Witch Hunts Lecture 4th October, 2006
Fallacies and Political Philosophy

This Week:
Wednesday:  Quick and Dirty Guide to Political Philosophy
Friday:  Spring/Summer 1933

Broad Categories:
•	Fallacies of Relevance
•	Fallacies of Presumption
•	(Fallacies of Ambiguity)
•	NOTE:  often, an argument can be charged with committing more than one fallacy, and sometimes the edges of the categories blur a bit.  It’s a judgement call which error is being committed.

Fallacies of Relevance:
•	DEF:  when an argument relies on premisses that are not relevant to its conclusion, and that therefore cannot possibly establish its truth, the Fallacy committed is one of relevance.

R7: Irrelevant Conclusion
•	Irrelevant Conclusion:  when an argument purporting to establish a particular conclusion is instead directed to proving a different conclusion.
•	The reasoning may seem plausible, but the premises miss the point.

•	This mode of reasoning is designed to bypass all talk of alternatives in favour of a conclusion which is desired by the speaker, often coupled with useful Ad Populum fallacies as well, and expressive language.
Fallacies of Presumption:
•	DEF:  to argue in a way that inclines the audience  to assume the truth of some unproved or unwarranted proposition.

•	Unwarranted leaps of reason are called presumptions.
P1&2:  Complex Question, False Cause
•	Complex Question:  asking a question in such a way as to presuppose the truth of some conclusion buried in that question.
•	False Cause:  assuming that one event was caused by another because they occurred in the right order, but not because a causal connection has been demonstrated.

P3: Begging the Question
•	Begging the Question:  to assume the truth of what one seeks to prove, in the effort to prove it.

P4&5: Accident and Converse Accident
•	Accident:  to presume the applicability of a generalization to individual cases that it does not properly govern.
•	Converse Accident:  to presume that what is true of a particular case is true of the great run of cases.

Uses of Fallacious Reasoning:
•	Used generally, they are how we often intuitively get past awkward questions and situations.  Most quarrels can be found, on reflection, to have one or more fallacies floating around in them.
•	Used deliberately, they are hugely persuasive methods of manipulation.

Democracy, Liberalism and Libertarianism
Origins and Repositories of Power

State of Nature?
•	A concept used in social contract theory, and in more extreme forms like contractarianism.
•	It assumes that there was a time, or an original condition, before political organization emerged.
•	By thought-experimentally accessing this lost history, we can derive and justify the origins of political organization.

Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651:
•	In a state of nature, we would behave badly to one another.
•	A war of all against all.
•	Life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
•	Best advantage is therefore found in contracting with one another and forming, through agreements, proto-laws and political orders.

Locke, Second Treatise on Government, 1689
•	People contract with each other to escape the brutality of the state of nature.
•	Governments are formed for the sake of the flourishing of the people.
•	Governments are not free, and power can revert to the people if governments behave with sufficient impropriety.
•	While liberties are curtailed, power is not in any way reduced – it is redistributed and, in a sense, held in escrow against the time that a government fails its citizens.

Our Reading on Locke: 4 Parts
•	Of the Beginning of Political Societies
•	Of the Ends of Political Society and Government
•	Of the Extent of the Legislative Power
•	The Legitimacy of Revolution

I.  Of the Beginning of Political Societies:
•	“Men being by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent, which is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community…”
•	CP p.11R

Was there Really a State of Nature?
•	When people give universal common consent to organize, a community is made and, when property is incorporated, a commonwealth.
•	All are alike under the obligation to the new society.
•	Specifically:  each person submits to the determination of the majority, and is under an obligation to be included by that majority.
•	Without these two elements of Majority Rule, there can be no validity in the original contract.

Tacit Consent:
•	“Every man that hath any possession of enjoyment of any part of the dominions of any government doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it, whether this his possession be of land to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging for only a week…

Extent of Tacit Consent:
•	…or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and, in effect, it reaches as far as the very being of anyone within the territories of that government.”
•	CP p.11R

Property is Part of Contract:
•	“To understand this better, it is fit to consider that every man when he at first incorporates himself into any commonwealth, he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexes also, and submits to the community those possessions which he has, or shall acquire, that do not already belong to any other government.”
•	Property is not exempt from determination of law, same act which incorporates a person into the commonwealth incorporates the person’s property.
•	CP p.11R

See CP p.12L, Par.1
•	“But since the government…”
•	Government’s direct jurisdiction is to the land, and to the possessors of the land by extension, before their explicit consent.
•	Two ways to exit the commonwealth: voluntarily, or involuntarily.

II.  Ends of Political Society and Government
•	“If man in the state of nature be so free as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions; equal to the greatest and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom?”
•	CP p.12L

Security and Liberty:
•	Provide security for the sustenance of liberty of each individual.
•	Emphasis is on the individual, not the collection of individuals.
•	However, the balance between individual, and individuals as majority is a difficult one to navigate.

See CP p.12 L2
•	“Why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?  To which ‘tis obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain and constantly exposed to the invasion of others; for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of his property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure.”

What’s Missing in the State of Nature?
•	Firstly, There wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the common measure to decide all controversies between them.

What’s Missing in the State of Nature?
•	Secondly, In the state of nature there wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according to the established law.

What’s Missing in the State of Nature?
•	“Thirdly, In the state of nature there often wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution.”

Society Offers:
•	“Thus mankind, notwithstanding all the privileges of the state of nature, being but in ill condition while they remain in it, are quickly driven into society.” (CP p.12L2)
•	People don’t chose to live in that state for long.
•	Law, Judge, and Police.
•	Common consent before each, and common protection by each is a fundamental part of the contract.
•	Origin of the legislative and executive powers of government.

First Power:  Preservation
•	“First, to do whatever he thinks fit for the protection of himself and others within the permission of the law of nature…”
•	Man gives up this power to be regulated by laws made by the society, so far as the preservation of the individual and the society shall require.
•	This ‘confines the liberty’ he had in the state of nature.

Second Power:  Punishing
•	“The other power a man has in the state of nature is the power to punish the crimes committed against that law.”
•	This power he wholly gives up, and engages his natural force to assist the executive power of the society as the law thereof shall require.
•	This also ‘confines the liberty’ he had in the state of nature.

Interim Conclusion:
•	See CP p.13L1
•	“And so…”

III.  Extent of Legislative Power
•	“These are the bounds which the trust that is put in them by the society and the law of God and nature have set to the legislative power of every commonwealth, in all forms of government.”
•	So:  there are limits and obligations placed on governments.

See CP p.13L1
•	“First, they are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favourite at Court, and the countryman at plough.”
•	“Secondly, These laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately but the good of the people.”

See CP p.13L1
•	“Thirdly, They must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of the people given by themselves or their deputies…”
•	“Fourthly, The legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to anybody else, or place it anywhere but where the people have…”

Otherwise…

IV.  Legitimacy of Revolution
•	“…for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making.”
•	CP p.13L2

Conditions for Revolution:
•	When legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people
•	Or, to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power.
•	Either one, puts the legislative power into a state of war with the people

Result:
•	People are absolved from further obedience.
•	Left with the common refuge which God has provided for all men against force and violence.
•	Self- defense.

See CP p.13L2:
•	“Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends…”

Power Reverts to the People:
•	“…and it devolves to the people, who have the right to resume their original liberty and, by the establishment of a new legislative, such as they shall think fit, provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.”

Ultimate Repository of Authority:
•	What stands for the legislative in general stands for the supreme executor.
•	Who shall be the judge of right or wrong conduct in this regard?
•	The People…in principle.

END.