The If-by-whiskey fallacy
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
" On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be."
And then proceeds to argue for both sides of the issue.
Perhaps politics in 1950's Mississippi were just as solidly partisan as our national politics are today. In that case, perhaps Mr. Sweat's satire was meant to try to influence the partisans to, at least somewhat, understand the other side.
Fyi, reading the first linked reference in Wikipedia brought me to a page talking about "the satiric straddling" in regards to the speech, which makes me think it also considers it satiric.
Seems more likely that he was simply pandering to both sides, and/or trying to dodge responsibility for a position altogether. The history of political speeches is pretty rife with this sort of tactic, although seldom as memorable as in this case. Politicians and public figures who don't want to alienate either side of an argument will often pay lip service to both sides.
No, it's explicitly a sarcastic parody of his fellow politicians behavior that he gave at the end of his only term in office on the floor of the legislature to his fellow members, not to pander to constituents. It was essentially a convoluted way to call his peers a pack of idiots and invite them to kiss his ass.
He was a cagey legal mind without a lot of patience for idiots, and he notes his amusement with the fact that half of his peers in the legislature heartily applauded the first half, and the other half heartily applauded the last half, and each half hated the other.
The easiest way to avoid responsibility is to not talk about the issue all together. Here he managed to outline the positives and negatives of both cases. If his view of whiskey's positives and negatives line up with yours, perhaps he understands and feels about the issue the same way you do and might make the decision that you would make in the same position. If not, you actually don't like his stance on the issue.
I think it's more interesting to consider the concept he isolates, though, and it's bothersome that we can so cleanly map the concept he considers to issues we have today.
Yes, but often politicians and public figures aren't given that choice. In this case, the man in question was either a judge or a lawyer at the time, and it seems likely that he was being asked or compelled to weigh in on the issue. His speech was a way of satisfying the weigh-in requirement without taking a controversial stance.
If by C programming, you mean writing elegant code that dances with the machine producing blazing code, optimized to the technology and problem at hand, then I am for it.
This is my stand. I will not compromise."
I really hate to say it, but I haven't seen this if-by-whiskey technique so formally named, but it does give me great insight into political double-speak. And perhaps it'll give me a few outs from tough situations. :-)
Get to work strongly implying that C is the actual cause of all these things with no externalities, and then you get toward the fallacy.
I disagree -- just as someone writing C can do it well or poorly, someone drinking whiskey can behave well or poorly.
The spectrum of drunken behavior is a big one, and does include moral and immoral activity...
mathattack was focusing on the programming language. To parallel the whiskey morals they need to focus on the act of programming, or on the programmer. Not the language.
In my simultaneous pro-life and pro-choice belief, I don't believe abortion should be illegal. However, it shouldn't be trivial and easy to do and should require medical oversight and counselling (non-extensive, non-judgmental, and non-coercive). That is to say, any woman should have the right but it must be a considered, reasonable choice (a bit like required for gender reassignment, euthanasia, or any number of significant medical decisions).
Obviously situations where the mother's life is in danger are kind of a gray area, but I think you could comfortably be "proer"-life and oppose the choice in non-life-threatening situations. Not that I agree, but that opinion wouldn't be "anti-choice".
And most of the pro-life positions people take are also pro-choice, just to a lesser extent than they are pro-life.
Choosing what you perceive to be the lesser of two evils doesn't make you pro-evil; choosing what you perceive to be the greater of two goods doesn't make you anti-{life,choice}.
EDIT: To further clarify, I'm not at all confused as to what camp I'm in. By standard definitions, I'm definitely pro-choice. The point I'm making is that the standard definitions are not hugely useful.
Does anyone know of any other examples of if-by-whiskey being used today?
Is it useful for politicians or would it completely backfire, where any opposition would try to say "You are quoted as being pro-alcohol: calling it the philosophic wine" or "anti-alcohol, calling it the devil's brew" and pick the paragraph that suits their needs?
The whole debt debate. If by spending you mean crippling debt being left to our children, interest paid to furreiners, etc etc, it's bad and everyone who supports it is bad. If by spending, you mean the concrete things that we are spending money on, of course this specific thing is so wonderful that it's worth it and anyone who says otherwise is bad, and in fact I may I just go out on a limb and say that we need more of this sort of spending.
