The limits of logical reasoning
Especially on difficult political issues, like abortion and guns rights…
There is a big flaw in political reasoning and debates, which I believe is the “real”, deep reason, of political misunderstandings and political conflicts between citizens. I believe we are mislead by thinking that “echo chambers”, or “polarization”, are the main causes. They play a role, for sure. But the real problem is the misunderstanding of the limits of “logical reasoning”, as envisioned and explained first by philosopher Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (even if it was applied on metaphysics, I believe it applies also on political debates).
I’m going to take two “hot” political issues, as examples in this article, to try to demonstrate that you can completely, fairly, legitimately, reasonably, justify very opposite views on different topics, even with the same datas. A little bit like Kant “proved” the existence, AND then the lack of reality, of God in his famous book, to demonstrate the limits of reasoning. I’m going to try to do the same with those hot and polarizing political topics that are abortion, and gun laws.
My goal here is to give for each of those two issues, two opposite “in favor” and “against” arguments. My goal is to give “extremely” convincing arguments (at least for most “reasonable people”), that would reasonably convince almost anyone of their validity, no matter their personal political sides.
My goal, if I succeed, is to put you in the position where you don’t change your mind, but realize that there was more to the question than you thought initially. No matter where you stand for. I will obviously try to abstain from giving you arguments that you already heard, the “classical arguments”. We will go deeper, I hope. We will take “new perspectives”.
My goal is obviously not to convince you to take one or the other side, but precisely to show that you can’t convince someone on those issues using only “logical arguments”. I believe, I hope, that realization could help to reduce tensions in society, if better understood. I’m going, in conclusion, to give more “useful” way to try “answering” those difficult questions.
Abortion, against and in favor arguments.
1-The case against abortion
There is one particularly convincing logical argument against abortion. It is exemplified by the legal turmoils of “third party fetus homicide” laws, that arise as soon as abortion laws are enacted in any country. This great legal review article, from the respected Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly (article written by Californian defense lawyer Alison Tao), exemplify the problem.
To explain it very simply, to allow abortion, the general legal propositions are to consider that a fetus is not a person until a certain amount of time, generally the first trimester of the pregnancy, because it is not yet sufficiently “formed”.
No matter if this proposition is reasonable or not, it creates a difficult legal (and even philosophical) question, the question of third party fetus homicide.
To explain it with a little context: Imagine a pregnant woman, during her first semester of pregnancy. This woman and her husband had great difficulty conceiving a child. They finally succeeded thanks to medical help, but the doctors warn that if this attempt finally fail, they are not sure they could succeed the next time, as can happen in certain difficult pregnancies.
Now imagine that this woman is attacked by a stranger in the street, who pushes her on the ground, to rob her of her purse. During this attack, the fragile fetus unfortunately dies in the shock. The woman “herself” suffers minor bruises.
The legal question is: should the attacker be prosecuted under the definition of “simple assault” (shoving or slapping a person that results in bruising may be charged, generally, as simple assault), or involuntary fetus homicide?
It seems like a simple question, but it is actually not. To be characterized as an homicide, the victim must be considered legally a person. You can’t legally “murder” a chair.
Some states simply added an aggravating circumstance in the case of assault on pregnant women.
Assaulting a pregnant woman seems like an obviously terrible action, so let’s look at other, more complicated legal scenarios.
What if the same woman was pushed, not by an attacker, but by accident, simply by someone running to catch a bus?
In this case, the hurried passer-by can face no charges on the one hand (it’s legally an innocuous accident to accidentally push someone on the ground, if no serious injuries result), or, on the other hand, face reckless homicide charges, which are extremely more severe (and can be up to 15 years or more in prison, depending on the circumstances and the states), if the fetus is a “person”.
The difference is huge for the persons involved.
Now imagine a last scenario: What if the husband, or boyfriend, of a pregnant woman, decides he doesn’t want to become a father anymore. His partner refuse to abort. So he slips an abortive pile in the drink of his wife. The fetus dies, but no “harm” (at least physical) is done to the pregnant woman.
Can this be considered an assault? Is this “so bad” legally, if only a fetus, as a non-person, was harmed? Probably yes, because it was non consensual, but how to classify it? Is it really like slipping an innocuous vitamin in someone else’s drink? Is it a little more severe? How severe? What is the loss? The loss of a minor organ, or the loss of a life?
And more importantly, how would the pregnant woman perceive those situations? It could be argued that from her perspective, even if she was still in her first semester, her loss is comparable to the loss of a “real human being”. After all, if the actions of the third party had not taken place, she would have had a full child, who would have lived a full life. She indeed could rightly feel that her “child” was taken away from her, and would probably want her loss to be recognized by the justice and society.
To conclude, if we consider that a first trimester fetus is not a person, then a third party killing this fetus should (or could in theory) have no more legal and moral consequences than cutting someone’s hair or fingernails.
