Doctor Mama Amon
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 30, 2018
- 2,089
- 2,725
The Disagreement Pyramid showing various levels of dishonesty
The Internet is the latest and in many respects most powerful medium than its predecessors, namely, the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television.
For many people these media have progressively eliminated time and space as obstacles to communication during the last century and a half.
As a result, the internet has enormous consequences for individuals, nations, and the world.
It is a powerful tool for education and cultural enrichment, for commercial activity and political participation, for intercultural dialogue and understanding.
So, it has turned static writing into a dynamic conversation. Forty years ago, writers wrote for readers and readers read later. Today, the internet allows readers to quickly respond with comments trough forums, facebook, twitter, WhatsApp and blog posts.
Yet this coin has another side. Just as it can be used for the good of persons and communities, it can also be used to exploit, manipulate, dominate, and corrupt the public through immoral practices of framing deceptive arguments.
For sure, many who respond to something may either agree or disagree with it. Disagreement tends to motivate people more than agreement, since when you agree there is less to say.
When you disagree you are probably entering a territory the original author may not have explored before. As a result, there is a lot more disagreeing going on in the internet.
But, if we are going to disagreeing , we should be careful to do it well by disagreeing morally.
What does it mean to disagree morally? Here, one complies with St. Paul's advice: "You may not do evil so that good may come out of it?"
Pataprased in the present case, "You may not frame a fallacious argument so that your good end of persuading the other party may come out of it?"
For if you do this, you will have subscribed to the evil doctrine of Machiavellism, according to which, "good ends may jutify whaterver means, either good or bad."
Only good means and good ends bring about morally good human acts. A mixture of good ends and bad means, or vice versa, breeds morally evil human acts. This is why the doctrine of Niccollo Machiavelli is wrong.
On this view, most morally upright readers can tell the difference between name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation.
But, there are intermediate stages of bad aruments that need to be named so as to clearly show when to recognise bad arguments and agnore their authors bad intentions.
In a sense, theres is a disagreement pyramid having Disagreement Hierarchy that, minimally, entail the following mischievousness steps, each higher level being bore better than the level below it:
Disagreement Level 1 (DL1): Name-calling
This is the lowest form of disagreement, and probably also the most common is attacking the arguer. Instead of responding to the argument, the arguer is given a name which is irrelevant to the question at hand.
It amounts to comments like this: "You are sick," "You are a thief," "You are poor," etc.
If there's something wrong with the speaker's argument, you should say what it is; and if there isn't, it makes no difference that he is sick, a thief, or poor.
Disagreement Level 2 (DL2): Attacking the Person
A personal attack is not quite as weak as mere name-calling. It might actually carry some weight, since it is somehow relevant to the case at hand.
For example, if an MP said that "senators' salaries should be increased," one could attackingly respond thus: "Of course he would say that, since he is a senator."
This wouldn't refute the author's argument, but it is still a very weak form of disagreement. If there's something wrong with the MP's argument, you should say what it is; and if there isn't, it makes no difference that he's an MP.
Another example, would be saying that speakers lack the authority to speak about a topic. This is particularly a useless rebuttal, because good ideas often come from outsiders.
The question is whether the authors are correct or not. If their lack of authority caused them to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem.
Disagreement Level 3 (DL3): Responding to tone or style
The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than the writer. The lowest form of these is to disagree with the author's tone or style. For example:
The author dismisses intelligent design argument in a way that shows him to be intellectually sick."
Though better than attacking the author, this is still a weak form of disagreement. It matters much more whether the author is wrong or right than what his tone or style is. Especially since tone and style are so hard to judge.
So if the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its tone or style, you're not saying much. Is the author flippant, but correct? Better that than grave and wrong. And if the author is incorrect somewhere, you should say where.
Disagreement Level 4 (DL4): Contradiction
At this stage we finally get responses to what was said, rather than how or by whom.
The lowest form of response to an argument is simply to state the opposing case, with little or no supporting evidence. This is often combined with DL2 statements, as in:
"The author dismisses intelligent design argument in a way that shows him to be intellectually sick. Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory."
