Out of the Fallacy Pan and into the Fallacy Fire
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Out of the Fallacy Pan and into the Fallacy Fire
Logical fallacies are part of everyday life. Ironically, sometimes when pointing out a fallacy we commit another one in the process. I hope to avoid that error as I discuss two fallacies in this newsletter, appeal to emotion, and false dilemma. Because I believe these particular fallacies are the product of imbalanced left-brain thinking, I’m going to start with a story rather than with the fallacies themselves.
As many of you know, in May, 2022 my wife Kristen was fired from her position as a women’s ministry director. In November of the previous year she received her first performance evaluation from the senior pastor. Using a 5-point scale ranging from poor to excellent, there was only 1 average, a few above average, and the rest were all marked as excellent. The comments section included 4 areas of strength, and then a final section titled “particular areas for concentration.” That last area only listed one item:
“1) Overly bearing the burdens of those under your ministry has the possibility of clouding your judgment.”
I wonder what do you make of that statement on first impression. In isolation you may think, sure, it is theoretically possible to become so closely attached to people and their lives that it’s hard to see objectively. But consider this context:
Kristen had been advocating for an adult woman who alleged attempted rape by a church elder. The pastor, along with the few elders who weren’t being kept in the dark, did not believe the woman’s story. In the course of disagreeing over how to respond, the pastor apparently came to believe he couldn’t work with a woman who disagreed with him. He certainly didn’t trust her judgment.
The perpetrator had only been ordained for 2 months before these allegations came to light. About 8 months prior, Kristen had pleaded with the senior pastor to not ordain this man. Although she didn’t have hard evidence, she reported concerns of infidelity. “Please don’t make him an elder,” she said. The pastor said, “No, I know [elder’s name], he’s a good man.”
“He’s a good man.” But because the pastor didn’t listen to my wife’s intuition, the elders had to remove this man from office within a few short months of ordination (which they did secretly against professional abuse specialist recommendations). Despite being obviously wrong about that man, the pastor used Kristen’s emotions as evidence of her untrustworthy judgment. But her emotional intuition was right. That performance review was a particularly manipulative form of spiritually abusive gaslighting.
But what does that have to do with logical fallacies? This is the kind of story that comes to mind when I hear men criticize arguments for abuse reform as illogical on account of “appeal to emotion.” It is particularly angering.
PCA pastor Cal Buroughs recently shared this observation in reaction to a debate at this year’s PCA General Assembly:
“A puzzling thing from the recent PCA GA is the critique of speeches as appealing to emotion. As opposed to cold, hard logic? I do not remember this criticism in the past. What do you make of this? I have my suspicions.”
I contend that we don’t have a problem with emotional reasoning. We have a problem with how we feel about emotional reasoning. Being unaware of that emotional reaction, critiques of appeals to emotion struck me as avoiding one fallacy by falling into another. Two particular aspects of that problem are important here: false dichotomies, and disembodied reason.
I. The False Dilemma
“Because of [the left hemisphere’s] need to collapse things to a certainty, false distinctions and dichotomies thrive, with an emphasis on ‘either/or’ rather than ‘both/and’.”1
Left-brain cultures are prone to the false dilemma fallacy. Faced with two opposing options, the left brain can’t see how to hold both in tension. Reason vs. emotion. Logic vs intuition. One or the other, rarely both.
But as Jean Porter, in Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective, writes,
“[M]oral judgments cannot function properly when the capacities for feeling in certain ways are damaged.”
Such affective deficits “make it difficult or impossible for the agent to grasp particular situations as morally significant in some way.”2
Christians should be less concerned about fallacious appeals to emotion and more concerned about the false dilemma of choosing between emotion and reason.
II. Gnostic Justice Is Not Justice
But the false dilemma doesn’t explain everything. It is still possible to err on the side of only using emotion and intuition. Why do left-brain cultures pick logic over intuition?
My wife exercised both reason and emotion and was right. She could do this because of her high emotional intelligence (intuition) along with her professional knowledge of abuse and trauma (reason). Leaders with low EQ will think they are simply using rational judgment and remain blind to the influence of their own emotions.
