Consequences not Motives
Published by Yazad Jal October 17th, 2003 in EconomicsArnold Kling’s excellent Open Letter to Paul Krugman brings out the use of ad hominem instead of analysis in debates. He calls ad hominem Type M, and analysis Type C.
Type C arguments are about the consequences of policies. Type M arguments are about the alleged motives of individuals who advocate policies.
Kling points out various ad hominems made by Krugman on mimimum wages, tax cuts, school vouchers, and the war on Iraq. He also points out the consequences (and he practises what he preaches by ignoring Krugman’s motives) of ad hominem as argument.
One consequence is to lower the level of political discourse in general. You have a lot of influence with those who sympathize with your views. When they see you adopt type M arguments, they do the same.
Conversely, many of your opponents are stooping to your level. I see type M arguments raised by many of your enemies on the Right. As horse manure draws flies, your columns generate opposition that is vindictive and uninformed.
Another consequence is to lower the prestige and impact of economists. We are trained to make type C arguments. Instead, you are teaching by example that making speculative assessments of one’s opponent’s motives is more important than thinking through the consequences of policy options. If everyone were to use such speculative assessments as the basis for forming their opinions, then there would be no room for economics in public policy discussions. [Emphasis mine]
Read the whole piece. Kling also runs the entertaining and analytical EconLog.
We capitalists are especially vulnerable to type M attacks. Our policies benefit the rich, ergo we are on the side of the rich and want to screw the poor. Leftists on the other hand can claim the purest of motives, hence 7 murders forgiven. (i.e saat khoon maaf)
Our policies don’t benefit the rich as much as they benefit those who want to become rich. :-). Which ofcourse is an unforgivable transgression considering that we are all equal, and we must remain equal in poverty.
Yazad, i have been thinking about the Typification of arguments a little bit, and here is what struck me. Often when constructing a good argument about the consequences of a particular policy or suggestion you must call into question the motives of the individual who is proposing it. Ofcourse the motives are only speculatively attributed, if they are not personalised they may be quite helpful in analysis. As Hugh Akston teaches in Atlas Shrugged “check your premises”. You got to check the assumptions upon which consequences maybe evaluated. Else what might seem to be negative consequences based on imputed objectives may really be positive when considering the real objectives of the policy/suggestion makers. What saith ye?
I think this example will clarify things a bit:
1) American leftists oppose shifting of jobs from the US to India
2) This opposition makes no sense, because by their opposition, they are hurting the same poor third-world countries they claim to care about
3) In reality they are not concerned about the poor at all. They are only speaking for the labour unions that have a vested interest in stopping the shift
3) is a Type M argument, and by itself won’t prove anything. As far as logical reasoning goes, it should end at step 2, as it is sufficient to prove that the said opposition is wrong. Problematic arguments come about because people tend to skip step 2 and make replace it by step 3.
Step 3 *is* useful, but only as a way to understand the motives of the person, and not to make an objective case.
Another place where looking at motives is useful is when we have to judge how credible a person is, but we do not have sufficient knowledge to judge his content.
For example, we’d be right to be suspicious about a piece of research that claims that cigarettes are good for health, if we know that the study was funded heavily by ITC.
But then again, it does not mean that the study should be automatically assumed to be wrong, only that we should look at it it more critically than if it were conducted by a neutral body. Ultimately, there is no substitute for actually looking at the study.
Hmm, yes i suppose the result of what you are saying ravikiran is that, though Type M arguments are weak on their own they can be used in tandem with Type C to illustrate the fallacious nature of the assumptions that we want to illustrate.
About your second post. ‘Neutrality’ is just imputed, is it not? It may arise from inadequete information. So one of the maxims that LSS throws around “Vigilance is the price of liberty” should be true all the time rather than based on some notion of safety that we might deceive ourselves into.