him to the vet. Derrick: Look, we've had this discussion 100 times. We can't go running to the veterinarian every time the cat has a hairball. Leave him alone, he'll be fine. Analysis Derrick misrepresents Samantha's reasoning in a weakened form. He characterizes the cat's condition as minor (similar to having a hairball) when in fact Samantha has identified symptoms that constitute evidence that the cat is very ill.