People don’t have a clue how to argue.
This has been bothering me for some time. The most obvious example of it is the abortion debate, especially in Internet circles. The pro-lifers like to nock their arrows and let them fly, but they forget to put fletching on the arrows, so they always miss the mark. The pro-choicers are setting up straw men and knocking them down, but they don’t even knock them down well.
Both sides tend to look like the Star Wars kid.
So, in response, I’m going to break down the big problems in the arguments on both sides and hopefully this will help someone, anyone, to understand what they’re doing wrong and to discover what the debate is really about. I will do my best to be unbiased, and if I am being biased I want somebody to call me on it. Also, if I neglect to address an argument on either side, or to criticize an argument effectively, I want to know so that I can refine the discussion.
Basic Argument Theory
Arguments generally start with two or more premises, and reason leads us to the logical conclusion from those prepositions. Example:
P1: Cars have wheels.
P2: A 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue is a car.
C: A 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue has wheels.
Note that you can only draw the conclusion (abortion is good/bad) if people accept all of your premises.
Arguments that are unconvincing generally have one of the following problems:
1. They assume that people accept their premises.
2. They don’t state all of their premises.
3. They skip premises altogether and move on to the conclusion.
The last problem is the worst of them all, because it only serves to make people angry.
The Pro-Life Side
The pro-lifers generally have two arguments, although the two are inter-related. However, if you accept either argument, it is profoundly convincing.
Argument 1: The Bible says abortion is wrong.
Quoting the Bible is a fine and dandy persuasive tool, if you are arguing with someone who believes in the infallibility of the Bible, or at least in some moral authority exemplified in the Bible. Here is how the argument should look, and why it doesn’t work:
P1: The Bible says that unjustifiable killing is wrong (murder).
P2: The Bible says that life begins at conception.
P3: There is no justification for killing an unborn life (they haven’t done anything wrong).
P4: Abortion kills unborn life.
Sub-conclusion: The Bible condemns abortion.
P5: The Bible is authoritative.
Final conclusion: Abortion is wrong.
The problem with this argument is that most pro-choicers don’t accept P5. If they don’t accept P5, what you’re left with is “The Bible condemns abortion.” To pro-choicers, this sounds like this argument:
P1: The Koran says that you should not eat pork.
P2: The Koran is authoritative.
C: You should not eat pork.
This is unconvincing to Christians because they don’t accept P2. Non-Christians likewise don’t accept the Bible as authoritative, and therefore the argument has no effect on them.
Argument 2: Abortion is murder.
This is basically the secularized version of the above argument. This is how it goes:
P1: Murder (the unjustifiable killing of a human) is wrong.
P2: A fetus/embryo/zygote is a human.
P3: Abortion ends the life of (kills) a fetus/embryo/zygote.
C: Abortion is wrong.
The problem with this argument is that pro-choicers do not accept P2. I’ll get back to that later.
The Pro-Choice Side
The pro-choice side has many more arguments. They are generally more complex than the pro-life arguments. The problem is that as long as pro-lifers accept the above arguments, none of these arguments will be good enough. Pro-lifers believe that abortion is murder, and murder is the ultimate moral wrong. The moral wrongs that pro-choicers seek to rectify are not as compelling as murder. Of course, to a pro-choicer, abortion is not murder.
Argument 1: A woman has the right to do what she wants with her body.
P1: A woman’s body is her own business and no one else’s.
P2: A fetus/embryo/zygote is part of a woman’s body.
P3: Abortion removes tissue (fetus/embryo/zygote) from a woman’s body.
C: Abortion is acting on a woman’s body, and is nobody else’s business.
The problem with this argument is that pro-lifers do not accept P2. People get emotional about P1, and they think that pro-lifers don’t accept P1, but this is not the case. I think that nearly everyone would agree about P1. So, therein lies the matter: what is a fetus/embryo/zygote? I’ll get back to that later.
Argument 2: Imposing moral standards on other people is wrong.
P1: (assumes that Argument 1 is accepted)
P2: Morality is relative.
P3: Imposing moral standards on other people is wrong (immoral).
