PART II
Psychological Fallacies

Before an audience of children, a debate about diet between a physician and a confectioner would be won by the confectioner, hands down. Before an adult audience, a politician armed with the tricks of persuasion and versed in rhetoric may overturn an engineer or soldier even though the subject is a specialty of the latter, say the building of defenses or harbors. Persuasion flatters the appetites of the audience and has a great advantage over a cold appeal to reason. This has been recognized at least since the time of Plato, and the above examples are from his famous attack on rhetoric, the Gorgias.

It is more interesting for all of us when speakers become excited, when they gush or rant, make us laugh, conjure our sympathy, cozen and beguile us in a hundred ways. "Instead of working on your opponent's intellect by argument, work on his will by motive; and he, and also the audience if they have similar interests, will at once be won over to your opinion, even though you got it out of a lunatic asylum," says Schopenhauer, lampooning the level of public discussion in his day. Sarcasm aside, it is easy to agree with Schopenhauer that a man entering on a controversy "must know what the dishonest tricks are," since he will certainly have to meet them.

It is evident that even a sound argument can still be urged on listeners with all sorts of emotional embellishments and with the help of various psychological appeals. If we are going to mean by "fallacy" faulty reasoning in argument, then these appeals and devices are not real fallacies. Yet, whether or not there is an actual error present in the machinery of the argument, some of these psychological tricks have been listed among the fallacies from the earliest times -- such devices as name calling, flagrant appeals to prejudice, flattery, ridicule.

All these tricks are practiced for distraction, disturbance, diversion. They confound the issue, they play up special interest, they rely on appeal and dazzlement. In short, they put people off guard, or by shifting the focus of discussion from a close preoccupation with the facts and their cogency, they seduce to the colorful or dramatic or disturbing. Sometimes the speaker will intend, by letting his audience look up, as it were, from a lengthy examination of the issue, only a momentary relaxation. Such a respite is often welcome. At other times the audience may find themselves led away altogether into watching or participating in vigorous displays or noisome forensics. Without becoming hypercritical of every embellishment and sparkle, we can still learn to recognize these for what they are, an added grace by the way.