by Vox Day
“Now for some people it is better worth while to seem to be wise, than to be wise without seeming to be (for the art of the sophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality, and the sophist is one who makes money from an apparent but unreal wisdom); for them, then, it is clearly essential also to seem to accomplish the task of a wise man rather than to accomplish it without seeming to do so.”
Those who have read SJWs Always Lie will recall how, in his Rhetoric, Aristotle provided us with a guide to the two languages of persuasion, dialectic and rhetoric, and warned us that some individuals are limited to the latter. However, it is another, even more famous work of his that is of interest to us here, as the sixth work of his Organon, as the standard collection of his works on logic are known, provides us with a guide to the understanding the flawed and dishonest foundations of many arguments presented in support of social justice. De Sophisticis Elenchis, or On Sophistical Refutations as it is more commonly known, details thirteen specific logical fallacies, several of which are habitually committed by SJWs. While more than a few readers have found Aristotle’s Rhetoric to be a little on the convoluted side, On Sophistical Refutations is relatively straightforward, it’s very short, and it is well worth reading as it specifically identifies a number of basic tactics that are repeatedly utilized by those who are presenting invalid arguments, or as is more often the case, presenting a false refutation of another’s argument. And Aristotle makes the connection between social justice warriors and sophistry by noting, in Rhetoric, that “a man is a sophist because he has a certain kind of moral purpose.”
The SJW naturally gravitates towards sophistry because his twisted morality does not recognize association with the truth to be moral, but rather, association with the social justice Narrative.
Aristotle divides the thirteen fallacies he identifies into two sections, those that primarily concern playing word games, and those that do not.
Those ways of producing the false appearance of an argument which depend on language are six in number: they are ambiguity, amphiboly, combination, division of words, accent, form of expression. Of this we may assure ourselves both by induction, and by syllogistic proof based on this-and it may be on other assumptions as well-that this is the number of ways in which we might fall to mean the same thing by the same names or expressions… Refutations, then, that depend upon language are drawn from these common-place rules. Of fallacies, on the other hand, that are independent of language there are seven kinds.
Fallacies in the language
Ambiguity
Amphibology
Combination
Division
Accent
Form of expression
Fallacies not in the language
Accident
Secundum quid
Irrelevant conclusion
Begging the question
False cause
Affirming the consequent
Complex question
Don’t be alarmed by the unfamiliar terms. As it happens, if you have ever encountered an SJW, then you are already familiar with many, if not most, of these fallacious argument styles. To begin with one very detailed example, what Aristotle calls ambiguity is simply substituting one definition for another, thereby allowing the SJW to magically transform X into Not-X in order to refute his opponent’s argument. Aristotle helpfully provides several examples of this:
Arguments such as the following depend upon ambiguity. ‘Those learn who know: for it is those who know their letters who learn the letters dictated to them’. For to ‘learn’ is ambiguous; it signifies both ‘to understand’ by the use of knowledge, and also ‘to acquire knowledge’. Again, ‘Evils are good: for what needs to be is good, and evils must needs be’. For ‘what needs to be’ has a double meaning: it means what is inevitable, as often is the case with evils, too (for evil of some kind is inevitable), while on the other hand we say of good things as well that they ‘need to be’. Moreover, ‘The same man is both seated and standing and he is both sick and in health: for it is he who stood up who is standing, and he who is recovering who is in health: but it is the seated man who stood up, and the sick man who was recovering’. For ‘The sick man does so and so’, or ‘has so and so done to him’ is not single in meaning: sometimes it means ‘the man who is sick or is seated now’, sometimes ‘the man who was sick formerly’. Of course, the man who was recovering was the sick man, who really was sick at the time: but the man who is in health is not sick at the same time: he is ‘the sick man’ in the sense not that he is sick now, but that he was sick formerly.
To provide a more recent example of an SJW utilizing both ambiguity and amphiboly, in 2015, the SFWA’s then-Vice-President, Mary Robinette Kowal, attempted to refute someone’s claim that I seldom attacked anyone who had not attacked me first. She asserted the following.
HA! His first mention of me is mid-2013. He has threatened to post where I live. And yes, he could, because he has the SFWA directory. This idea that you can ignore him and he’ll go away is demonstrably not how it works. Speaking as someone who has been the repeated target of Vox Day, this strategy does not work. Until April 11, 2015, I have NEVER mentioned him on my blog. EVER. I have him blocked on all social media.
Sounds superficially convincing, doesn’t it? And yet, this refutation is sophistical, ambiguous, deceptive, and full of lies.
First, this was my first, and only, mention of her in 2013. I was using the cover of her recently released novel as an example of the way in which the science fiction publishers were engaging in their own deceptive and ambiguous practice of selling romance under the guise of science fiction and fantasy.
