Reductio ad absurdum

Photo: Jurassic World (2015)

APOLOGIA        

By Hendrik van der Breggen

The Carillon, August 6, 2015

                

Reductio ad absurdum

               

Reductio ad absurdum is an argument strategy that employs logic to tease out the truth that another argument or claim is flawed. How? By reducing it to absurdity.

Let's look at this argument strategy in general terms, and then let's illustrate with a couple specific examples.

In a reductio ad absurdum argument, we assume, temporarily for the sake of argument, that the view under investigation is true. We approach the view in question with the attitude, "Okay, let's say it's true. What follows?" If the logical consequences of the view's assumed truth are false or logically contradictory, then it follows that the view under investigation is false or at least deeply problematic.

Here is an example from contemporary popular moral thought.

Consider the view that ethics is mere feeling, i.e., what's right and wrong is fundamentally a matter of subjective opinion or taste—there is no real right or wrong.

Let's say this is true, for the sake of argument. What follows logically?

If ethics is mere feeling, i.e., mere subjective opinion or taste, then right and wrong mean "I like" and "I don't like," respectively. Ethics becomes essentially similar to our attitudes to, say, food.

Just as I like chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla, you like vanilla rather than chocolate. No big deal. We're both right.

Cake: yum! Kale: yuck! Good: yum! Bad: yuck! This is the ethics-is-mere-feeling view.

But if the ethics-is-mere-feeling view is true (as we'll assume for the sake of argument), then another claim follows logically as true: just as Jane likes helping people and seeing them flourish, Joe likes torturing people and seeing them writhe in pain. So, if it's true that ethics is mere feeling, then Jane and Joe are both right ethically. No big deal.

Surely, though, that Jane and Joe are both right is clearly false (we know this via moral-rational insight). Hence, the assumption that ethics is mere feeling is flawed.

Here is another example from contemporary popular metaphysical thought (metaphysics has to do with the reality of being).

Let's say that personal identity, i.e., what I am, is wholly a personal matter—again, a matter merely of subjective feeling. My feelings about myself and my identity are trump.

Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner basically holds this view. He feels he is a woman so he is a woman—and so he has had plastic surgery to "feminize" his face and throat, had hormone therapy for growth of breasts, and may yet undergo genital surgery to remove his testicles plus use his penis to construct a "vagina."

But if the view that my feelings about myself and my identity are trump is true, what follows?

It means that we must accept the claims of "otherkin" as true. Otherkin are people who self-identify as—i.e., who believe they actually are, at least in part or wholly—non-human. They believe they are cats, foxes, dragons, etc. If feelings are trump, then they are non-human in fact.

Moreover, it means we must accept the claim of Adrian Van Oyen, who in a YouTube "coming out" video, claims to be a dinosaur. Yes, a dinosaur. And, according to Van Oyen, if you don't accept him for who he is, you are "transdinophobic."

(Note: Van Oyen's two-minute video is a stunt, ending with an image of a "facepalm" to the forehead; nonetheless, it makes an insightful philosophical point.)

Surely, however, the alleged truth of the thesis that my feelings about myself and my identity are trump lands us logically into obvious absurdities and falsehoods. Regardless of what a man feels, he is in reality not a dinosaur, nor a cat, nor a woman.

Feelings are not trump. Reductio ad absurdum.

Objective truth and reality are trump.

(Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is associate professor of philosophy at Providence University College. The views in this column do not always reflect the views of Providence.)

ADDENDA

A. Here are a couple  interesting reductio-ad-absurdum-related bits located here because of space limitations in the main body of my column:

1. If my feelings about myself and my identity are trump, then we should also accept the claims of the "transabled." The transabled are people who feel that they are imposters if their body is in full working order, so they seek to amputate a limb or otherwise mutilate/ disable themselves. But the truth is that you are not in fact an imposter if your body is in full working order. Again, the alleged truth of the thesis that my feelings about myself and my identity are trump lands us logically into obvious absurdities and falsehoods.

