The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy (9 page)

In inductive arguments, the arguer intends his conclusion to follow from the premises with a
degree of probability
. Here, if all of the premises are true, then the conclusion probably or likely is true, but it could be false. In the “Towelie” episode, the boys notice that when they speak about anything having to do with towels, Towelie shows up, and so they reason like this:

Provided these premises are true, the conclusion is probably or likely true, but not definitely so. It’s what we call an “educated guess” that Towelie will show up, given past experience. But because Towelie has regularly appeared in the past doesn’t
guarantee
that he
will
show up now.

Consider Stan’s reasoning at the end of the episode “Scott Tenorman Must Die” after it’s revealed that Cartman orchestrated the death of Scott’s parents and added their bodies to the chili, while the band Radiohead witnessed the entire thing so they could make fun of Scott for being a wussy:

Again, even if both of the premises are true, it doesn’t follow with absolute certainty that the boys had better not anger Cartman in the future; they may be willing to take the risk. As it turns out, the boys piss off Cartman many times without the kind of retaliation inflicted on poor Scott Tenorman. So, the conclusion is at worst false, and at best, not well supported.

But our goal isn’t just to slap together arguments. We need to form
good arguments
, and we need to evaluate the arguments of others. There are good arguments and there are bad arguments in both the deductive and inductive realms. A good argument, in either realm, is one in which the conclusion logically follows from the premises and the premises of which are all true. If either one of these conditions is absent, then the argument “sucks” and should be rejected.

When the conclusion of a deductive argument follows from premises, we call this argument
valid
(it’s
invalid
if the conclusion doesn’t follow with certainty). When an argument is
valid
and
all
the premises are true, such a good argument is said to be
sound
. The conclusion absolutely, positively, without a doubt, is true, and this is a good thing! In the case of an inductive argument, if its conclusion is
very likely
to follow from its premises, this means that the argument is
strong
(or
weak
if the conclusion very likely doesn’t follow). When an inductive argument is
strong
and
all
the premises are true, such a good argument is said to be
cogent
. The conclusion most likely or probably is true, and this is a good thing too!

So, as rational critical thinkers, we always have to go through this two-step procedure of checking our own arguments and the arguments of others to see if (1) the conclusion follows from the premises (is the argument deductively valid or inductively strong?) and (2) all of the premises are true. If the argument fails the (1) or (2) test (or both), then we should reject it. This also means we’re rejecting the argument’s conclusion as either absolutely false or probably false. For example, Cartman’s argument for pooling together the boys’ teeth probably is a bad one because Premise 2 (“If they get money from the Tooth Fairy, then they can buy a Sega Dreamcast”) seems false. Even if they get money from the Tooth Fairy, they won’t be able to buy a Sega Dreamcast, because the Tooth Fairy only gave Cartman two dollars. Two dollars times four boys is only eight dollars and, even if we’re talking about a used Dreamcast, that’s not enough. So, in the case of this particular deductive argument, the conclusion “If the boys combine their teeth, then they can get a Sega Dreamcast” is false. On the other hand, the Towelie argument was a good one. It was true that the few times they mentioned towel-related things, Towelie showed up. Given this, they had a strong case for the conclusion that he’d show up again, asking, of course, “Wanna get high?”

At times, checking to see if conclusions follow from premises and if premises are true can be difficult. Some words are ambiguous, having multiple meanings. And some people try to get us to believe the truth of claims in order to deceive us, sell us something, get us to vote for them, or share their ideology. People will even try to convince us a conclusion follows from a premise or premises when it really doesn’t. Just think about what the cartoon Johnny Cochran does with the Chewbacca Defense (a satire of the real-life Cochran’s closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson case) in the episode “Chef Aid.”

In the episode, Alanis Morissette comes out with a hit song “Stinky Britches” that Chef had written some 20 years ago. Chef produces a tape of him performing the song and takes the record company to court, asking only that he be credited for writing the hit. The record company executives then hire Cochran. In his defense of the record company, Cochran shows the jury a picture of Chewbacca and claims that, because Chewbacca is from Kashyyyk and lives on Endor with the Ewoks, “It does not make sense.” Cochran continues: “Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense … If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.” The jury is so convinced by Cochran’s “argument,” that they deny Chef’s request to give him credit, but they also find Chef guilty of harassing a major record label, fining him two million dollars to be paid within 24 hours. Friends of Chef then organize “Chef Aid” to pay his fine.

We laugh at Cochran’s defense because it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual case. It’s even more absurd when the Chewbacca Defense is also used to “prove” Chef is guilty of harassing the very record company that had produced his stolen song. The issue of Chewbacca living on Endor is completely irrelevant to whether Chef should receive credit for the song, or whether he’s actually harassed the record company. As rational thinkers, we recognize this, laugh at the absurdities, and wonder why anyone in their right mind would connect the Chewbacca Defense with these other issues.

As we saw earlier in this chapter, logicians have a special term (a
fallacy
) for these bad arguments in which the conclusion doesn’t follow from premises. Fallacies are so common that logicians have names for different types of fallacies. The Chewbacca Defense, for example, is an instance of the
red herring
fallacy, which gets its name from a police dog exercise in which policemen used strong-smelling red herring fish in an attempt to throw dogs off the trail of a scent. In a red herring fallacy, claims and arguments that have nothing to do with the issue at hand are offered in order to point to the truth of a conclusion that the arguer wants us to accept. In the episode “Weight Gain 4000,” Wendy has a legitimate complaint against Cartman for cheating to win the essay contest, but people refuse to accept her conclusion because they’re distracted by the excitement of Kathy Lee Gifford coming to town. Even after Wendy shows the damning evidence that Cartman had just handed in a copy of Thoreau’s
Walden
as his essay, they simply don’t care about whether Cartman cheated or not. This happens in a lot of
South Park
episodes; it’s a humorous way for Trey and Matt to make their points about people’s faulty and crazy reasoning.

