During an intellectual battle, one’s true colours are tested. The side losing ground, as a last resort to assert tenacity, turns argumentation into sophistry. Objectivity becomes the worst casualty because of the errors in reasoning called logical fallacies. Below-the-belt play of arguments leads to the blind alley of resentment. Disagreement would then spawn dislike and vice versa.
Among the logical fallacies, one is ad hominem — the opponent’s character is attacked instead of his arguments. The targets of attacks range from one’s heritage to educational background to achievement (mostly failures) in a field particularly related to the moot. Hazrat Ali (AS) advises us that one’s words should be judged irrespective of one’s status. When personality is discussed, it shows how low one has stooped to win the argument. Eleanor Roosevelt categorises intellectual worth: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
When one’s arguments lack force of conviction, some authority is quoted as conclusive evidence. Mostly, the authority — mutually unknown or irrelevant to the topic being argued — is referred to deflect the argument in an unknown direction. Sometimes, the authority is too sacrosanct to refute, and if at all it is defied, the contrarian risks being labelled disrespectful.
As byways are plied to leave the highway, irrelevant subjects are broached to dislocate the locus of the argument. It is called a red herring fallacy. A red herring is a strong-smelling smoked fish used to distract hounds from chasing a rabbit. In a discussion once with a student on the importance of human effort in achieving success, the student argued that bolts from the blue like COVID-19 stultify human effort. Natural catastrophes are exceptional cases when we discuss the importance of human effort and free will, I argued. In scientific laws, when the relationship between two quantities is discussed, the other factors that might affect the relationship are assumed constant.
Sarcastic humour is also used as a red herring to parry off the opponent’s trump argument. Humour is a ploy to play to the gallery to garner support of the people around to weaken the opponent by showing that the majority sides with you.
The straw man fallacy — to misrepresent, to distort, to caricature one’s argument — equates ‘call for civilian supremacy’ with ‘a security risk’. Our political discourse is rife with strawman narratives.
The use of one’s own authority to strengthen the argument is common in situations involving hierarchical status, social standing, or gender. Bosses, teachers, parents and clergy — when fail to counter the arguments of their subordinates, students, wards and followers — often brandish their authority by branding the latter with a scarlet letter of disobedience. The people misusing their position knowingly steer the argument to a point where the contrarians’ arguments might prove self-destructive for themselves. Similarly, when the arguers are friends, to use each other’s weaknesses to win an argument goes beyond the ambit of objective argumentation.
To rebut abstract ideas based on personalised tangible evidence is another logical fallacy — the false causation. One might deduce: the people visit shrines and tombs of saints and Sufi poets but don’t practise Islam; hence, these holy places are dens of ignorance. If people indulge in iniquities despite observing namaz five times a day, it doesn’t imply that namaz is no longer a rendezvous with the Creator.
Argument and persuasion are diametrically opposite ways of reasoning. Argument aims at discernment of truth, while for persuasion, winning is the ultimate goal. Subjective reasoning leads to persuading the opponent, while objective reasoning aims at the truth for a new awakening.