The ‘Passes-For’ Fallacy and the Future of Critical Thinking

The ‘Passes-For’ Fallacy and the Future of CriticalThinking

William Goodwin

Published online: 16 September 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract In this paper, I characterize Susan Haack’s so called ‘‘passes-for’’ fal-

lacy, analyze both what makes this inference compelling and why it is illegitimate,

and finally explain why reflecting on the passes-for fallacy—and others like it—

should become part of critical thinking pedagogy for humanities students. The

analysis proceeds by examining a case of the passes-for fallacy identified by Haack

in the work of Ruth Bleier. A charitable reconstruction of Bleier’s reasoning shows

that it is enlightening to regard the passes-for fallacy as an abuse of the application

conditions of the concept of bias, rather than as an egregious case of Hasty

Generalization.

Keywords Fallacy � Susan Haack � Critical thinking � Relativism

Beginning with her work in the early nineties, Susan Haack has repeatedly

characterized a fallacy that she finds to play a central role in the arguments of those

who deny the existence of objective epistemological norms. The ‘passes-for’

fallacy, as she calls it, marks the transition from what may well be legitimate,

informed criticism to a more general cynicism about honest inquiry or objective

truth. In the case of science, which has been Haack’s central concern, she finds the

passes-for fallacy at work in the arguments of those relativists, social constructiv-

ists, and post-modernists who would deny the epistemic distinction of science.

These ‘‘New Cynics’’ typically gain a foothold by unmasking a particular purported

product of scientific inquiry as a historical accident or as the product of bias. From

this particular piece of purported knowledge—which as it turns out has merely

passed for knowledge but is no such thing—the cynics then infer that science is

W. Goodwin (&)

Department of Philosophy and Religion, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Argumentation (2010) 24:363–374

DOI 10.1007/s10503-009-9170-y

incapable of producing objective knowledge or engaging in honest inquiry. Haack

acknowledges that science is fallible, and that criticism can, should, and does play

an important role in rooting out the false beliefs and misleading assumptions to

which science is sometimes subject. On the other hand, she wishes to deny that this

criticism leads to either a limp nihilism or a licentious epistemological free-for-all.

Not surprisingly, then, it is the inference from local criticisms to broad

epistemological conclusions that Haack identifies as fallacious and criticizes. In

this paper, I will characterize Haack’s passes-for fallacy, analyze both what makes

this inference compelling and why it is illegitimate, and finally explain why

reflecting on the passes-for fallacy—and others like it—should, in my opinion,

become part of critical thinking pedagogy for humanities students.

1 The Passes-For Fallacy

Susan Haack has offered many different, roughly equivalent, formulations of the

passes-for fallacy since first coining the term in 1993.1 My favorite version is the

following (Haack 2003, p. 173):

[T]he passes-for-fallacy: that ubiquitous but crashingly invalid argument from

the true premise that what passes for truth, evidence, known fact, honest

inquiry, etc., is often no such thing, to the false conclusion that the ideas of

truth, evidence, knowledge, honest inquiry, etc., are ideological humbug.

If Haack is right, and there is an argument type that is both ubiquitous and

‘‘crashingly’’ invalid, then clearly there is some work to be done by those of us who

aspire to instill critical thinking skills in our students.

Apart from some very broad sociological and psychological suggestions (which I

will mention later), however, Haack has not done much to characterize the

inferential contexts in which the passes-for fallacy is prevalent or to reconstruct the

reasoning of those who commit it. Instead she has been content to dismiss the

relevant inference as straightforwardly invalid. She is not particularly concerned

with uncovering the sources of this fallacy, or suggesting ways that it might be

avoided. It is enough to have identified the inference and declared, or perhaps more

charitably shown, the inference not to be truth preserving. Given her rhetorical

objectives—making space for a critical common-sensism about science—this may

be perfectly appropriate. However, it does leave some work to be done. If one wants

to appreciate what is distinctive about the passes-for fallacy, then the inappropri-

ateness of the inference cannot be understood by simply declaring it to be a bad

inference, or assimilating it to cases of a more general formal fallacy. Simply

declaring that the inference is bad will look like begging the question to those who

accept it. Likewise, assimilating the inference to generic cases of, say, hasty

generalization is also unlikely to have much rhetorical force. Thus to establish the

1 In Defending Science within Reason, Haack reports (p. 30, footnote 26) that the term was coined in

‘‘Knowledge and Propaganda: Reflections of an Old Feminist,’’ originally published in 1993; however, I

have been unable to find the term in my reprint of that essay in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate.

364 W. Goodwin

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etiology of the passes-for fallacy in a way that exposes it to treatment, we must try

to make sense of the context in which the inference occurs. This will allow us to

understand more charitably those who commit the passes-for fallacy, which in turn,

one hopes, will suggest more effective strategies for avoiding it in the future.

