On Genetic Fallacies and Red Herrings 5/12/13

Red Herring

The genetic fallacy generally refers to a type of fallacious reasoning that appeals to how the position is arrived in order to prove for or against a particular claim or a particular argument. The genetic fallacy also goes by other names but the definition generally remains the same: "the fallacy of origins;" "arguing based on the source rather than on the merits of a position;" or as mentioned in a Wikipedia article, "the fallacy of irrelevance." The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy also defines the genetic fallacy this way: "A critic uses the genetic fallacy if the critic attempts to discredit or support a claim or an argument because of its origin (genesis) when such an appeal to origins is irrelevant."

Aristotle, for instance, would have also characterized this type of reasoning under sophistry, a deceptive form of argumentation that focuses on the accidental aspects of an issue rather then on the substance of the issue in order to make the argument look correct when it is not. The genetic fallacy also fulfills Aristotle's notion of sophistry by shifting attention away from the argument to other unrelated aspects of the argument, like the way in which the position came to be held.

The genetic fallacy shows up everywhere in the popular culture and especially in the media. Political debates, television talk shows, and even religious debates include instances of people committing the genetic fallacy ad nauseum. Here are just a few examples:

President Barrack Obama's television advertisement successfully debunked the claim that the study ran by Senator Mitt Romney was independent and non-partisan by referencing Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and the chairman of the study who used to work at Romney's former company (assuming of course that that is all true). But the advertisement did not prove against the claim that "Obama and the liberals will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000" (0:13 - 0:17). In fact, no mention was made against that claim other than the appeal to the study's partisanship.

In other words, the focus on the study's partisanship distracted the argument away from considering the relevant information needed for proving against the claim that Obama and the liberals will indeed raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000; this is called a red herring. A red herring, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is a "digression that leads the reasoner off the track of considering only relevant information." Red herrings distract the person following an argument from considering important information related to the conclusion of a particular argument.

If, on the other hand, the advertisement was claiming that Obama will not raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000 because partisan groups ran the studies that projected those figures, then the advertisement would be committing the genetic fallacy by basing their conclusions off of the people's backgrounds rather than on more relevant information (like counter-statistics and so forth). In other words, people's backgrounds or the particular associations of which they happen to be a part does not necessarily falsify the statistics they put forward in a study. After all, the evidence they publish may indeed indicate the truth of the matter regardless of their particular backgrounds or reputations.

Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist and outspoken advocate against religion, suggested to the young girl at the podium that she may have only held her beliefs in God because of her native upbringing in the United States. Dawkins then listed a few conditioned claims (0:28 - 0:54) reminding the young girl that if she had been "brought up" in another culture, then she would have never believed in God and would have replaced God with another deity instead. Dawkins, however, only suggests that she rethink her belief in God and never finally tells her that she falsely believes in God.

The fallacy in Dawkins' reasoning involves leaping from the claim that growing up in the United States influenced the young girl's belief in God to therefore concluding that her belief in God's existence is false. The conclusion simply does not follow from the premises because growing up in the United States only incidentally relates to her belief in the truth of God's existence. This is called the genetic fallacy. In all fairness to Dawkins, however, he never explicitly claimed the young girl's belief in God to be false. In fact, it is difficult to tell whether or not Dawkins had even truly advanced an argument, due to the fact that the young girl never asked Dawkins to argue against anything. Nevertheless, Dawkins committed the genetic fallacy by leaping from the young girl's upbringing to concluding her belief in God's existence to be false, which he implicitly concluded at the end of video.