2. The Bible is no stranger to logic (which makes good sense because God is the Logos). In fact, the reductio ad absurdum is employed in the New Testament. Paul preaches the resurrection of Jesus (which he and others know to be true) and Paul addresses those who say there is no resurrection of the dead. He argues "if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised" (1 Cor. 15:13). But Paul adds that he testifies to Christ being raised: "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead" (1 Cor. 15:20a). That is, Paul and others know this to be true. D.J. Hill, in New Dictionary of Apologetics, concludes: "So, Paul shows that the assumption that there is no resurrection leads to the contradiction that Christ has both been raised and not raised from the dead." In other words, in view of the known fact that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead, the claim that there is no resurrection reduces to the absurd.

B. For further discussion of reductio ad absurdum arguments, see:

1. Julian Baggini & Peter S. Fosl, The Philosopher’s Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods, 2nd edition (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 121-122.

2. D. J. Hill, “Reductio Ad Absurdum,” in New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics, edited by W. C. Campbell-Jack & Gavin McGrath (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2006), 602-603.

Are Morals Wholly Subjective?

Ted Bundy in custody

APOLOGIA 

By Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, February 25, 2010

Are morals wholly subjective?

A few weeks ago in Apologia, I examined a presently popular view of ethics known as moral relativism. According to moral relativism, there are no moral principles or values objectively real and applicable to everyone; rather, what’s right/wrong or good/bad essentially depends on individual preference or culture, and this varies from person to person or group to group.

I evaluated moral relativism via an argument strategy known as reductio ad absurdum or the absurd consequences move. That is, to show that moral relativism is problematic, I assumed, temporarily for the sake of argument, that the view is true. If the logical consequences of the assumed truth of moral relativism are false or otherwise deeply problematic, then it follows logically that moral relativism is false or otherwise deeply problematic, or both.

I then set out various logical consequences that are false or otherwise deeply problematic. Hence, I concluded, there are good reasons for rejecting moral relativism. (For a review, see here and here.)

I think that my reductio ad absurdum arguments are strong (from the point of view of good reasoning and truth). Nevertheless, I would like to add one more argument against moral relativism, especially in its individualistic form (a.k.a. moral subjectivism), as a reply to those persons who still might think that we needn’t be concerned about whether morality is wholly subjective.

More specifically, I wish to respond to the shoulder-shrugging dismissive attitude toward careful moral thinking summed up in the all-too-popular mind-numbing mantra “whatever.”

Here, then, is my response. It’s a paraphrase of a tape-recorded conversation between serial murderer Ted Bundy and one of his victims:

"Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments.

“Believe it or not, I figured out for myself—what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself—that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring—the strength of character—to throw off its shackles….I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited.

“And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights?

“Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’?

“In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me—after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self."

[Ted Bundy (proponent of wholly subjective ethics and murderer of at least 20 women), cited in Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 3rd edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson, 1999), 31-32.]

Surely, we should be concerned when right and wrong are alleged to be wholly subjective. Surely, too, shrugging off careful moral thinking with “whatever” is socially irresponsible as well as morally repugnant.

Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, teaches philosophy at Providence College, Otterburne, Manitoba. The views in this column do not always reflect the views of Providence.

Assessing Moral Relativism, continued

APOLOGIA
By Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, January 28, 2010

Assessing Moral Relativism, continued

A presently popular view of ethics is moral relativism. According to moral relativism, there are no moral principles or values objectively real and applicable to everyone; rather, what’s right/wrong and good/bad essentially depends on individual preference or culture, and this varies from person to person or group to group.

Moral relativism seems tolerant (“you do your thing and I’ll do mine”), but is it reasonable to believe? We should think not.

First, let’s get clear on moral relativism by looking at it in its group or cultural form; let’s call it cultural relativism (CR for short). (Last time we looked at individual/subjective relativism.)

According to CR, ethics essentially depend on one’s culture or tribe. That is, CR says action X is right or good if culture says X is right or good, and X is wrong or bad if culture says X is wrong or bad. Action X may be right in one culture but wrong in another. Our culture may hold that apartheid is wrong, but another culture may be okay with apartheid, because of a difference in the history of interracial relations.

On CR, then, morality is wholly a matter of cultural invention, i.e., social construction, to cope with historical circumstances, and because such circumstances vary from group to group, so do the constructed moralities. Thus, we shouldn’t impose our culture’s moral values on others, and others shouldn’t push theirs on us.