The
slippery slope
is another fallacy often lampooned on
South Park
. A person commits this fallacy when she claims that some initial occurrence or belief will inevitably lead to a further chain of events that we want to avoid, and so we should avoid the initial occurrence or reject the belief. It’s as if there’s an unavoidable “slippery” slope with no way to avoid sliding down it. Mrs. Broflovski’s reasoning about the banning the
Terrance and Phillip Show
, mentioned earlier, might go something like this: “If we allow something like the
Terrance and Phillip Show
on the air, then it will corrupt all of our kids, then shows like this one will crop up all over the TV, then more and more kids will be corrupted, then all of TV will be corrupted, then the corrupt TV producers will corrupt other areas of our life, etc., etc. So, we must take the
Terrance and Phillip Show
off the air; otherwise, it will lead to all this bad stuff!” We can clearly see the slippery slope. It isn’t ­necessarily true that the corrupt TV producers will corrupt other areas of our life, but all of a sudden we’re at the bottom of the slope! What just happened?

In “Clubhouses,” Mrs. Marsh uses a kind of slippery slope fallacy combined with a hasty generalization to respond to Stan grabbing a cookie. The humor comes from the fact that she’s going through a rough separation with her husband: “You men are all alike. First you get a cookie and then you criticize the way I dress, and then it’s the way I cook! Next you’ll be telling me that you need your space, and that I’m sabotaging your creativity! Go ahead Stanley, get your damn cookie!” Her conclusion is that Stan shouldn’t grab a cookie because, otherwise, all of these other things will happen. The hasty generalization comes from the “you men are all alike” comment.

A
false dilemma
fallacy draws a conclusion from only
two
options, when there are three or more actual options. People are inclined to an “all or nothing” approach to winning their arguments, and this tempts them think in terms of false dilemmas. In some situation, couldn’t it be that we have a little bit of both, so that we get a “both/and,” not an “either/or,” as our conclusion? In “Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo,” the people of
South Park
give into all-or-nothing kind of thinking when they conclude that the only way not to offend anyone is to rid the school’s Holiday Show of any and all religious references. This kind of logic has disastrous consequences: the show is ruined and people wind up fighting over it. Could they have
included
a few other religious traditions, instead of
excluding
all of them? But the “both/and” strategy, which can often avoid a false dilemma, might not always have the best consequences. Consider “Chef Goes Nanners”: even though a “both/and” solution is reached and some “ethnic diversity” is added to the South Park flag, it’s doubtful whether this is good, let alone right, for the townsfolk.

A fallacious
argument from inappropriate authority
sounds like what it is: it’s incorrectly drawing a conclusion from premises that come from an untrustworthy, non-qualified, or illegitimate source posing as an authority. The best way to avoid this fallacy altogether is to
become
an authority, at least to some extent, by getting all the ­relevant facts, understanding issues, doing research, checking and double-checking your sources, dialoguing with people, having your ideas challenged, defending your position, and being open to revising your position. But we can’t become authorities on everything, so we need to rely on others. In “Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?” Father Maxi claims that Kyle (who’s Jewish) and Timmy (who can only communicate his own name: “Timm-aah!”) will both go to hell if they don’t confess their sins and accept Christ as their savior. At first glance, the conclusion that Kyle and Timmy will go to hell doesn’t
seem
to be a fallacy of appeal to inappropriate authority. After all, Father Maxi is an authority of the Church. However, after investigating Church doctrine, you’ll see that no human being—pope, priest, or layperson—can make pronouncements about who’ll burn and who won’t.

An
ad hominem
fallacy occurs when we dismiss a person’s arguments because of their actions, background, personality, or ideology. In other words, instead of focusing on the person’s argument, the person herself is attacked (
ad hominem
is Latin for
to the man
). This strategy of discrediting a person’s argument by discrediting the person is common. But a person and their argument are two distinct things. For example, in “Butt Out,” a cartoon Rob Reiner argues that kids in South Park shouldn’t smoke, and he campaigns for a law to ban smoking in the town. Not only is Reiner portrayed as having his own junk food vice, but he deceptively uses the boys to get the law passed. Now, even if Reiner does have a junk food problem, and even if he does something immoral in trying to get the boys to help him, what does this have to do with the truth of the argument about whether kids should smoke, or whether laws against smoking should be passed in South Park? The answer is, absolutely nothing! Yet, we might be duped into opposing such a law against smoking if Reiner’s apparent hypocrisy and deviance were pointed out. But that would be misguided since cartoon Reiner’s hypocrisy and deviance have nothing to do with the arguments for or against smoking.

Part of the appeal of
South Park
is how it points out the flaws in our thinking. We all sometimes forget to check if our premises are true, or we believe that a conclusion follows from premises when it doesn’t. But the biggest logical problem we all have stems from our staunchly held emotional beliefs, the ones that we just can’t let go of no matter what evidence and arguments are presented to us. Some people are almost
phobic
in their fear of letting go of some key belief.