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Describing a logical belief as an addictive aberrationImagine a person who believes there was a little deception involved in the invasion of Iraq (e.g. the claim that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq).
Next imagine a person with a different opinion trots out a study that says "people who believe Americans who were duped into supporting one war are likely to believe Americans were duped into supporting other wars." The study makes it sound like suspicion of war campaigning is akin to a drug habit; if you get stoned once, there's a greater than average likelihood that you'll get stoned again. Likewise, if you believe the government wasn't completely honest about Iraq, then you may believe it wasn't honest about Vietnam or the Korean War (in fact, it wasn't honest about these wars, either). What do you call this kind of fallacy? |
| asked on Sunday, Oct 15, 2017 04:33:55 AM by David Blomstrom | |
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Many of our ideas about the world are based more on feelings than facts, sensibilities than science, and rage than reality. We gravitate toward ideas that make us feel comfortable in areas such as religion, politics, philosophy, social justice, love and sex, humanity, and morality. We avoid ideas that make us feel uncomfortable. This avoidance is a largely unconscious process that affects our judgment and gets in the way of our ability to reach rational and reasonable conclusions. By understanding how our mind works in this area, we can start embracing uncomfortable ideas and be better informed, be more understanding of others, and make better decisions in all areas of life.
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I don't see a fallacy here. You mentioned that a study was cited. If that is the case, this is someone referencing a study as support for a claim, which is not fallacious. Being an academic psychologist, I can tell you that it is a fact that lack of trust, suspicion, paranoia, and general conspiratorial thinking is a fairly stable pattern of thinking, meaning that it not only applies to one area (e.g., suspicion of wars) but crosses domains (e.g., suspicion in relationships, lack to trust with business partners, etc.). Decades of research backs this up (for one example, see Goertzel, T. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 731-742.)
If someone actually said that "suspicion of war campaigning is akin to a drug habit," they would be making weak analogy and perhaps strawman . |
| answered on Sunday, Oct 15, 2017 06:46:05 AM by Bo Bennett, PhD |
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Wow, great answer. Thanks especially for the reference to the article in Political Psychology!
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| answered on Sunday, Oct 15, 2017 05:39:02 PM by David Blomstrom |
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