Logical Reasoning

PT115 · S4 · Q11 Letter to the editor: According

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Letter to the editor: According to your last edition’s anonymous article, we should all be required to carry identification cards and show them on demand.

Conclusion

This opinion is wrong. rephrase: We should not be required to carry ID cards and show them on demand.

Evidence (after all)

The writers of the article should not have asserted that the right to remain anonymous was trivial, unless they were prepared to put their names to that assertion.

Evaluate

This author's evidence doesn't seem to have anything to do with her conclusion. She's trying to convince her audience that we shouldn't be required to carry ID cards and show them on demand.

Why shouldn't we? Would it be too hard to disseminate ID cards to everyone? Would people too frequently forget to have their ID card on their person and get in trouble as a result? Would authorities employ their power to stop people and demand to see their ID cards in some way that would target or terrorize subsets of the population?

She doesn't say anything like that. In fact, she doesn't say anything about this Plan at all. There's no discussion of what positive or negative ramifications would result of installing a policy of mandatory ID cards.

Instead, she just says something about the people who wrote the article.

Attacking the source of ideas rather than the content of the ideas is one of the 10 famous flaws, called Ad Hominem. In almost all examples of Ad Hominem, the author tries to dismiss some idea because the source of the idea either (1) has a biased interest in the matter, or (2) has conflicting past behavior.

This is a case of #2. The author is saying the person who wrote this article behaved in a way that's inconsistent with their claims (they wrote an article anonymously while agitating for a policy of everyone being required to show their identification).

Goal

Look for an answer saying that this author failed to respond substantively to the article's position, and that it instead tried to disqualify the position based merely on the fact that the writer behaved in a way that seems at odds with their position.

11.

The reasoning above is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it

  1. criticizes the editor rather than

    Doesn't Criticize Editor Contradicted

    The author criticizes the writers of the article, not the editor. She says, "After all, the writers of the article should not have asserted that the right to remain anonymous was trivial".

    3% picked this

  2. Correct

    diverts attention from the content

    Why this is right

    This is describing an Ad Hominem rebuttal in which an author fails to engage with the content (she never thinks through what effects it would have if we enacted this mandatory ID law) and instead focuses on the source of the content. The author's premise has nothing to do with the proposal. She is just complaining that the people who wrote the proposal acted in a way contrary to their statements. It would be like arguing, "According to Donald Trump, politicians should do their best to tell the truth at all times. This opinion is wrong. After all, Trump made more public lies than did any other modern President."

    Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    76% picked this

  3. commits the same error in

    Out of Scope: same error

    The author is accusing the writers of committing the error of saying one thing and acting in a different way. The writers say that the right to remain anonymous is trivial, but in writing their article anonymously, they seem to be acting in a different way. This answer is saying that the author of this argument also says one thing but acts in a different way. Acts in a different way? We don't have any idea how this author acts. There's no apparent conflict between this author's ideas and actions.

    8% picked this

  4. attacks the integrity of the

    Out of Scope: attack integrity

    The author doesn't attack the writers' integrity. She just thinks that "given that the anonymous writers clearly care enough about their own right to remain anonymous, their opinion that we should all be required to carry and show ID cards is wrong." This answer is also implying that the author made a hasty judgment about someone without looking into their situation to learn more about them. But that sort of objection doesn't land here, since the author is attacking anonymous writers. This author isn't vulnerable to the criticism of "You should have tried to learn more about those writers" because how can you learn more about an anonymous source?

    4% picked this

  5. confuses two meanings of the

    Not the Best Objection

    This answer describes one of the 10 famous flaws, Equivocation, in which an author uses the same word or concept in two different ways. Did the author use anonymous in two different ways? When the first sentence says, "According to your last edition's anonymous article", it's using anonymous to mean "unidentified author". In the last sentence when it says, "They shouldn't have asserted that the right to remain anonymous was trivial", it's referring to the idea that in a world where you have ID's and have to show them on demand, you're forced to identify yourself. You no longer have the right to be anonymous (unidentified). While that definitely uses anonymity in two different contexts (signing authorship on something you've written vs. being confronted by an authority demanding your ID), it's consistently using anonymous to mean "unidentified". To whatever extent it's using the word in two different ways, that should not be our #1 complaint. We should be primarily angry that this author rejected a proposal without telling us anything bad about the proposal whatsoever.

    8% picked this

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