But we all intuitively feel that is not really the case, at least I believe, based precisely on the “third party fetus homicide laws” enacted in most states.
I feel the counter argument coming. But the problem is not that “someone” is “killed” for pro-choice defender, but that the pregnant woman suffered a loss in her own body, without her consent. So the problem is the problem of consent.
It can be simply answered that yes, the consent is the problem. But once again, no matter the lack of consent, the issue is of the value of the loss. You can’t legally of morally blame someone who made you loss a small part of a fingernail. So we have to agree that a fetus is of more value than a fingernail (as most states and people do). So we have to wonder what value. And for most people who would suffer such a loss, the value is of course the value of a “future life”.
We can reasonably add that ANY action, by third party or not, who ends a viable pregnancy at any term, is indeed jeopardizing a life. So it can be “reasonably” defended that a fetus is, at least, a “future person”, or citizen, or human being. So an abortion can be argued reasonably to be, at least, a preemptive or actual form of “murder”.
Now, let’s see an equally reasonable and logical argument in favor of abortion.
2-The case for abortion
Even if we were to admit (we don’t really have too, but for the sake of thinking) the conclusion of the first argument, that a fetus is a person, there is a very good argument to be made in favor of abortion. A moral and legal one at the same time.
Let’s admit that a fetus is a person. We have to realize that it is nevertheless a person in a very unique situation, in that its life, its very existence, is entirely, completely, dependent on another person body (the mother, or pregnant woman, how you like to call her).
A fetus is indeed the only human who lives inside another human being.
It cannot survive, especially in the beginning, outside of the body of the pregnant woman.
That raises a big legal and moral problem. But before explaining that problem, I’m going to give another similar legal and moral question, that will help exemplify the situation.
If you have a terrible kidney failure, and you need a kidney donor to save your life, you are in a relatively “similar” legal and moral situation of a fetus. I know it seems far stretched, but you are going to see that it is not THAT far stretched actually.
Imagine the only donor available is one of your siblings, or even your mother for instance (I’m sure you see where I am going). If they give you one of their kidneys, they will save your life. If they refuse, you will die. They are indeed somehow “killing you”, in a sense, if they refuse.
But the problem is that, as it is considered in almost every democratic country, it is legally impossible to force someone to give you their kidney. They have to do it voluntarily. There are two reasons for that. First, obviously, because they risk their health themselves by doing so. It is generally a safe procedure, but they can still die during the operation. And they can also have a small risk of having their only remaining kidney fail them at a later stage of their own life. It is just a little bit less safe to have only one kidney than two for this reason.
It is also considered by most democratic countries that a person’s body is “sacred”, and belongs only to themselves. We can’t force someone to use part of their body for someone else, even for saving a life.
A pregnant woman is in exactly the same situation as a potential organ donor. Because, even if the health risks of pregnancies have become less and less prevalent, they still exist. A woman still have a small risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth. Moreover, she is supposed, as any citizen, to possess full property, autonomy and choices regarding her own body.
It is therefore absolutely immoral, and illegal, to force a woman to have a pregnancy against her will, even if the fetus is a person.
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I hope, with those two arguments, that I managed to convince you, not that abortion is good or bad, but that very strong logical arguments can be made on the two opposite sides of this debate.
What is more important? The right to live of the fetus as a futur person, or the rights of bodily autonomy of a woman? Those are “competing rights”, very valid competing rights. The solution is NOT obvious, I hope I managed to show that complexity. It is not easy to decide only based on “logic”. We have to use our personal “gut feelings” at some point (or personal preferences, opinions if you will), to choose a side. There is probably no “right or wrong” answer.
That’s why finding a “middle ground”, or consensus, is probably a good idea. But we will talk about that in the conclusion.
Let’s try the same exercice with gun laws, this other hot political debate.
The right to buy guns, against and in favor arguments.
1-The case for guns
There is one big argument in favor of laws, in my opinion, allowing citizens to purchase firearms. It is that the number of people actually dying from gun violence (homicides I mean, not suicides) is relatively low, even in a country like the USA (which have very lax gun laws), compared to other “mundane” causes of deaths. There is around 12 000 homicides by firearms, every year, in the USA, compared with more than 40 000 deaths by car accident, or even 92 000 death by drug overdose.
In this regard, it can be argued that preventing citizens from buying firearms, for personal defense, for fun, or any other reason, is not very “reasonable” considering that almost everybody is able to buy a car. People drive recklessly, under the influence of various substances, everyday. Nobody thinks of banning cars. Sure, you need a driver license, but a firearm permit can be implemented in the same way.
For instance, if the government makes sure that any gun purchaser has no criminal record, and why not also regularly checks that they have no dangerous mental health issues (every 10 years for instance), it could be reasonably argued that guns are finally not really more dangerous than cars.
