Remember, too, that all circular arguments are irrelevant. In standard form, Alice’s reasoning looks circular:
1. Any book without pictures is not useful.
2. My sister’s book has no pictures.
3. Therefore, my sister’s book is not useful.
p. 288 Although the argument is formally valid, the conclusion is wrong because the premises are wrong.
The major premise (premise 1), for us to accept it, would need to be proved. In fact, premise 1 is false. There are books that have no pictures or conversations that are useful. Premise 2 is probably true, although we don’t know that for sure. Nor does Alice know that for sure. She has not looked at the sister’s book in its entirety. She has only “peeped into” the book “once or twice.” If the book is the usual run-of-the-mill English book, Alice might have seen only four pages of what is probably a two-hundred-page book. Therefore, she has sampled only four out of two hundred or 2 percent of the actual pages of the book, and there is a reasonable chance that one or more of those pages might have a conversation or a picture. Thus, even premise 2 might be false. We simply don’t have enough evidence to say one way or the other.
Whether premise 2 is true hardly matters because premise 1 is false. Any conclusion based on a false premise has to be unsound, meaning not justified—and often just plain wrong.
Danger alert!
Alice is bored. Because she is bored, her boredom is likely to interfere with her judgment and color her observations. That mood likely swayed Alice’s judgment about her sister’s book. Indeed, Alice is so bored that “she was considering . . . (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid) whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies. . . .”[3]
Understand that if Alice had said that she doesn’t like books that have no conversations and no pictures, then there could be no argument. We would have to accept that at face value as her preference. But when she gives a reason for her opinion, then that reason is subject to inquiry and refutation because it is not supported by relevant evidence that is adequate in amount, kind, and weight.
“Well,” thought Alice to herself. “After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling downstairs! How brave they’ll all think me at home! Why I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!”[4]
Ha, ha, ha! That’s very likely because if she fell off the top of her house, she would have likely broken her neck—or worse, be dead—and therefore unable to say anything about her fall or, for that matter, about p. 289 anything else. The false analogy here is that since one fall has not (so far) seemed to hurt her, all subsequent falls will not hurt her either, not even a tumble downstairs, not even a fall off the roof of the house. All continuum arguments are unreasonable unless supported by relevant adequate evidence.
Furthermore, Alice’s focus is off. Instead of concentrating on the point, which is whether she will or will not get hurt when she lands, she is concerned about what she will tell others after similar falls in the future that might happen. And she is concerned what others will think about her when she doesn’t say much about her falls: “How brave they will think me at home.” What Alice says about the falls or what others say about them is not particularly relevant to the main problem of falls in general and this fall in particular, which is how much damage will occur on impact.
Humor or other diversionary attempts by the ostrich approach of ignoring the real situation are irrelevant because they lead away from the truth to a false idea of reality. Here, Alice focuses away from the real concern about her continued fall, which should be, “Will I get hurt?”
Yes, Alice is in free fall. She should be worried about the consequences of hitting the ground. She should not be thinking about how nice future falls will be if they turn out like this one. Because the future is not determined yet, neither Alice nor anyone else has a right to predict it with accuracy. Hence, Alice is committing the error of future fact. The future doesn’t exist. Therefore, the future on which Alice bases her conclusion doesn’t exist. Conclusions based on nonexistent evidence are inadequately supported, often mere fantasies, and often wrong.
Anyway, it is the fallacy of the continuum to think that because she did OK after this fall, she would do OK in the next fall. It is an especial error, as this fall has not even been safely completed yet.
Each fall is an independent event. What happens would depend on the details of that next fall. In fact, Alice bases her conclusion of a safe landing on no evidence at all. The usual outcome of such a fall would be expected to be disastrous. Alice should always base her conclusions on what is reasonable and expected. That is the best protection against the unreasonable, the unexpected, and the unexpectable, which has a sneaky habit of turning up now and again. Conclusions based on what is reasonable and expected are the only way of preparing for adverse events in the future and heading off trouble when it looks likely to occur.
Ignoring previous experience and denying counterevidence usually p. 290 results in catastrophe, except in the fantasy world of children’s books—Alice lands quite well and continues (in chapter 2) in her quest for the White Rabbit.
Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a small cake, on which the words “EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants. “Well, I’ll eat it,” said Alice, “and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door.”[5]
Either/or thinking, black-and-white assessments, and falsely limited alternatives don’t work because they exclude multiple other possibilities. Here, Alice failed to consider the very real possibility that eating the cake would neither make her grow nor make her shrink. She failed to consider the most reasonable and expected result of eating cake—which is, and has always been, that there will be no immediate or dramatic change in body size.
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself “Which way? Which way?” holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing; and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size.[6]
To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake.
