Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
I have to tell you, I absolutely love doing this podcast & I especially love hearing from you, my listeners. It’s so fun to hear how much you’re learning, to hear about the conversations you’re having as a family when you listen, and hearing about your wins when you recognize ‘bad thinking in the wild’ as I like to call it. I’m telling you, I believe the ability to think well is like having a super power that everyone else around you doesn’t have, especially since we are living in a period of time where the propaganda & the lies are intentional and pervasive. I listened to a podcast recently that went over the history of propaganda and it was eye-opening in a sort of scary way. Suffice it to say, I’m not being a weird conspiracy theorist when I tell you that there has been a concerted effort to create, control and change certain narratives & beliefs for a very long time. So much so that we don’t even recognize most of it when it happens! And the crazy part is that they’ve been alarmingly successful. So we HAVE to be able to recognize it when we see it, and a great way to do this is to learn to think well and learn to think for yourself. That’s what this podcast is all about.
So, to start off, let me share a quick podcast review that Rasa1974 left for the show: “I just started listening to this podcast a few days ago and I think it’s so needed. We need to be taught how to think for ourselves. Too many entities want to tell us what to think and this resource teaches us how to think. Keep it up!” Thank you, Rasa1974, for leaving that review! I certainly intend to keep it up! If you haven’t left a review, would you take just a minute and do that now wherever you’re listening? It helps so much when you leave a review - both to spread the word & help people find this podcast, but it also encourages me more than you know!
I want to say thank you to our sponsor the past few months, Classical Conversations. The Classical Conversations® homeschool programs set students up for success in all areas of life by encouraging them to develop the skills necessary to learn anything. By joining a Classical Conversations community of local homeschool families, you’ll be equipped with the tools and training to homeschool with confidence. Learn more at classicalconversations.com/gibbens.
Ok, the fallacy of the day is going to feel pretty easy to you b/c it’s the exact opposite of the fallacy we covered in yesterday’s episode. Yesterday, we talked about the Noble Motive fallacy, where someone is expected to be believed b/c they have good intentions. Today, we’re going to talk about the opposite, the Wicked Motive Fallacy. The Wicked Motive Fallacy happens when someone is automatically assumed to be false or lying or wrong just b/c they have bad motives.
This is a form of Argument from Motives Fallacy, and is sometimes called the Attacking the Motives Fallacy, where someone just focuses on the person’s motives for doing something, without actually asking if something is true or not.
Here’s a simple example: Sam, who woke up on the ornery side of the bed that day, just wants to get his sister in trouble, so he tells their parents that she didn’t clean her room like she was supposed to. She loudly complains, “He’s just saying that to get me in trouble!”, which certainly appears to be true, so their parents reprimand Sam for tattling on his sister. Do you see the fallacy? Yes, Sam had bad motives for telling on his sister, but his bad motive doesn’t mean his claim was false! The kids’ parents needed to actually go look at the sister’s room and see for themselves whether it had been cleaned or not.
Another example would be saying, “Osama Bin Laden wanted the US out of Afghanistan, so clearly we must keep fighting!” Do you see how they’re appealing to the wicked motives of Bin Laden and if he wanted something, we clearly have to do the opposite, without even stopping to ask the question of whether or not we should be fighting in Afghanistan.
The problem with this thinking is that when we are trying to determine truth, we have to take a look past the person’s motives & actually ask the question, ‘is it really true?’ We have to look at the claim or the argument for its own sake rather than just conclude that it isn’t true b/c the person has bad motives. They can have bad motives AND be telling the truth.
This Wicked Motive Fallacy happens all the time in politics. One political party will point out that the other political party just hates the current President and therefore they will do anything they can to stop him and make him fail, so therefore we can’t trust anything they say or do. And this is an easy bandwagon for people to jump onto…especially when they’re on the other side! They almost WANT to believe how wicked the opposing party is so that they can discredit everything they say and not have to actually ask the questions, “Is it really true?”
And honestly, that’s the reason this fallacy happens so much - it works! People love to believe a Wicked Motive Fallacy b/c it feels good and “right” to disbelieve a wicked person. There’s a lot of emotion involved with seeing someone’s bad character, making it really easy to then disbelieve everything they say. It takes intellectual honesty to say, well…is it possible they’re telling the truth, or is it possible that what they’re saying is true, even if they have bad intentions?
Question to ask yourself: “Is it really true that it’s wrong just b/c they have bad intentions?”… *repeat*
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