(Lest you think I'm being partisan here, there's a very clear pattern in the last 20 years on which party in the US wants to spend, and which party wants to cut, and it's not D/R or liberal/conservative in either direction. The pattern is that the majority party wants to spend, and the minority party wants to cut. One can not help but cynically observe that what really bothers the minority party is majority's successful ladling out of the pork for patronage to the other guy's constituents, rather than any sort of real offense about spending. And thus, to be clear, the reason I chose this as my example is that you can find instances of the same individual giving both halves of this speech, playing both sides of the argument, separated by about a decade and one flip of the majority party.)
I think your theory needs tuning.
https://www.google.com/search?q=special+education+spending&#...
The arguments aren't always doublespeak I'd say. You can very well be for something, given a set of circumstances, but against the same thing, given a different set of circumstances.
The political problem I'd say, is figuring out how to separate, or even if you can separate, the "bad circumstances" from the "good circumstances"
Is it a terrorist or a freedom fighter? = Is it an assault weapon or a rifle?
A more apt analogy would be
Religious Conservative : Taliban :: Rifle : Assault Rifle
My point being that, in this case, it's not simply a matter of perspective. Now, if the debate were much more polarized, one could see something like
Terrorist : Freedom Fighter :: Murder Machine : 2nd Amendment Rights
The only real difference between an "assault rifle" and a "regular" rifle is the color/design. One is painted black and looks scary. The other is usually wood tone. They are equally dangerous. You can find high capacity clips/magazines for virtually any brand or style semi-automatic rifle (and handgun) made.
Though the second amendment is strictly about protecting this latter use.
Some people argue that this means:
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of persons who belong to such a militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
This raises two questions:
1) Why did they not write that?
2) Did every person who fought against the British, and who had a weapon of their own, belong to a militia when they purchased the weapon?
Aftern considering these questions, it is clear that the second interpretation is not what they meant at all. What they meant was:
A) A well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.
B) A well regulated militia cannot happen unless US Citizens have the right to bear arms. That there be a large element of the population who can rise up and form a militia, "officered by men chosen from among themselves"[1] is necessary for (A) to occur. Therefore, whether or not such a militia exists, and whether nor not a given person is a member of such a militia, all persons have the right to bear arms because one day they may be needed.
So when people say "Well we don't have an organized militia so you don't get to have guns", they have it exactly backwards. Instead of banning guns, we should be organizing militia. Not government militia. Not state militia. But organizations of free citizens getting together to organize and practice. This is exactly the opposite of what the federal government has been doing. Where these organizations exist, it has been shutting them down by force.
By all means argue that we have no need of a militia, and that we should therefore strike the second amendment. However, do not pretent that the second amendment means that only army reservists or state police should have guns, or that "regulated" implies that the very enemy it protects against (the state) should do the regulating.
It looks like the law is similar in DC. Possession of a magazine with >10 round capacity is a crime. Other firearm laws are irrelevant to the case you linked to.
I have the feeling that if I heard that speech I would actually believe that Soggy is both for and against whiskey. I don't think I'd vote for him, but I would believe him.
He was acknowledging that alcohol could be used for good or for bad things, and he was (maybe from our perspective only) making a good point about the use of polemic, misleading, and ridiculously overblown rhetorics. His was a reasonable argument, a witty meta argument, and a biting satirical observation all at the same time.
The point is, "Soggy" wasn't really undecided on the issue. Hell yeah, I'd vote for that guy.
But they wouldn't see that characterization as inapt, or insulting, so it's not a very strong or brave position to take.
"If by scotsman you mean..."
Not sure what it has to do on the frontpage though.
http://www.amazon.com/Language-Thought-Action-Fifth-Edition/...
Which talks in detail about the "informative" and "affective" connotations of words (it's a lot more entertaining than it sounds). Only slightly related, but I was just reading in the book how we have the terms "light meat" and "dark meat": because ladies and gentleman in 19th century Britain couldn't bring themselves to say "leg", "thigh" or "breast" – even of a chicken!
The question is "Should whiskey be prohibited or not?" but he takes it to be "Is there anything good or bad about whiskey?" or "Do I think whiskey is good or bad?".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_S._Sweat
...you get a great audio recording of the speech (over 50 years later, and not by Noah)
But if by politician you mean a low, corrupt, power-mad petty puppet jerked around by evil special interests, then sadly I have to agree.
I don't see a fallacy here.
From the description of the fallacy the "if-by-whiskey" fallacy would be someone taking either one side, or the other.
So the "canonical example" is not at all an example of the fallacy but simply the roots of the name of the fallacy.