Alice had just finished the first of twelve occasions in AAW in which she alters in size. This first metamorphosis occurred after she obeyed the bottle’s sign DRINK ME. But Alice got the erroneous idea that since drinking the stuff in the bottle made her small, eating the cake would change her size in some way or other. Her conclusion is based on inadequate evidence, the case of N=1, an inadequate sample of only one instance. That is hardly sufficient to counter the experiential fact that every little girl should know: one’s size doesn’t immediately change by eating cake. Over time, if you eat too much cake, you will get fat, but you won’t necessarily shrink or expand lengthwise.
Alice’s thinking is also a false analogy: Because her size changed after DRINK ME, that doesn’t mean there is a reason to think that EAT ME would do the same. Drinking and eating, though similar in some respects, are different in others. Drinking and eating do share the same property of taking things into the body via the mouth and so forth, but that they share some properties does not mean that they would share others as well.
p. 291 If X has a and b, and Y has a and b, it does not follow that if X has c, Y has c. Whether DRINK ME and EAT ME share the properties in the question of size alteration would have to be proven by more evidence than one trial of DRINK ME.
Post hoc reasoning is often defective, as this episode might prove. Alice knows her size changed after DRINK ME, but she doesn’t really know that the DRINK ME was the causative agent. Loads of other data might be required to establish the causal connection. Just because one event follows another does not necessarily mean the second event was caused by the first or that the events are connected in any causal way. Of course, we learn later that the bizarre events with DRINK ME and the other eleven transfo
rmations that Alice undergoes have a more rational explanation: Alice is dreaming.
As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! she was up to her chin in salt-water. Her first idea was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, “and in that case I can go back by railway,” she said to herself.[7]
Too bad for Alice that her thinking is elliptic. That is, she has words and a chain of reasoning omitted. She can’t go home by railway because she hasn’t fallen into the sea. She isn’t at Brighton. There is no railway.
First ideas or first impressions to the extent that they are emotionally based and not reasoned are often in error. The error is often compounded when linked to a series of other ideas that seem to follow from the first. Alice’s reasoning is elliptic, but if it were spelled out in textual steps, it might be depicted as follows: “The water that I have fallen into is salty. Therefore, I’m in the sea. Since I’m in the sea, I must be near a seaside resort. Seaside resorts always have railroads. Therefore, a railroad must be nearby. Last time I was at Brighton, I came home by railway. Therefore, I shall be able to return home this time the same way, by railway.”
Domino theory reasoning like this has to have a separate justification for each item and a separate justification for each link in the chain of connected items. Otherwise, the conclusion will be unreasonable. True, Alice had been to the sea once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion that wherever you go on the English coast, you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind p. 292 them a railway station. So there was some evidence, however skimpy, for her thinking that fed her emotional need to go home.
However, Alice soon figured out that her imagination had overgeneralized from her limited seaside experience. She was not in the sea. Instead, she was in the pool of salty tears, which she had wept when she was nine feet high. Alice was drowning in her own tears.
Indeed, she had quite a long argument with the Lory, who at last turned sulky, and would only say “I’m older than you, and must know better.” And this Alice would not allow, without knowing how old it was, and, as the Lory positively refused to tell its age, there was no more to be said.[8]
Whether the Lory (a type of Australian parrot) is older than Alice is not relevant to the argument because age does not make a person’s argument correct or incorrect. An older person can be right or wrong. Therefore, age is irrelevant to truth. Obviously, the Lory is trying to appeal to authority (argumentum ad verecundiam), in this case, the supposed authority of being older. All appeals to authority are irrelevant because they do not concern evidence. What counts is the relevance, sufficiency, quantity, kind, and weight of evidence, not the age of the person presenting the evidence.
Alice missed the point. She wanted to make her evaluation of the Lory’s argument contingent on the Lory’s age. Alice’s statement shows that she has accepted uncritically the Lory’s unsupported and unwarranted assumption that if the Lory is older, then it would know better. Alice should never accept unsupported statements without proof.
Note also that the Lory could have won the argument by telling its age. That it did not suggests that it feared that it was younger, not older, than Alice. How else can we explain its sulkiness and its refusal to tell?
Unless the Lory’s age is already known to Alice. That would be a fact if the Lory is Alice’s dream representation of her older sister Lorina. In fact, a case could be made that the Duck in this scene represents the Reverend Robinson Duckworth, and the Dodo is Dodgson himself, who had often stammered his name (“Do-Do-Dodgson”). For that reason, the Oxford crowd called Dodgson “the Dodo” after the extinct flightless bird. Crucial evidence: Lewis Carroll inscribed his gift edition of AAW to Duckworth: “To the Duck from the Dodo.” Such an analysis would, by reductive elimination, make Edith, Alice’s younger sister, the p. 293 Eaglet. If this is true, we shouldn’t wonder why the Eaglet complains that the others in the party use big words that it doesn’t understand!