CR sounds good, but is it sound? To show that CR is not sound (i.e., is not reasonable to believe), let’s assume, temporarily for argument’s sake, that CR is true. If the logical consequences of CR’s assumed truth are false or otherwise deeply problematic, then it follows logically that CR is false or otherwise deeply problematic, or both. (This argument strategy is known as reductio ad absurdum or the absurd consequences move.)

If CR is true, then six problems result.

1. CR ends up giving support to obviously evil regimes and evil cultural practices. On CR it becomes impossible to criticize the Nazis. If Nazi culture says that genocide is right, then, for Nazi Germany, genocide is right. In other words, if CR is true, then we cannot condemn the following: the Jewish Holocaust, Stalin's murder of millions, human trafficking in Asia and eastern Europe, torture of political prisoners in Afghanistan, the Hindu practice of Suttee (cremation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre), the African practice of clitoridectomy (wholly or partially removing a woman's clitoris so she will not be distracted from her family duties), Chinese foot binding (so women’s feet remain tiny and pretty, albeit crippled).

Moreover, if CR is true, then we cannot condemn atrocities committed by Christians in the Crusades and in the Spanish Inquisition. It was just their culture, after all. But we think—we know—that we can and should condemn such regimes and practices.

2. If CR is true, then internal cultural reform is disabled. On CR what the culture says is right is right, so it's not possible for one's culture to be mistaken let alone reformed. Yes, one can critique acts according to cultural standards, but it's not possible to criticize one's own cultural standards. The result: moral quietism—no prophets or independently-minded moral reformers could arise to preach a social justice hitherto unknown.

But, obviously, they do arise. Examples: Old Testament prophets, Jesus, William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, etc. In other words, the existence of cultural reformers is a fact, and this fact counts against CR.

3. CR self-refutes. If CR is true, it allows for the possibility of a society having a non-relative or absolute morality. That is, on CR a society could hold that CR is false, and CR would say that this morality is true. So, if CR is true, then CR also is not true. This is a serious logical problem.

4. CR has a practical problem. According to CR, what the culture says is right is right. But the question arises: Which culture? The one you're born into or the one you presently occupy? I asked this question when I visited a university in Russia a few years ago: What should I do, since I was born in Venezuela, grew up in a Dutch family, became a Canadian as a teen, teach at a Christian college, study at a secular university, and yet I was spending some time in Russia?

And what about the Arab-American father who kills his daughter in accordance to Arab custom, because she refuses to marry the man the family had arranged for her to marry? American culture says this is wrong, but the father’s Arab culture says this is right. Which culture should be followed? These questions throw a wrench into the practice of CR.

5. CR does not provide a satisfactory answer to yet another important question, specifically: Why obey the tribe’s rules? Tribe's answer: Because the tribe says. But it makes good sense to ask: Why? Significantly, any non-question-begging answers (i.e., any answers other than “culture says its rules are right because culture says its rules are right”) lead us to reasons other than mere accordance to what culture says. But this means that culture is no longer the fundamental ground for ethics.

If we are told to follow culture because, say, human life has intrinsic worth, then intrinsic worth of human life is what's most important, not culture. But this means ethics are not essentially dependent on culture, and so any good reason for CR actually counts against CR. This nuttiness counts against CR too.

6. CR, if true, is useless in conflict resolution. CR says, “You’re right because your culture says you’re right.” But saying this to a bully-nation and a bullied-nation—that is, saying this to Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Netherlands, or to a Holocaust-denying nuclear-armed Ahmadinejad-ist Iran and its Jewish targets—is a recipe for disaster. Morality is usually thought to be useful in social conflict. CR, however, simply stares blankly and shrugs its shoulders.

In view of these problems which arise logically from CR, it’s reasonable to conclude that cultural moral relativism is flawed—logically, factually, and morally—and so should be rejected.

Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is assistant professor of philosophy at Providence College, Otterburne, Manitoba. The views in this column do not always reflect the views of Providence.

Assessing Moral Relativism

(Click on graphic to see details and source more clearly.)
APOLOGIA
By Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, January 14, 2010

Assessing Moral Relativism

A presently popular view of ethics is moral relativism. According to moral relativism, there are no moral principles or values objectively real and applicable to everyone; rather, what’s right/wrong and good/bad essentially depends on individual preference or culture, and this varies from person to person or group to group.

Moral relativism seems tolerant (“you do your thing and I’ll do mine”), but is it reasonable to believe? We should think not.

