Hence, January is guilty of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism
Bulverism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bulverism is a logical fallacy coined by C. S. Lewis where rather
than proving that an argument is wrong, a person instead assumes it
wrong, and then goes on to explain why the other person held that
argument. It is essentially a circumstantial ad hominem
argument.
Lewis wrote about this in an essay of the same name (in 1941) which
is available to us in the book God in the Dock. He explains the
origin of this term as follows:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining
why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion
that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the
only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so
common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it
"Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its
imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at
the age of five when he heard his mother say to his fatherwho had
been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater
than a third"Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that
moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening
mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of
argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be
at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still)
try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national
dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how
Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Pattern
The form of the Bulverism fallacy can be expressed as
follows:
You argue that A implies B.
However, you personally desire that A implies B because of C.
Therefore, A does not imply B.
Example
From Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large
balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this
belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any
conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only
chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum
yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only,
will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my
arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my
psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you
find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain
psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the
doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevantbut only after
you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on
purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and
all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by
speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making
a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical
grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments.
Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological
causes of the error.