Contradiction can sometimes have some weight. Sometimes merely seeing the opposing case stated explicitly is enough to see that it's right. But usually evidence will help.
Disagreement Level 5 (DL5): Red Herring and strawman
A Red Herring argument "distracts" the audience from the real issue to focus on something else where the speaker feels more comfortable and confident. It changes the subject to distract the audience.
On the other hand, a strawman argument is an intentional "misrepresentation" of an opponent’s position. It sets up an easy and false target for the speaker to knock down.
So, a red herring is a distraction, while a strawman is a misrepresentation.
So, for example, if you are in a discussion and you say that “I believe woman get lighter sentences than men do for the same crime because most judges are male”.
Red Herring response would be: “Anarchy is the way to go, no laws, and we govern ourselves, we don’t need police, laws, or judges!”
While this response is close to the topic, it doesn’t address the cause of women getting a lighter sentence or agree/dispute the claim that women get lighter sentences. It goes off on a rant that has nothing to do with the debate.
Strawman response would be: “That is because you think that all women are sex objects.”
While the topic does allude to one possible reason for the lighter sentence which could be applied to judges seeing women as sex objects, it misrepresents the claim.
For example, the original claim would cover if the male judges see women as weak and frail, or less criminally minded, or any number of other reason why a male judge might sentence a female defendant lower for the same crime that doesn’t have to do with the judge viewing those women sexually.
Disagreement Level 6 (DL6): Counter argument
At level 6 we reach the first form of convincing disagreement called counter argument. Forms up to this point can usually be ignored as proving nothing.
Counter argument might prove something. The problem is, it is hard to say exactly what. Counterargument is contradiction plus reasoning and/or evidence.
When aimed squarely at the original argument, it can be convincing. But unfortunately it's common for counter arguments to be aimed at something slightly different.
More often than not, two people arguing passionately about something are actually arguing about two different things.
There could be a legitimate reason for arguing against something slightly different from what the original author said: when you feel they missed the heart of the matter. But when you do that, you should say explicitly you're doing it.
Disagreement Level 7 (DL7): Refutation
The most convincing form of disagreement is refutation. It's also the rarest, because it's the most work. Indeed, the disagreement hierarchy forms a kind of pyramid, in the sense that the higher you go the fewer instances you find.
To refute someone you probably have to quote them. You have to find a "smoking gun," a passage in whatever you disagree with that you feel is mistaken, and then explain why it's mistaken. If you can't find an actual quote to disagree with, you may be arguing with a straw man.
While refutation generally entails quoting, quoting doesn't necessarily imply refutation. Some writers quote parts of things they disagree with to give the appearance of legitimate refutation, then follow with a response as low as DL4 or even DL1.
Disagreement Level 8 (DL8): Refuting the Central Point
The force of a refutation depends on what you refute. The most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point.
Even as high as DL6 we still sometimes see deliberate dishonesty, as when someone picks out minor points of an argument and refutes those.
Sometimes the spirit in which this is done makes it more of a sophisticated form of personal attack than actual refutation.
For example, correcting someone's grammar, or harping on minor mistakes in names or numbers. Unless the opposing argument actually depends on such things, the only purpose of correcting them is to discredit one's opponent.
Truly refuting something requires one to refute its central point, or at least one of them. And that means one has to commit explicitly to what the central point is. So a truly effective refutation would look like:
The author's main point seems to be x. As he says: <quotation>.
But this is wrong for the following reasons: <facts>
The quotation you point out as mistaken need not be the actual statement of the author's main point. It's enough to refute something it depends upon.
What all this means
To be a good debater one has to avoid logical fallacies. To embrace logical fallacies intentionally is to be immoral. For example, to use name-calling is a form of offensive, insulting and abusive language (affinabus language). It is immoral. It amounts to worshipping The God of Niccollo Machiavelli and betraying the True God of Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus Christ. It is stanism.