First, let’s get clear on moral relativism by looking at it in its individualistic form; let’s call it individual relativism (IR for short). (Next time we’ll look at the cultural or group version, a.k.a. cultural relativism.)

According to IR, ethics are merely a matter of individual preference. That is, IR says action X is right or good if I like X, and X is wrong or bad if I don’t like X. Depending on our feelings, action X may be right for you but wrong for me. You may not like abortion, but I may be okay with abortion, if my feelings are not as troubled by it as yours are. Morality, then, is basically a matter of taste, and tastes vary. I shouldn’t impose my tastes on others, and others shouldn’t push their tastes on me.

IR sounds good, but is it sound? To show that IR is not sound (i.e., is not reasonable to believe), let’s assume, temporarily for argument’s sake, that IR is true. If the logical consequences of IR’s assumed truth are false or otherwise deeply problematic, then it follows logically that IR is false or otherwise deeply problematic, or both. (This argument strategy is known as reductio ad absurdum or the absurd consequences move.)

If IR is true, then six problems result.

Problem 1: Intra-personal criticism is lost. If IR is true, whatever we feel is right is right. In other words, on IR we can never be wrong morally and we cannot criticize ourselves (all we can be is true to our feelings). This is not a knock-down argument against IR, but it serves as a red flag against IR, because our pre-theoretic experience of morality is that we sometimes make moral mistakes, in spite of our feelings.

Problem 2: Inter-personal criticism is lost. If IR is true, then we cannot criticize others. On IR we can’t truly morally condemn the behaviour of, say, Robert Picton (the British Columbia pig farmer who murdered as many as dozens of women) and Josef Fritzl (the Austrian man who locked his daughter in his basement for 24 years and raped her repeatedly, fathering as many as seven children, three of whom were also locked up in the basement). After all, Picton probably liked killing the women and Fritzl probably liked raping and wielding power over his daughter.

On IR, the feelings of these men justified their actions. In other words, according to IR: Who are we to judge them? I have my feelings; they have theirs. I like chocolate ice cream; Picton and Fritzl like strawberry ice cream. Sure, if I had the power to stop them, I would; but then, on IR, I’m just reinforcing my taste with power, so might makes right. It turns out that Picton and Fritzl were the more powerful in their situations, so, on IR, they were still right. Surely, though, this is morally wrong—and we know it to be a fact.

Problem 3: IR has a practical problem: it seems psychologically impossible to practice. For example, for IR to work I should be able to believe that it’s wrong, say, for me to torture my sons for fun, but okay for others to do so if they want to. But I simply cannot believe this. This is a serious practical/psychological problem for IR. (Interestingly, if somebody can practice IR, then what IR upholds as a moral model is the psychopath. That is, someone like the Joker in the Batman film The Dark Knight would be our moral model. This seems wrong, plain and simple.)

Problem 4: IR self-refutes. If IR is true, it allows for the possibility of an individual having a non-relative or absolute morality. That is, on IR an individual could feel that IR is false, and IR would say that this morality is true. So, if IR is true, then IR also is not true. This is a serious logical problem.

Problem 5: IR proponents tend to be inconsistent in the face of IR’s (alleged) truth. If, say, we were to abuse the proponent of IR, the abused proponent would probably say that the abuse is wrong—truly wrong—i.e., actually wrong for all, not just for him/herself. A person may mouth IR, but when I steal his iPod, he will probably say that’s truly wrong. A student may mouth IR but when I give her an F for actually excellent school work, she will probably say that’s truly unfair. This counts against IR. (Interestingly, if the IR proponent is okay with others abusing him/her, then the moral ideal/model that IR upholds is the masochist. Surely, this is weird, and also counts against IR.)

Problem 6: IR, if true, is useless in conflict resolution. Saying “You’re right if you feel you’re right” to a bully and the bullied, or to the abortionist doctor and the person who kills abortionist doctors, is a recipe for disaster. Morality is usually thought to be useful in social conflict. IR, however, simply stares blankly and shrugs its shoulders.

In view of these problems which arise logically from IR, it’s reasonable to conclude that individual moral relativism is flawed—logically, factually, and morally—and so should be rejected.

For additional reading: Assessing Moral Relativism, continued

Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is assistant professor of philosophy at Providence College, Otterburne, Manitoba. The views in this column do not always reflect the views of Providence.