As we face the election here’s an article from StraighterLine about the presidential candidates and their logic. Enjoy!
Once upon a time, college students studied topics like logic and elocution. Armed with what they learned, they joined their college debating teams and went out to do battle against teams from other schools.
Sounds kind of quaint, right? But the purpose of it all was to teach students to argue compellingly and attack flaws and intentional deceptions in their opponents’ arguments.
How well did the two presidential candidates do in this area in the recent debates? Were they using arguments that were flawed or intentionally deceptive? To find out, let’s consider these classical forms of deceptive or flawed arguing . . .
Allusion to authority. To use this tactic, debaters try to win support by referring to vague “authorities” or “experts” who agree with their arguments. In the recent debates, both candidates were guilty of it. Both referred to “experts” and “studies” that support their opinions, without naming those authorities. (Those studies and authorities probably exist, but the candidates did not name them.) So both candidates were a bit guilty of this deception.
Ad hominem attacks. “Ad hominem” means “to the man.” It means launching a personal attack on an opponent’s honesty, character, intelligence or some other critical trait. (Of course, women can use this debating tactic too.) Neither candidate went overboard with this tactic in the recent debates. Apparently, they are both reserving it for all the attack ads they are running on television.
Quibbling. This happens when debaters argue about a term without ever defining it precisely. Both candidates talked about “a stronger economy.” To their credit, they both tried to define that term. For Senator Romney, it would be “12 million new jobs.” For president Obama, it would be “building the economy from the middle class out” and continuing to build on the improving employment numbers that have been reported during his term. So in their own ways, both candidates were trying to define their terms – some of the time, anyhow – and to avoid illogical quibbling.