Getting an Ought from an Is argument:
During a sales presentation errors in reasoning are not always easy to spot. However, they do undermine their persuasive force and should make us question the salesperson’s motives. The salesperson may not knowingly be offering us spurious arguments but just simply applying a sales methodology that is almost standard across all fields of selling. Standard it might be, but non-manipulative it is not. But even if questionable practices are used unknowingly they are not entirely forgivable. They remain manipulative whether used knowingly or unknowingly, just as a brick landing on our head will hurt just as much if accidentally rather than purposefully dropped. It is incumbent upon us as consumers to wear our hard consumer hat and assess the arguments presented.
Deriving ought from is:
A common mistake salespeople make is to blur the fact-value distinction. There is a fundamental difference between how something is and how it ought to be. The fact that some people save for retirement is one thing; that they should, or ought to, is quite another matter. The first just happens to be a fact, the other a matter of value.
Problems occur when salespeople infer an ought from an is. The following argument seems reasonable:
How can anyone claim travel insurance is a bad idea? Travel insurance has been around for hundreds of years.
Reasonable as it sounds, it is a fallacious argument. If we look closely at the argument we will see that it makes the following claim:
Travel insurance has existed for hundreds of years. (is) So it is a good idea (for you). (ought)
This argument has derived an ought from an is in that it offers a prescriptive conclusion. In other words, it offers as a conclusion what we ought to believe solely on the basis that travel insurance has been around for hundreds of years. That there is something wrong, or inadequate, with the argument becomes more apparent if we substitute the following identical argument:
How can anyone think poverty is a bad thing? Poverty has existed for thousands of years.
Poverty may have existed for centuries, but surely false to suggest it ought to be regarded as a good thing. If we are not prepared to accept this conclusion we have exactly the same reason to reject the first argument. Just because something is the case does not provide sufficient grounds for concluding something ought to be the case.
The reason travel insurance is a good thing, if it is a good thing for you, is because it provides you with protection of a particular kind not covered by any other form of insurance. Not because it has been around for hundreds of years. But if holiday insurance simply covers what might already be covered on your household policy, or a policy offered with a bank account, then the policy on offer is a waste of money, so you ought not to buy it.
What we have in both examples is an inference from a descriptive premise (what is the case) to a prescriptive conclusion (what ought to be the case). Sales presentations that argue that because something is the case often do not provide sufficient grounds for why we ought to take action. They simply blur the waters to lead us to the conclusion they prescribe.
Conditional arguments:
There is nothing wrong with arguments presented to us which are conditional in that the reasons offered support the conclusion. Conditional arguments are often quite easy to spot. The salesperson will often use the phrase ‘If … then …’ For example:
If you have poor insulation, then your heating bills will be high. Your heating bills are high. Therefore, you have poor insulation.
The fairly straight-forward example used to explain the problem with some conditional arguments is the following:
If it is raining, the windows will be wet. The windows are wet. Therefore, it’s raining.
However, not all such arguments are as they first appear and you might well have spotted the flaw already.
The reason the windows are wet could be accounted for by other reasons. Perhaps because someone was washing the windows or a hose pipe was accidentally sprayed over them. The argument only works as a line of reasoning if we can’t think of another reason for the conclusion. But the argument crumbles if we can think of another reason why the windows might be wet.
Similarly in the case of poor insulation:
It could be the case that our heating bills are high because we use a lot of power. Perhaps we have the heating on a high setting, or we seldom turn off lights, and so. It could have nothing to do with having poor insulation.
With conditional arguments what we have are some truths but a falsehood derived from them. True that if your insulation is poor your bills will be high, true your bills are high. But false you have poor insulation. So it is not enough to simply have premises in an argument that are true to have a conclusion that is true. The premises must support the conclusion.
Whenever we are confronted with an ‘If …, then …’ argument we need to examine them to ensure we have been offered a valid argument or merely had the initial claim affirmed. If so then we are being misled by a fallacious argument that is unsupported. The salesperson might not have knowingly misled us, but that makes it no less unacceptable.
In #6 I will look at Conditional and Appeals to Force arguments.