Jonathan Haidt refers to this as the rational tail wagging the intuitive dog.3 The tail makes a lot of movement, but it does not control the dog. Haidt’s model of social intuition starts from the first principle of moral psychology, that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”4 That is, we only come up with supporting reasons after we make a moral judgment on the basis of embodied intuition. That’s just how humans have been wired by God to function.
And that’s where our second problem lies: lack of mindful connection to one’s body—a prevalent problem in left-brain cultures—leads to low emotional awareness. It is a kind of disembodiment that leads to difficulty making intuitive judgments.
To rephrase that pastor’s criticism, remaining unaware of your bodily emotive states has the possibility of clouding your judgment. To attempt to seek justice without emotion, feeing, or intuition is to seek gnostic justice. It’s trying to decide the right course of action without allowing one’s body to be properly acted on by the situation or issue at hand.
The fact of the matter is, there is no such thing as unemotional reasoning. There is only emotionally unaware reasoning, and emotionally aware reasoning.
It’s time we all accepted this and moved on toward more wholistic pursuit of justice. A good place to start is training our intuition through spiritual formation.
Quote from Jonathan Haidt
“Therefore, if you want to change someone’s mind about a moral or political issue, talk to the elephant first. If you ask people to believe something that violates their intuitions, they will devote their efforts to finding an escape hatch—a reason to doubt your argument or conclusions. They will almost always succeed.”5
Recommended Reading
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt.
Question
How comfortable are you with intuitive reasoning? How might you speak to the intuitive elephant of those with whom you disagree?
Jonathan Rowson and Iain McGilchrist, Divided Brain, Divided World: Why the Best Part of Us Struggles to be Heard, p. 19.
Jean Porter, Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2016), p. 200.
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2012), pp. 32-60
Haidt, p. 106.
Haidt, p. 59.
Out of the Fallacy Pan and into the Fallacy Fire
This is very good, and brings out a very problematic false dichotomy of our culture.
I would expand on this by a more full explanation of the processing of information in our right hemisphere; which operates logically, but in a different kind of logical processing than the left hemisphere, which is constrained by both linearity and sequence! Left brain processing of facts takes place in a LINEAR-SEQUENTIAL requisite order. And a LEFT BRAIN dominant CULTURE ordered by left brain dominant males, mandates this as the 'only valid logic', and created words to DEMEAN and DIMINISH the larger half of the human race that is NOT LIMITED by strict left hemispherical thinking!
I'm a right brain requisite male who spent the majority of my adult life in academics. Where on a daily basis, I was confronted by the very different logic my right hemisphere operates with.
And having spent fifty years in a left brain dominant world as a right brain requisite human being, I KNOW both the 'validity of my mind and that of the majority of the human race who are not left brai constrained, but 'whole brain thinkers'. And have experienced to a lesser degree the supression and diminution the dominant left brain thinkers impose on them (and me to a lesser but very real degree).
and so I offer a more extended understanding that adds validity to those who have been discounted as 'emotional' and 'intuitive'.
I agree with what you've written, my intent is to add some understanding that takes us further...
The right hemisphere, as I understand it allows us to look at facts logically, but the logic is 'relational, hierarchical, integrative and weighted. My attribution of this conceptually, is correct in distinguishing this kind of logic from linear sequential logic as it has been attributed to the left hemisphere. The distinction is valid, conceptually, but the actual specific regions of the brain where what I'm framing as 'right hemisphere' centric thinking takes place, is not something I claim to have seen actual MRI based metabolic consumption data for; the experimental aspect of how regions of the brain are assigned functionality to, is something I'm aware of at a basic level but I've not seen or read studies that examined where this 'right hemisphere' thinking I'm describing actually localizes.. But i have observed differences in academic colleagues, between male 'linear sequential' logical thinking, and the 'relational, hierarchical, integrational, weighted' logic I'm describing and that i am dominant in. Women, as I understand it, are fully capable and operate with BOTH hemispheres active; the 'weighting' and nature of a more FULL logic dominates over the limitations of 'linear-sequential' logic.
There are advantages in both kinds of logic; and both are meant to be employed in decision making!
