Posted: December 3rd, 2022

Skepticism and Fallacies

Skepticism and Fallacies
The video under review is produced by Colburn Classroom with a short clip from the Simpsons film. From the clip, the mayor manages to distract the citizens by diverting their attention and advocacy to another issue. The citizens of Springfield are agitated and aggravated by the high taxes that they have been exposed to, which lead them to call for action by questioning the mayor about the issue. The mayor resorts to ducking the issue in what he refers to as ‘real leadership’ by arrogantly and mischievously dodging the main issue by the use of another irrelevant side issue (Colburn Classroom, 2019). Since the citizens are concerned about the rising taxes and they will not give up the bear patrol. Understandably, the citizens must find a solution from the law makes and leaders especially the mayor who holds the responsibility for the implementation of taxation measures within their community. These citizens are genuinely concerned and need their issues attended to in a substantial and productive manner.
Although the citizens have raised their issue, they are handled with a form of fallacy that draws their attention from the main issue and gives them another irrelevant one to consider and discuss. Such a form of fallacy is the red herring approach in which the mayor stops and manages the argument by distracting his citizens with an irrelevant issue. This is when he claims that the high taxes have been influenced by illegal immigrants. As much as such a claim might be true, it does not apply to the contexts in which the audience raised their concerns. The use of red herring fallacies enables the mayor to offload himself off the burden of having to take the issue substantially. Instead, he proposes that the town votes for a special referendum in a week’s time that shall be called Proposition 24 to decide whether or not the illegal immigrants would be deported from Springfield. By so doing, he manages to draw the attention of the citizens towards the issue of illegal immigrants thereby managing to avoid the real issue of high taxes and bears that are the core and most relevant challenges within the community at that specific time.
The red herring fallacy is mainly used by politicians especially when they are faced with tough public policy issues that they would rather dodge or avoid. To do so, they end up raising an irrelevant piece of information that allows them to distract their audience and shift the discussion to a new direction (Habernal, Pauli & Gurevych, 2018). Such a form of fallacy is mainly used in debates and arguments and it shows that the perpetrator is not interested in continuing with the prevalent line of discussion. In this case, the red herring fallacy is both informal and logical as it entails the conclusions as well as the premises that are irrelevant to the undergoing conversation or discussion. It can also be specifically classified as an irrelevant argument fallacy or a fallacy of relevance in general. Since the arguments presented to promote a red herring do not address the issue at hand, this fallacy can also be referred to as ignoratio elenchi which translates into ignorance of refutation (Ilchenko, 2015). The concept of red herring is structured around flawed premises because the content of argument in which it is developed does not relate to the discussion.
Writers also use red herring intentionally to impose a false clue that would mislead the readers towards a conclusion that is relatively false. For instance, from The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, a specific character is presented in such a way that most of the readers suspect him to be the key player in the development of the narrative (Chatfield, 2017). Bishop Aringarosa is portrayed as the man who pioneered the conspiracies revolving around the church. On the contrary, he was only used to promote the application of red herring considering that the individual at the center of such conspiracies is the actual antagonist. In addition to the unfolding of the story as a way of using red herring, the author uses the character Aringarosa whose name is an Italian translation that means red herring. The use of red herring in literature is considered to be a literary device or approach that is used to determine how much the readers are in a position to effectively discern factual circumstances while comprehending the predominant law. This means that red herring is not only used as a rhetorical strategy by politicians but it is also applied inadvertently in argumentation as well as being used as a mastery of fiction.
It is imperative for the audience or the participants in a particular debate to be able to recognize and determine when and where red herring is being used. With such ability, the involved individuals would be in a position to effectively counter an argument that is based on the fallacious red herring. Once the recipients of information recognize that the one addressing them used red herring to distract them and change the topic, they can point out where this fallacious approach was used and why it does not serve towards their best interests. From the case study, where the citizens of Springfield have been duped into believing that the illegal immigrants are the major problem within their community and not the high taxes, the citizens are obliged to be attentive and point out how the mayor has said nothing concerning the high taxes. It is also upon the citizens to confront the mayor for using the issue of illegal immigrants as a way of changing the topic of high taxes that has been a major problem to them and their welfare of their children.
After the citizens have recognized the fallacious approach of distracting them towards an irrelevant issue, they can redirect the conversation to the real issue of high taxes. This can be achieved by allowing the mayor to address the issue of taxes specifically considering that he had not attended to it, or the citizens can expound more on how the issue of high taxes has affected them in their day-to-day life and how it is inhibiting their growth at the economic context. Although the citizens may manage to identify the red herring fallacy, the mayor may decline to engage in a conversation concerning the issue of taxes. At this point, it is upon the citizens to decide the next course of action in which they could choose to disengage from the discussion, insist on continuing with the initial discussion on the issue of high taxes, or accept a new line of discussion that had been used to distract them and focus on it.
References
Chatfield, T. (2017). Critical thinking: Your guide to effective argument, successful analysis and independent study. Sage.
Colburn Classroom. (2019, November, 29). Simpsons logical fallacies: Red Herring [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wgH0cfe828
Habernal, I., Pauli, P., & Gurevych, I. (2018, May). Adapting serious game for fallacious argumentation to German: pitfalls, insights, and best practices. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Assessment (LREC 2018).
Ilchenko, О. М. (2015). Communicating complex ideas clearly: key to cracking the code of publishability. Лінгвістика ХХІ століття, (2015), 88-97.

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Tags: Skepticism and Fallacies