Consider the cover of Mary Robinette Kowal’s new novel, Without A Summer. Kowal is the current VP of SFWA. She’s nice, she’s talented, and she’s an award-winning writer. She was even nominated for the Best Novel Nebula in 2010. What she isn’t is an SF/F writer. She’s a romance writer. The marketing department at Tor Books clearly knows that. Both the Handsome Prince and the Pretty Princess with her bluebirds on the cover are straight out of Disney. Giving a Nebula award to a book like this would be akin to giving Joe Abercrombie the Golden Tea Cosy or whatever award it is the RWA gives out because one of his mentally unstable killers happens to tenderly rape a female captive during a momentary interlude between bloody battles.
That is not exactly the threatening personal attack implied, is it? Second, while it was true that she had never mentioned me on her blog, she had publicly called me out on Twitter, in a flawless example of the amphiboly that Aristotle describes. I prefer to think of it as the SJW’s Custom Dictionary. “How can you claim I attacked you when I didn’t even punch you? Sure, I kicked you, stabbed you, and elbowed you in the head, but I didn’t actually punch you.” It’s an effective way to hide the lie under a veil of partial truth, at least from those who aren’t paying sufficiently close attention.
But what about my threat to post where she lives? That’s pretty outrageous, is it not? Well, as is usually the case with SJW claims, significant details have been omitted in order to imply the precise opposite of the truth.
You see, the science fiction and fantasy community suffers from a pedophilia problem. It has for decades, ranging from fans and Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association members to recognized grandmasters and lifetime achievement award winners. On 24 June 2014, nearly one year after I was supposedly expelled from SFWA for unspecified thought crimes, I noted the fact that 18 years after Ed Kramer’s first arrest for aggravated child molestation, 14 years after his arrest on three counts of child molestation, three years after arrest in Connecticut for “risk of injury to a minor”, 18 months after being arrested again in Connecticut for violating his bond, and six months after his guilty plea on three counts of child molestation, he was still an active member of SFWA. And to prove this, I cited both the 2010 SFWA directory as well as a screen capture from the SFWA’s online member directory taken on 23 June 2014.
And this was t
he Twitter exchange between Kowal and me.
Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette
What are these facts you speak of? Such a strange and silly custom
Vox Day @voxday
“Agent Code: (MAA Jackson)”. Now, would you like me to put up the entire page 26 scan as evidence, Mary?
Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette
Scan of what, as evidence of what?
Vox Day @voxday
The facts you questioned: Ed Kramer’s membership.
Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette
In 2010. YOU said he is a current member, which is false.
Now, the point that I was making, and that she knew perfectly well that I was making, was that on page 26 of the 2010 SFWA directory, Ed Kramer was listed directly below one Mary Robinette Kowal, and therefore, posting the page as evidence of his membership would also expose her private address to everyone as well as her telephone number and email address. Because I did not wish to do that, I was pointing out that her demand for evidence of Kramer’s membership would necessitate posting where she lived. Of course, being an SJW, she immediately attempted to deceptively portray this desire to avoid posting where she lived as a threat to do so. (This is another standard SJW tactic, Assume the Worst Possible Interpretation.) In doing so, Kowal was attempting to create a false narrative about me attacking her as well as setting up a false dichotomy between the evidence for Kramer being an Active Member in 2010 and his being an inactive Member in 2014. Moreover, her claim that Kramer was not an active member in 2014 was belied by the SFWA’s own online membership directory, which listed Kramer as an active member as late as June 2014.
Only hours after I posted the screenshot proving as much, Ed Kramer abruptly disappeared from the SFWA membership directory. The truth is that Ed Kramer remains an inactive current member of SFWA despite his multiple arrests and convictions for molesting children; the only reason he is inactive is that he was unable to pay his annual membership dues from prison. To the best of my knowledge, the SFWA Board has never voted to expel Ed Kramer, has never issued a public or private statement about him, and the organization has never announced his expulsion. To the contrary, many of SFWA’s members, including some of its more famous ones, have publicly defended him, even in SFWA publications. At no time was he, or the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, or the Marion Zimmer Bradley estate which is still listed on the SFWA’s Estate Contact Information page, ever subject to any organizational discipline for their documented sexual crimes against children.
Aristotelian ambiguity is a tactic that is often used by SJWs claiming the right to assign to their opponent the only possible meaning of a word that the opponent has used, even when the other meanings of that word are much more readily applicable and the opponent has declared that the assigned meaning was not the meaning utilized. The fact that this requires both mind-reading and the opponent’s ignorance of his own word-choice seldom slows the SJW down, because SJWs are always intellectually dishonest.
Word Games
Given the size of this book, it is not practical to go into similar detail with regards to every sophistical refutation and related SJW tactic, but at least we can list them along with an explanation and a brief example of each. Fallacies in the language is simply another way of saying that the SJW is playing word games. Of the six classic examples delineated by Aristotle, five of them are utilized on a regular basis by social justice warriors.