C: Making others lose their right to choose abortion is wrong.
This is a highly problematic argument. First, it assumes that Argument 1 is accepted, and we have already established that pro-lifers do not accept it. Second, Christians do not accept P2 because they believe that the Bible is authoritative and absolute. Finally, it is (arguably) self-contradictory because P2 and P3 seem to be in conflict. If morality is relative, then there is no standard on which to judge what is wrong—and therefore there is no basis for stating that imposition of morality is wrong.
It also fails because government polices morality all the time (gambling, prostitution, stealing, and even murder). Yes, most morality laws also have an economic or public health justification, but for many of these laws this element is a stretch.
There are things that can be done to refine the argument, but these too are problematic. You can replace P2 and P3 with the premise that “the only immoral thing is to impose morals on other people,” but this premise in itself is arguably self-contradictory, and in any case is unconvincing. Plato and Aristotle would throw a fit about that.
You could also replace P3 with another sub-conclusion that since morality is relative, there is no rational basis for deciding what is moral. This is a much more acceptable argument, but it also reduces its persuasive force. It is much more powerful to say that something is wrong than it is to say that there is no way to decide whether something is right. Also, I reiterate that the government polices morality all the time.
Argument 3: Pro-lifers are hypocritical.
P1: Pro-lifers are against the killing of fetuses.
P2: Pick one of the following:
a. Pro-lifers approve of the death penalty
b. Pro-lifers bomb abortion clinics
c. The Bible has pro-death messages
d. Etc.
P3: If a person has two viewpoints that are apparently in conflict, then all of their views are meaningless.
C: Pro-lifers’ views are meaningless.
This is also a highly problematic argument. P3 is a stretch, and I think most people would agree that it is not a valid premise (people who don’t like Justice Scalia often agree with some of his opinions, regardless of whether they are apparently contradictory). Also, most of the premises under P2 are faulty, for example P2a and P2c, but that’s an issue for another day. P2b, in addition, is faulty because this focuses on an extremely small subset of pro-lifers, and would be analogous to looking at pro-choice men who beat their wives.
Argument 4: People will get abortions anyway.
P1: If abortion is outlawed, people will get abortions from disreputable practitioners.
P2: Abortions from disreputable practitioners are unhealthy and dangerous.
SC: Outlawing abortion will lead to an increase in unhealthy and dangerous abortions.
P3: Unhealthy and dangerous activities are to be avoided.
C: Abortion should not be outlawed.
This is actually a solid argument from a purely theoretical standpoint. However, it is a weak argument persuasively. There are many laws that can be subjected to similar arguments: loan sharking, drug trafficking, et cetera. Does this mean that they should be legalized? Sure, if we legalized meth then it would be produced by professional chemists, and so it would be (perhaps) less dangerous and fewer labs would explode. But this is undercut by noting that meth in itself is harmful and it is better to discourage and attempt to eradicate it than to give up and allow it to happen.
Argument 5: We have no business regulating abortion because we still haven’t solved problem X.
I won’t go to the trouble of laying out the premises here because this argument is overall just silly. Problem X can be anything: world hunger, the environment, poverty, cancer, or anything else. But who decides which problem is more important?
Regardless, I can’t recall the name of the theory that refutes this, but it essentially uses the following equation: A * B = C. A is the seriousness of the problem and B is how easy it is to solve the problem. C is your return on investment of time. If a problem is serious, it makes more sense to put more work into it to solve the problem. Conversely, if a problem is easy to take care of, but the problem is not serious, it still makes sense to fix the problem. Usually, however, Problem X may be serious, but it is also extremely difficult to fix, and therefore the return on investment is less and it makes sense to defer fixing the problem until other problems (with a higher return on investment) are fixed.
Argument 6: You can’t impose different laws on men than you do on women.
Again, I won’t go into the premises and conclusion on this one, but it suffices to say that if you assume that a fetus is human, then you are not regulating the mother, but are regulating instead the fetus. This argument focuses on the pregnant mother, not on the fetus itself and whether it is human.
The Crux of the Matter: What is Human?
**sorry, must have met the space limit**