Moreover, some countries, like Switzerland, have a lot of gun ownership, around 28% of the population possesses a firearm there, compared to 42% in the USA. But their rate of homicides is extremely low, 1 per 100 000 people compared to 7 per 100 000 people in the USA.
So maybe the reason of gun violence is not only related to gun ownership, but to other factors. It is possible (just speculations), that the difficult access to health practitioners, health insurance, low safety and social net protections, extreme capitalist functioning of the USA (where winners take all, and “losers” are left dangerously alone and vulnerable), are a dangerous “mix”, that combined with high gun ownership, creates this unusual high level (relatively to other countries I mean) of gun violence that we see in the USA, with all their mass shootings, school shootings, and day to day violence. There could be many factors. It is not absolutely sure that the prevalence of guns is in itself a guarantee of violence.
Guns didn’t exist before around at least the 13th century, but societies where infinitely more violent before that. Societies were even more violents before the invention of modern firearms, one or two centuries ago. I’m sure most people would prefer to live in America today, with all their guns, that in medieval Europe with all their swords. I’m not even talking about health concerns, but really you had more chances to be killed by a sword in medieval Paris, in France, than in modern day Chicago with all their guns and gangs.
2-The case against guns
Let’s admit that guns are not that dangerous for society, compared to other more “mundane” risks like car accidents. Let’s admit guns are not even the main reason of violence in a society, but just participating in the mix of other social problems. There is still the question to know: are the benefices really worth the cost, or the risk, to society? Is it worth it, even if the risks are low?
We all understand the benefices of cars. They are huge for society in terms of mobility and economic life.
But what are really the benefices of guns ownership? To protect oneself against dangerous people, or a tyrannical government, mainly (as explained by the supporters of the second amendment).
We are not going to discuss about the leisure activities like hunting or just collecting guns. I feel it’s not really a benefice that could be weighed favorably against innocent lives lost. Nobody will argue in favor of drunk driving, because it’s “fun” to get drunk at parties for instance (even if it IS fun, one could argue, it’s not a reason to risk innocent people lives).
So we are going to talk about the benefices of guns, to protect oneself against dangerous people, or a tyrannical government.
— Let’s start with the tyrannical government.
A population with firearms can effectively better defend themselves against a dictator. But let’s push the logical argument a little bit “too much”, at absurdum as we say, just for the pleasure to think.
The American government possesses Nuclear weapons. If an evil dictator really came to power in this country, and effectively had the support of the army (like any serious dictator would need), he could possibly (in theory) threaten his own population with nuclear retaliation. The USA are a big country after all, so he could realistically threaten to unleash one or two nuclear warheads on a few cities, like Chicago, Dallas or Los Angeles, to deter rebellion, and to keep everybody “in line”, without destroying the whole country.
It would of course be impossible in a small country like Israel, Japan, or Switzerland, because those countries are too small to target only one part of their territory without damaging too much of the whole country. But in the USA, it is absolutely possible.
So are guns really a viable option of defense against a dictator? Probably not, at least not certainly. The best defense being probably having strong democratic values in the general population, in the army, and having strong counter-powers like the judiciary, the press and the parliament (congress).
Moreover, contrary to popular beliefs, dictators rarely stay in power only with the support of their army. They generally need the support of a substantial part of their population. And, when they lose it, they generally lose their power, as we have seen during the Arab springs for instance.
Of course a big part of their population always suffer, but they still need a substantial support of their population to stay in power. That was the case in Nazi Germany, in Argentina, in Soviet USSR, in Irak, in Syria, and in most dictatorships. There is always a part of the population who supports the dictator, for ideological reasons, or because they benefit from it, or both.
So a dictator in the USA will likely not only have the support of the army, but also of a part of their population. Which is armed precisely to oppose him in theory, but would side with him. Canceling the benefices expected from an armed population, or leading to civil war.
The only historically proven, reliable way to fight a dictator (or any government), is simply to have enough of the population “fed up” with him, and “falling” into the opposition. A population is infinitely greater in numbers than their army, in any country (1 300 000 people in the US army, against 340 000 000 citizens). The sheer numbers are generally sufficient to disrupt and change governance. Most populations in countries of the Arab springs, like Tunisia, succeeded in their revolution without an armed population. Whereas in some countries it can fail, even with an armed rebellion (think of the Farcs in Colombia), simply because there are not “enough” of rebels, even if they are armed.
— What about protecting against other dangerous people?
This is the classical “arms race” game theory problem. Of course, if everybody has a gun, it’s better to have one yourself. But the idea is precisely to prevent everybody from having a gun, so you don’t need one, and the tensions decrease.