Ambiguity we have already described. It can be created by switching one word for another, by leaving a false impression through implication, or by substituting an irrelevant definition of one word for the relevant one. I tend to think of it as the Bait-and-Switch, or Every Richard Dawkins Argument Ever. You, however, might find it easier to remember as the Humpty Dumpty Dictionary: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” It is worth noting in this regard that SJWs who favor ambiguity-based refutations are extremely vulnerable to having their own tactics used against them. By intentionally utilizing a word that has multiple definitions, including some that are less than helpful to your case, you can be certain that the SJW will latch onto the definition he perceives to be most damaging to your argument and thereby leap eagerly into the trap. SJWs will reliably do so because their objectives in an argument are usually focused on disqualifying their opponents in the eyes of the crowd rather than in genuinely refuting their arguments. Once the SJW has attacked the wrong definition, it is then a simple matter to turn the table by providing the correct one and discrediting him in the process.
Amphiboly is related to ambiguity. In fact, the word stems from the same Greek root, ampho, which means “two sides”. However, it involves ambiguity that is created from a sentence can be interpreted in various ways due to grammar, structure, or punctuation. Amphiboly applies when the context that is necessary to understand the statement is removed or left out, such as the fact that while Kowal had NEVER EVER mentioned me on her blog, she had addressed me directly on Twitter and mentioned me in the SFWA’s private forums. Amphiboly can a difficult word to remember since it tends to leave one with the vague impression that it has something to do with frogs, so I remember it as being the Case of the Missing Context.
Combination is a particular favorite of SJWs in the media. Combination occurs when an SJW claims that because something is true of some part of the whole, it is therefore true of the whole. We see this all the time from SJWs, such as when one Nazi flag at Charlottesville is taken as conclusive evidence that the entire Alt-Right is dedicated to the 25 unalterable points of the German National Socialist Workers’ Party’s Munich Manifesto, or when a group of white sorority girls singing along to a Kanye West song is cited as proof that all white people are racists who want to re-enslave black Americans. SJWs tend to naturally think in terms of combination, which is why you will almost always search in vain for any mention of a Democratic politician’s party membership when he is arrested and accused of a crime, while in the case of a Republican lawmaker, his party membership will usually lead the headline. You can perhaps remember this as The Specific is the General. Or, if you are a wargamer of a certain age, as Pacific General.
Division is the exact opposite of Combination. This fallacy is much less popular with SJWs than Combination, but it is seen from time to time when they venture forth into the unfamiliar territory of statistical analysis, particularly as it relates to race. For example, any observation that the average IQ of blacks is 85, one standard deviation below that of whites, will inevitably cause the SJW to declare that the observer believes all blacks are stupid, never mind the fact that this observation, combined with a standard bell curve distribution and the global population, means that there are 231.7 million individuals of African descent who are more intelligent than the average white individual. As it is the converse of Combination, you can remember Division as The General is the Specific.
Accent is not much used by SJWs or anyone else who speaks English, because it is defined as “the ambiguity that emerges when a word can be mistaken for another by changing suprasegmental phonemes, which in Ancient Greek correspond to diacritics.” Also known as prosody, it is almost entirely irrelevant today, even in its expanded form that is based on the stress one lays on an individual word. You can safely ignore this one.
Form of expression is also known as the figure-of-speech fallacy. This is not uncommon among SJWs, particularly those who are attempting to play the gotcha game in order to discredit or disqualify someone. However, it is probably better described as a category error, since the Aristotelian example concerns putting words in the wrong categories, such as erroneously putting an adjective, which describes quality, in the verb category, which describes action. Aristotle considered the confusion of categories to be the chief cause of metaphysical mistakes, which tends to suggest that category errors on the part of SJWs may well be unintentional, as they are clearly metaphysically challenged. The phrase
often used by scientists, about ideas that are “not even wrong”, is often applicable here, as category errors tend to render a statement ridiculous and irrelevant as well as incorrect. That being said, some form-of-expression fallacies are clearly intentional. It is almost certainly an intentional category error when objections to mass Islamic immigration into the European Union are described by SJWs as being racist, for the obvious reason that Islam is a religion, not a race or an ethnicity, and even the most maleducated SJW is likely to know that.
Logic Games
In addition to the six classic word games that Aristotle identifies, there are seven fallacies that are based in logic rather than language, all of which are arrows in the SJW arsenal. As Stefan Molyneux, author of the philosophical bestseller The Art of the Argument, has said, trying to have a reasonable debate with a Leftist is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall, so it is useful to know these basic fallacies well enough to be able to identify them when you encounter them, as you inevitably will. And it is a powerful showstopper to correctly call out the specific fallacy being committed, particularly if you follow that up with an interrogation focused on learning whether the SJW is knowingly relying upon it or not. Once the debate turns into a discussion of whether the SJW is being deceitful or is merely ignorant, it’s all over but for the SJW running away crying.
Accident is simply ignoring the obvious exception to the rule by attempting to apply a general rule to a situation where it is not relevant. Accident is the favored fallacy of the Black Lives Matter group, which exists mostly on the basis of a textbook example of it.
Shooting and killing blacks is racist.
The police shoot and kill blacks.
