In a world of fairminded critical thinkers, the list of those who reasoned best and the list of those with the most influence in the world would be one and the same. But we don’t exist in an ideal world of intellectually disciplined, empathic thinkers. We live in fundamentally uncritical societies, societies in which skilled manipulators, masters of intellectual tricks and stratagems, are the ones who tend to achieve position, status, and advantage.
In the everyday world there is a continual struggle for power and control, and in that struggle truth and insight have little chance of competing with big money driving big media. Big money routinely utilizes the resources of media logic, polished rhetoric, and mass propaganda techniques to gain its ends. Most people, being intellectually unsophisticated respond to, and even unknowingly use, fallacious thinking.
As we hope you realize by now, most of what are traditionally called fallacies are in fact highly effective strategies for shaping the opinions and beliefs of others. Fallacies are best understood as “counterfeits” of good reasoning, devices often successful in manipulating the intellectual “sheep” of the world.
Of course, it is important to realize that those who manipulate others typically deceive themselves in the process. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves. People want to view themselves as decent and fairminded, not as manipulators of unsophisticated others. The result is that when people use bad reasoning to manipulate others they must at the same time “deceive” themselves into believing that their thinking is perfectly justified.
In an ideal world, children would be taught to recognize fallacies at an early age. They would learn how common fallacies are in everyday discourse. They would practice identifying fallacies in every dimension of their lives. They would come to understand the frailties and weaknesses of the human mind. They would learn to recognize their own frailties and weaknesses: their own egocentrism and sociocentrism. They would become familiar with the differences between uncritical thinking, sophistic thinking, and fairminded thinking. And, they would become adept at identifying and distinguishing their uncritical, sophistic, and fairminded thinking. They would continually catch themselves about to slip, slipping, or having slipped into egocentric or sociocentric thought. They would have no trouble admitting mistakes. They would be eminently moveable by sound reasoning.
But we do not live in an ideal world. Fallacies are “foul ways” to win arguments, yet they are winning arguments and manipulating people everyday. The mass media are filled with them. They are the bread and butter of mass political discourse, public relations, and advertising. We all at times fall prey to them. And many live and breathe them as if they were the vehicles of sacred truth.
Your goal should be to recognize fallacies for what they are — the dirty tricks of those who want to gain an advantage. They are stratagems for gaining influence, advantage, and power. You will withstand their impact more effectively when you know these
fallacies inside and out. When you come to see how counterfeits of good reasoning pervade everyday life (and are the life blood of the mass media) you are better able to resist their influence. When you are inoculated against fallacies, your response to them is transformed. You ask key questions. You probe behind the masks, the fronts, the fostered images, the impressive pomp and ceremony. You take charge of your own mind and emotions. You become (increasingly) your own person. And perhaps most important, as you pursue your own goals, you diligently work to avoid using fallacies yourself.