MSNBC commentator Touré (That's a name?) commented on Roe v Wade 40 years after. He was in favor. He told of a time when he got a girlfriend ("I was in a committed relationship with a woman who I knew was not the one." I'm sorry, what do you mean by "committed"?) pregnant. Having that baby -- becoming a father 15 years ago -- would have changed his life direction. "She decided it was best to have an abortion and days later she did. We did. And in some ways that choice saved my life."
Welcome to the logical fallacy known as Equivocation. Equivocation occurs when you use a term as the same thing when what you mean by it is two different things. Here's a silly but appropriate example:
- All banks are beside rivers.
- I put my money in a bank.
- Therefore, the financial institution where I deposit my money is beside a river.
Yes, silly, but that illustrates the fallacy. You take a word that can mean different things and then use it to mean the same thing. Touré told us that his female sex partner's (I have a hard time calling her his "committed relationship" or even "girlfriend" at this point) abortion "saved my life." You see, if she hadn't done that heroic, unselfish act, Touré would have died.
Well, of course not. He wouldn't have died. In this equivocation, "life" could mean "the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body" (as the phrase "saved my life" would typically suggest) or it could mean "a way or manner of living."1 In Touré's piece the latter was exactly what he meant ... and the two are not the same thing.
The argument of the pro-life advocate is that life -- human life in particular -- is valuable and worth defending. The argument of the pro-choice advocate is that choice -- a woman's choice in particular (not a man's choice and certainly not the choice of the unborn) -- is valuable and worth defending. The pro-abortion advocate (I'm being generous here because "pro-choice" and "pro-abortion" is a hairline distinction.) might argue that life is valuable, but here they equivocate. They would argue that the life of the child in the womb is not more important than the life of the woman. Now, at face value it might be hard to argue against that. Seems reasonable. So let me show you the fallacy. They would argue that the life ("the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body") of the child in the womb is not more important than the life ("a way or manner of living") of the woman. See it now?
Equivocation is a logical fallacy. It invalidates the argument that uses it. The pro-abortion argument above, then, is not valid.
Equivocation is a favorite among those in the pro-abortion camp. It is a favorite among the anti-theists, too. Perhaps you've seen something like this one.
- Christians did the Crusades.
- Christians are opposed to homosexual marriage.
- Therefore, it is mean-spirited, contentious people who are opposed to homosexual marriage.
All kinds of errors there, but one of them is equivocation. They have defined "Christian" with "Crusades", defined "Crusades" with "mean-spirited" and "contentious", and then equated the two. The classical Equivocation Fallacy.
Now, to be honest, just about anyone can accomplish this fallacy. I don't mean to suggest that it is only "evil pro-aborts and homosexuals" that make this error. Christians do it, too. Indeed, that's why I'm bringing this up. Pay attention, Christians. Know your terminology. Know their terminology. Make sure you're not mixing terms. Making a good argument with bad logic doesn't make for a good argument. I recently read a paper on immigration where a family member was deported because they didn't have the proper documentation. It concluded, "What did they do wrong? Well, they were different – they spoke broken English – but since when was that a justification for not recognizing a person’s humanity?"2 Regardless of what you believe about immigration or how it should be handled, equating "a person's humanity" with their presence in this country is a fallacy. That is the equivocation fallacy. Bad argument regardless of the quality of the intent. Don't do that.
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1 Interestingly the first definition I offered here is the first definition in the dictionary and occupies in various forms multiple definitions. In the dictionary I referenced that second definition was way down at number 6 on the list.
2 I have not given a reference to the paper because I don't wish to cause any undue or unnecessary responses to the author (or those who may be closely connected to the author). Who wrote it is irrelevant to the discussion. I saw the same kind of thinking in a TV interview of an undocumented immigrant in college. "Just because I don't have the right documentation doesn't make me a second-class citizen!" "Second-class citizen" suggests "a person of lesser value", but "citizen" has a specific meaning and not having been a legal, natural-born or naturalized citizen makes her not a citizen at all. Argument invalid.
2 comments:
Another system of argumentation that relies on emotions over logic. Emotions are good, healthy things, until you allow them to control all your thinking processes. Logic must win out the day, or our entire lives will be lived on the whims of our emotions that change throughout the course of a day, where logic is the same over the years.
I agree that emotions shouldn't control thinking and that relying on emotions over thinking is unwise, but I'm not entirely sure this is one of those times. More often it's someone who isn't paying attention to their terms. The MSNBC commentator who rejoiced that killing a baby saved his life, while likely blinded by emotion, didn't seem to notice that he was using "life" to mean two different things. Sloppy.
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