Notice also that the Lory’s statement is truly diversionary because we never learn what it argues about. Therefore, we can’t judge anything. Older sisters are like that, I am informed. And that indeed may be Carroll’s not-so-subtle point. In effect, he sides with Alice against Alice’s older sister, a position likely to gain him some influence and affection from the real Alice. This tactic would curry favor, for most people believe (without supporting evidence) that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Carroll may also be savagely parodying the Victorian attitude toward children and the ways in which adults patronize and treat children intellectually. The Lory is a kind of pedant who refuses to come to terms with proper discussion of issues or inform the child of the reasons for things. That sort of pedant insists that we accept what she says without question and at face value merely because she says so. She claims to know best, but she doesn’t support that claim with any evidence. In so doing, such pedants show a single, fixed, self-serving, and rigid standard, inimical to children, but characteristic of this type of the pedantic mind.
“Ahem!” said the Mouse with an important air. “Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! ‘William the Conqueror, whose cause was favored by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest.’ ”[9]
That passage from the history of the Norman conquest is unlikely to dry Alice, who is still wet from her swim in her tears. The confusion (and the fun) arises, of course, from the two meanings of the word dry. The dull, boring, and dry history of the Norman invasion has nothing to do with the other meaning of the word dry—having no moisture.
Times have not changed. Even today, lots of absurd solutions to problems are proposed to us “with an important air.” And with that important air, the Mouse continues:
“Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him; and even Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable—”
“Found what?” said the Duck.
p. 294 “Found it,” the Mouse replied rather crossly: “of course you know what ‘it’ means.”
“I know what ‘it’ means well enough, when I find a thing,” said the Duck: “it’s generally a frog, or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?”
The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on. . . .
“As wet as ever,” said Alice in a melancholy tone: “it doesn’t seem to dry me at all.”[10]
Good for Alice. She proves that the dry talk has had no effect on wet clothes. Alice had a perfect right, some would say an obligation, to take her own experience seriously. In voicing concern for results, she positions herself in the camp of Charles Peirce, William James, Benjamin Franklin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the founders of America’s first indigenous philosophy—pragmatism. They thought that reality counts.
Alice tells us that reality counts more than words do and must remain the controlling influence on conclusions. She is not dry. The mouse’s dry tale dried her not.
Incidentally, many words besides it in English do have confusing referents that depend on context. Take, for instance, take, as in “The passengers took the boat upriver.” In the ordinary sense, the passengers would pay the captain for their trip, but in another sense, the captain might take after them for theft. This is yet another example of amphiboly.
Carroll makes much of the double meanings of words later on where knot and not are confused; draw (as in sketching) and draw (as in water from a well) and axes (as in chop off your head) and axis (as in what the Earth and other planets rotate on) are mixed up; flamingoes and mustard both have a “bite” (though the bite of each is quite different); and “mine” (the absolute possessive form of my) and “mine” (a place where minerals come from) and so forth are discussed. In Through the Looking Glass, the Frog can’t understand why anyone would answer
the door unless it (the door) has been asking something. Pretty stupid! Right? But pretty funny, especially for the entertainment of little girls. And excellent (Carrollian) illustrations of the limitations that language can impose on human thought.
But what’s the real point? What’s Carroll’s point in logic?
His point is that in a bit of reasoned discourse, the terms that occur several times must retain their same sense throughout. They can’t keep changing like the Cheshire Cat. Otherwise, confusion arises.
p. 295 An argument will clearly be cogent and convincing only if in each of its occurrences the word in use retains a fixed meaning with the same name and same reference frame for the same kind of object or idea. The requirement that in a given context a term must be used in essentially the same manner is expressed as the principle of identity. When the identity of a word shifts, confusion occurs, as the Alice books so well illustrate.
The problem of double meanings and unclear referents is exploited in that Abbott and Costello skit wherein Abbott “proves” that Costello is not there in the studio in New York City:
Abbott: You’re not in San Francisco, right?
Costello: Right, I’m not in San Francisco.
Abbott: You’re not in Chicago, right?
Costello: Right, I’m not in Chicago.
Abbott: Well, if you are not in San Francisco and you are not in Chicago, you must be somewhere else, right?
Costello: Right! I am somewhere else.
Abbott: See, I told you![11]
What’s the confusion? The confusion is change of context with loss of the identity of the expression somewhere else, which is never used in a vacuum or in a contextless way. It always is expressed within a frame of reference. No one can be somewhere else because there is no such place. Somewhere else means either not here, where “here” is specifically or implicitly defined, or it means somewhere other than the place explicitly mentioned. Abbott mentioned San Francisco and Chicago, exploring the second meaning. Costello is somewhere other than San Francisco or Chicago. That’s true. Abbott then exploits the first meaning, thereby shifting in this context the identity of the phrase somewhere else.
Truth, Knowledge, or Just Plain Bull: How to tell the difference Page 35