Our culture has promoted 'left brain linear logic' dominance for decades; it allows faster reaching of goals; but right brain logic is requisite to ensuring that we are pursuing the BEST goal!
'intuition' is a word CHOSEN to belittle right hemispherical logic. But it's a MORE COMPLETE logical process than that that is constrained by the two limits of 'linear' and 'sequential'.
The advantage is clear when one thinks through the process we are aiming at by using logic; we desire to consider a number of facts to come to a conclusion that allows us to make a decision.
Linear sequential logic requires we follow a sequence from 1 to 2 to 3... to 10, and then to conclusion A the first factor in making a decision
If conclusion A doesn't allow us to make a decision, we have to process further, so we take another set of relevant facts (which we chose as relevant through a SUBCONCIOUS process of right brain, relational logic!!) and then follow another series of fact 1a to 2 a to 3a to 10a, and find we now make conclusion C, another factor in making a decision..
OOPS-now I need to figure out how to get to conclusion B so I can take three conclusions to get to a DECISION from their logical sequential chain (without B I'm not sure my conclusion C will lead me to a right decision; I need the facts that lead to the unknown factor B.
A woman not constrained (limited) strictly to linear sequential logic, but CAPABLE of it because her brains is bilateral not unilateral-both hemispheres engaging, using two forms of logic-sees relationships that allow her to see that step 1 links to step 4, then to 7, then to 10, comes more quickly to factor A, does something similar-seeing step 7 has a parallel into a relevant chain that starts at step 5 of path B, follows logic in chain 7, skipping some steps; follows part of path B that begins to give an idea of what factor B is about-so can make a conclusion without requiring all the facts a man needs to form the 3 linear-sequential chains and then put those factors into a linear sequential order. So she arrives at choices that allow her to choose decision Y and rule out decision X and Z...without all the pieces.
this RELATIONAL logic allows steps to be skipped that are necessary in linear sequential logic; though it's possible to skip steps in linear logic, too-but not in the same manner. So a linear logic constrained thinker, doesn't see logic-so has to coin a term for it that names it as illogical and thus 'less valid'.
but RELATIONAL logic, which is also hierarchical and integrative (adding more value) is helpful and LOGICAL.
so where does emotion come in? Emotion is how we WEIGHT facts. When we come to a place where we see something more complete-whether its a full linear logical sequence that allows us to step back and analyze toward decision making, we add WEIGHT. Men do this, but without realizing it; men 'drive from our gut'-which means OPERATE INDEPENDENT OF LINEAR SEQUENTIAL LOGIC on the basis of SUBCONCSIOUS relational-hierarchical-integrative logic and EXPRESS IT with the language we use that CONFERS WEIGHT. Men USES emotional language and words that connote emotions ('intuition adds DISDAIN to a process women use that men don't understand!)...
And as a commentor makes clear; men have become experts at taking the conclusions their 'gut' reaches and RATIONALIZING them as though they arrived at them from linear logic, when in fact, they 'intuited' their stand and came up with justificiation for it that SOUNDS like its logical (in linear sequential logic).
As you wrote in a post; this is longer than it would be if I took more time..
This was helpful!
My take is that resistance to emotional reasoning is about loss of control.
I believe men who lack EQ are uncomfortable with emotion because they don’t know how to identify it, can’t control it, and because their feelings can’t be proved or defended the way thoughts can -- as you said, they resist being reduced to binary categories.
Anyway, your essay helped me think through an experience with my former pastor. I was surprised when I caught him in a couple of lies and by how he’d started speaking to me in an aggressive, domineering way. I was worried about him and told him so. I said something along the lines of, I think you might be worn down and not in a good place. (this was the tail end of Covid stress) I was believing the best of him and wanted to help, if possible.
His response? “You were trying to manipulate me.”
He perceived my care as a tactic calculated to defeat him in an argument, not as the genuine expression of kindness it was.
He was using emotionally unaware reasoning... I believe he was afraid to be “moved” by my compassion (and probably afraid of being caught in sin). And in response, he constructed a logical defense against it. A completely rational and completely wrong defense that, tragically, left him isolated and unprotected.