Steve Watson

Santorum does Reductio

The recent incident, reported in the New York Times (Friday, January 13, 2012), of Rick Santorum trying to present an argument against same-sex ‘marriage’ to an audience of university students indicates that teaching the fundamentals of Critical Thinking remains an uphill struggle. Here’s a partial transcript. I’ve made adjustments for grammaticality and sense – actual speech looks like gibberish when written down – but I’ve tried to be honest about the matter.

Student: How about the idea that all men are created equal and have the right to happiness?
Santorum: Ok. So, are we saying that everyone should have the right to marry?
Student(s): Yes.
Santorum: Everyone?
Students: Yes
Santorum: So anyone can marry anybody else?
Student(s): Yes.
Santorum: So anybody can marry several people?
Student(s): (Protests.)
…
Santorum: So, everybody has the right to be happy, so if you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that ok?
…
Student: I’m not talking about that.
Santorum: I’m asking the question; if what you said was ‘every person has a right to their own happiness …’
Student(s): It’s irrelevant.
(Protests.)
Santorum: No it’s not irrelevant.
…
Student: Is it right for two men to have the same rights as a man and a woman?
Santorum: Well, what about three men?
Student(s): I’m not talking about that.
…
Santorum: I’m going to ask you the question again. If it makes three people happy to get married, based on what you just said, what makes that wrong and what you said right?
Student: How do you justify your belief based on your high morals you have about all men being created equal, when two men who want to get married …
Santorum: Well, what about three men?
Student: That’s not what I’m talking about.
…
Santorum: You know, it’s important if we’re going to have a discussion based on rational thought, that we employ reason. And reason says that if you think it’s ok for two, then you have to differentiate for me why it’s not ok for three.

Santorum’s point is a very (very) simple one, and, having tried to use the same sort of technique myself in arguments, I can sympathise with his frustration. It can sometimes feel like you’re talking to a brick wall in these situations.

The student is clearly claiming that we have a right to marry whom we want because that is what we require for our happiness and we have a right to happiness.  In standard form it’s something like this:

A1: The student’s argument:

                                P1.          We have a right to happiness
                               P2.          Two men may require to be married in order to achieve happiness
                               HP1.       [All things are rights that are necessary to achieve other rights.]
                                                —————————————————————————————-                                C1.          Two men have a right to be married

This can be taken as a valid argument. Santorum is attacking the idea that P1 and HP1 are true together. To do this, he grants for the sake of argument those two premisses and shows that it can lead, very plausibly, to an unacceptable conclusion.

A2: Santorum’s modification of the student’s argument:

                                P1.          We have a right to happiness
                               P3.          Three men may require to be married in order to achieve happiness
                               HP1.       [All things are rights that are necessary to achieve other rights.]
                                                —————————————————————————————-                                C2.          Three men have a right to be married

This is also a valid argument, but it leads to an unacceptable conclusion – which is to say, a conclusion that the proponents of A1 do not wish to admit (at this time.) Since A2 is different from A1 only in substituting P3 for P2, and P2 and P3 are equally plausible possibilities, it follows that either P1 or HP1 are unacceptable. Since HP1 is left unstated, the focus of Santorum’s counterargument is clearly P1. Santorum is arguing for no more than that you can’t get a right to something because you say that it is necessary to your happiness. It’s not even an argument against same sex ‘marriage,’ it’s an argument against that argument for ssm.

Of course he could have inserted anything in the place of ‘Two men require to be married,’ and it might have made the point clearer than it already was if he had said ‘I require to be king of the world’ or ‘I must be a single hat in a shop window’ or ‘I want to marry my daughter or my dog’ (google that one.) But on the other hand, perhaps the crowd would just be even less able to see the connection.

What seems to be happening is that the audience are just not recognising that he is attacking the argument and not directly contradicting the conclusion; they seem to expect him to offer an argument against same-sex ‘marriage’ as they had defined it which would look something like ‘X and Y and Z, and therefore two men can’t marry, and therefore you’re wrong.’ Thus, whenever he proposed P3, and mentioned ‘three men’ they immediately reacted to that as if it was going off-topic. But it is hard to see how he could have made his strategy any plainer: as the NYT reported, he had previously, and consistently with previous outings, made the point that if they wish to change something, the onus is on them to present an argument in support of that change. (‘Don’t you have to make the positive argument why the law should be changed?” he asked several of them.’) Indeed, they react as if they had never before seen an argument challenged – but this is absurd: debates of any worth can’t be conducted as independent arguments for different conclusions. You might as well not debate at all if you aren’t going to address each other’s arguments.

We know that people aren’t very good with arguments, and episodes such as this may perhaps be deplored as evidence of our fellow humans failure to live up to our own high standards, but a more useful reaction might be to take such episodes as indicators as to the kinds of rhetorical/argumentative techniques that are appropriate to public speech. It’s no earthly use having a formally valid knock-down argument if none of your audience are capable of being persuaded by it. The whole point of argument is to give support to your point of view, and in so far as it fails to provide that support, it is a failure. Santorum’s argument is a failure everywhere outside the tiny fraction of the audience who are able to recognise through training or native ability its ‘formal’ effectiveness.That tiny minority is not his intended audience.