Then, of course, only criminals have guns, not honest people. That is the case in most European countries for instance. But the reality is that real armed criminals (organized crime) rarely use their weapons on regular citizens, even less so in public areas like a school or a mall (they are not, generally, “mad men” living in their mother’s basements, but more sort of illegal “business people”, trying to avoid confrontation with the police as much as possible). They usually use guns to kill other criminals.
Moreover, the arms race often creates its own vicious circles. For instance, if a burglar breaks into a house in France, he likely won’t expect armed resistance (except in some parts of the countryside). So he will probably not take a gun with him, as he is generally just trying to steal a TV or money. The judiciary cost of breaking into a house WITH a gun is exponentially worse, if you get caught by the police, than breaking into a house without any weapons (armed robbery is way worse than simple robbery).
There is no reason for him to bring a gun. He doesn’t generally fear for his life. And guns are a real liability in a country like France. As it is never authorized, if you get caught with one, the problems are very big, no matter the infraction.
And even if he takes a gun with him, he is far less likely to use it against the people in the house. Why? Because, once again, he doesn’t fear for his life. His gun gives him the confidence that he is “safe”. He will generally use it to scare people, not shoot them.
What about serial killers? Those people are really a rarity in the criminal world. And they will have the advantage of “surprise”. They generally don’t kill with guns anyway.
Whereas, in a country like the USA, a burglar really can expect armed resistance while breaking into a house. Does that stop him from breaking in? Not really, that just convinces him to take a gun with him. As everybody is expecting the other party to be armed and fears for their own life, the tensions are really high, and the result is fear, not feelings of safety.
The police officers job is often more difficult and dangerous in countries where citizens are armed. Which of course makes them more prone to make mistakes, and “shoot first and ask questions later” because of fear (“I thought he had a gun”). That’s probably one of the reasons the US police kills so much more than any democratic police in the world.
Lastly, even in the cases of a “good guy” with a gun, stoping a bad guy with a gun, it is very difficult for the police (or even bystanders) to understand who is the good guy. That’s why heroes get accidentally killed in a lot of mass shootings. The police officers simply don’t understand why a civil, someone dressed in normal clothes, not in uniform, is shooting someone else in the streets, in a mall, or anywhere else. They arrive on the scene a little bit late, they don’t have the time to correctly assess the situation. All they know is that an active shooter is killing people, and all they see is a “regular guy” with a gun, standing next to a corpse, or even actively shooting at someone.
They can’t reasonably ask: “Are you the baddy? Or the hero?”. Moreover, if they don’t take a shot fast, they can themselves get killed.
That’s why it’s generally safer for everybody to let people in clear uniforms (police officers or army…), do the “good guys with guns”.
Imagine the confusion if everybody draws a gun, during a terrorist attack. Who is with who?
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Conclusion
Once again, I was not trying to convince you that you should be against or in favor of abortion. Or against or in favor of guns. I’m not even saying that my arguments are completely decisive. Just that they are based on some reasonable logic.
I was just trying to show you, that logical reasoning is ultimately limited, in finding a solution to some difficult political questions.
A lot of good, logical arguments can be made in various different perspectives.
So, why do people choose one side or the other?
It can be for various reasons, education, social environments… But ultimately, I believe that the real reason is simply “gut feelings”.
What do I mean? I simply mean that people have different priorities, that’s all.
Some women are more worried about the loss of their bodily autonomy, which is understandable. Some people, for religious reasons or any other reasons, are more worried about the life of a fetus. That doesn’t mean that anyone of them is more “wrong” in an absolute moral sense. Those are both valid, logical concerns.
Some people are more worried about their liberty to defend themselves against potential aggressors, knowing that the police takes a lot of time to come to the rescue in case of danger, so they want to have the right to buy a gun. Some other people are more worried about the societal climate of fear that lax guns laws can create in a country. And the ability for crazy people to do mass shootings. Those are valid, logical concerns. Nobody is really “wrong” about their concerns.
What are the solutions?
It’s obviously consensus. It has always been the ideal solution in democratic countries.
It’s never a good idea, when people strongly disagree, to only favor one side (except if a consensus is absolutely impossible, like with the question of ending slavery, but it’s rarely the case, and that often leads to civil wars).
How to reach consensus? By admitting that nobody can be totally “satisfied” with the solution. The role of the debate should be to place the “cursor” somewhere. Not to definitely put in on one side or the other. Otherwise it creates too much political instability.
More generally, the goal is to consider that your opponents oppose you in “good faith”. Because that is actually generally the case. It’s a little bit preposterous to imagine that one side is composed only of “stupid or crazy radical people”. That can happen, of course. But it’s not a very “useful” or practical way to think. Especially if you can demonstrate that logical and reasonable arguments can be made on both sides.
Sometimes, when the disagreement is really strong, it’s just more healthy to say, like Ali G: “Let’s agree to disagree”.
Thank you, have a good day :)
