You know, the search strings that lead to this blog are occasionally slightly worrying. I was unaware that anything I'd said had been particularly misandrist, especially not compared to some of what I say. Nor was I aware that London was part of Ireland. I should really watch the news more. On the other hand, I'm apparently listed on Google. In at least three different countries. Which is awsome.
Now that I'm finished with 'stuff you don't care about', onto 'more stuff you don't care about'. Also known as 'the topic'. I bought a book moderetly recently by Dr Madsen Pirie. Now, I quite like Madsen. He's clever, he's good at explaining and justifying his views, he doesn't seem to be a hypocrite, and his veiws aren't without merit. But I'm moderately good at logic, and one of the first principles of logic is that it doesn't matter who said something - only the argument itself has merit. And some of what he writes in his book is some pretty textbook use of logical fallacy. Let's take his argument against double jeopardy*. He starts off with what technical people who are trying to sound clever call an 'ad antiquitam'. To people to whom words are more a tool of communication than a way of showing how clever they are, that means 'arguing that something is good because it's so old'. It's a rather interesting fallacy for a libertarian to be using, but whatever. I'll assume it wasn't really part of his argument.
No, the main body of the argument is based on what is known as a 'false dichotomy' (or a 'bogus dilemma'). You should know this kind of thing, because it pretty much defines politics, as well as a significant portion of advertising. 'You're either with us or against us', 'either you support our charity or you hate children', 'either you buy our beer or you'll be unattractive to females'. Ignoring the fact that a third option is perfectly possible. One of the most important parts of his argument is that if there is no restriction on re-trying people for the same crime, there is no reason for the police to gather all of the evidence before trying someone, so they can just keep trying for a conviction over and over, like the Irish government having referenda on europe. He argues that a few terrible crimes going unpunished despite the evidence existing to convict people for them is less important than preserving our personal liberty.
That sounds reasonable, right? I mean, you might not agree, but it's reasonable. Where's the false dichotomy here? It's in Madsen's apparent asumption that either you have no retrials, or you have any that are asked for. Ignoring the fact that you can quite easily have a system which can limit such retrials to only those few cases that an absolutist system would exclude. How about having a system where new evidence has to be examined by a review pannel before a a retrial is called. You could increase the level of proof required (from beyond reasonable doubt to beyond a shadow of a doubtt, for example) in retrials. And you could introduce penalties on the prosecution for unsuccessful retrials. That would stop the police from just forcing people into repeated retrials.
Most of the rest of his argument is a lits of things happening in america. Since I don't really care what the Americans do, and since single examples have little or no impact on issues of general morality (I think this would be an example of 'ad metum', Madsen appealing to the emotions of fear these examples cause in his readers in order to support his argument, rather than using actual logic, but whatever it is, examples might be a useful way of illustrating an argument, but they do nothing to support or condemn the argument as a whole), I'm just going to ignore that bit.
Effectively, Madsen's entire argument is based on a hidden slippery slope argument. A slippery slope, in the contest of fallacy, is the fallacy of assuming that one step in a direction will lead inevitably to the extremes of that position. Madsen assumes that any single step in the direction of trying criminals a second time must inevitably lead to endless retrials for every criminal. There is no reason why this should be the case, and it is, again, a rather conservative fallacy. Leading me to believe that Madsen might better be described as a neo-conservative. Certainly, he seems to have a rather frightning disregard for the concept of 'negative liberty', at least in this book.
Now, I don't want to be unfair to Madsen. I am a liberal, and I do agree that having freedom eroded is certainly dangerous. Whilst Madsen has failed to make a convincing case** for the avoidance of 'double jeopardy', the slippery slope might actually have some validity in this particular case, were it presented right. its not that there isn't a any way to have a better system, as Madsen claims***. Its that its unlikely that we'd actually have that system very long. We'd keep making it just a little easier to re-try criminals. If you don't belive me, look at the history for the rules for detention without trial****. In the 1970s, when we were fighting the IRA, it was news that they'd increased the maximum time for detention without trial to a whole week. I personally would allow double jeopardy in some cases, but I'd also reform our punishiment system quite radically. I don't really mind the people who do want to keep away from retrials, I just have a 'let's make everything perfect and keep it there' attitude.
And again, I'm not trying to attack Madsen here. My intent was more an introduction to logical fallacy - to show that an argument that seems convincing can turn out to have to logical strength of a tea-soaked strawbery wafer. And to show that there is virtually no argument, no matter how simple it seems, which can be propperly adressed in less than three hundred words. It's always a bit more complicated than that, until you find you've written a PhD on the invention of the carpet. So why did I pick Madswwn? Well..
guess who wrote the book I use for checking what is and isn't a fallacy?
*For those who might not have heard the term before, that's the ability to try someone twice for the same crime - if they were found innocent the first time, then the police found the hundreds of human fingerbones which they keep under their bed, to take an example that is totally divorced from my everyday life.
**Or, indeed, any case.
***Or if there isn't, Madsen has failed to give his answer to claims that there might be a better.
****More accurately, that's 'the time the police can hold someone without charging them. But since its detention which happens without a trial, I refer to it as 'detention without trial'.
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