2 Fleshing Out the Context

In at least one case, Haack identifies a particular text and author where she thinks

the passes-for fallacy has been committed. By considering this particular case, as

well as Haack’s presentation of it, I hope to develop both a more nuanced

appreciation for what the passes-for fallacy is and what makes it compelling to those

tempted by it.

The paper that Haack cites as containing a case of the passes-for fallacy is,

‘‘Science and the Construction of Meanings in the Neurosciences’’ by Ruth Bleier.

Bleier was a neuroanatomist who was well respected by her peers for her careful

studies of the hypothalamus and she was also well known for her work on gender

bias in science (Brugge et al. 1988). Both of Bleier’s major intellectual concerns are

evident in the article that Haack cites. Most of the article is a forceful condemnation

of the review procedures of the journal Science. Bleier suggests that this journal

suppresses dissent by either not holding privileged contributors to ‘‘anyone’s

minimum scientific standards’’ or by publishing what ‘‘the editors and reviewers

find culturally and socially pleasing no matter how shoddy the evidence or

reasoning’’ (Bleier 1988, p. 98). To reach this conclusion, she contrasts some papers

that were published in Science, which purport to show that there is an anatomical

basis for gender differences in cognitive ability, with her own papers—rejected by

the journal—that reach the opposite conclusion. The upshot of this contrast, as

Bleier presents it, is that there is not much good evidence for the conclusions

presented in the papers that were published, while there are plenty of good reasons

to suppose that her own conclusions are well-founded. In her description of Bleier’s

work, Haack has nothing negative to say about this part of Bleier’s paper.

Presumably, Bleier’s criticisms of theories of the existence and origin of cognitive

differences between the genders would be exactly the sort of ‘‘detailed criticism of

specific scientific work’’ (Haack 1998, p. 116) that Haack recognizes as potentially

contributing to both to the disciplines at which it is directed and to traditional

epistemology.

For the purposes of understanding Haack’s charge of fallacious reasoning, we can

take it that the first part of Bleier’s paper makes a convincing case—in the course of

its criticisms of Science’s editorial procedures—that there was no good evidence for

gender-associated structural differences in the human brain. Furthermore, Bleier

alleges that the most prestigious scientific journals, and the neuroscientific literature

more generally, were still presenting theories of gender based structural differences

as if they were well-established scientific results. If Bleier is right in both cases, then

a claim that is broadly accepted as scientific knowledge (or at least a well-supported

hypothesis) is in fact not such knowledge (or not well-supported). Rather it is a

claim that is maintained for reasons other than its being well-supported by the

The ‘Passes-For’ Fallacy and the Future of Critical Thinking 365

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evidence. In this case, Bleier alleges, the claim is accepted both because those

responsible for its dissemination, ‘‘benefit personally and professionally from the

perpetuation of gender stereotypes’’ and because the claim ‘‘resonate[s] harmoni-

ously with the ideologies and needs of the larger androcentric society’’ (Bleier 1988,

p. 103). In other words, values or beliefs associated with gender are responsible for

the discrepancy between the evidence and the theories promoted in the neurosci-

entific literature. As a result, the first part of Bleier’s paper plausibly establishes the

truth, in a particular case, of the premise of Haack’s passes-for fallacy—‘‘what has

passed for …known fact… sometimes turns out to be no such thing’’ (Haack 1998,

p. 117).

On the basis of this (plausibly) true premise, Bleier concludes—according to

Haack—that ‘‘bias is everywhere [and] that objectivity is impossible’’ (Haack 1998,

p. 118). Indeed, Bleier does claim that, ‘‘there must be, finally, an irreducible level

of distortion or biasing of knowledge production simply because science is a social

activity performed by human beings in a specific cultural and temporal context’’

(Bleier 1988, p. 101). Furthermore, she is explicit that ‘‘however rigorously any

scientist attempts to be objective when investigating natural phenomenon, there is

an irreducible level of subjectivities in the project’’ (Bleier 1988, p. 100). Though

Haack gets Bleier’s conclusions right, I think that she misrepresents her argument.

Bleier does not infer directly from a single case of bias to the general conclusion

that bias is inescapable and objectivity impossible. Instead, the example of how bias

undermines objectivity developed in the first part of her paper plays a supporting

role in Bleier’s argument. It is used as a suggestive instance of a general

epistemological claim—maintained for other or additional reasons—which in fact

does the heavy lifting in the argument.

To see that this is so, it will be useful to reconstruct Bleier’s argument for the

universality of bias and the lack of objectivity presented in the second part of her

paper. Bleier begins by claiming that gender—the ultimate source of the bias

identified in the first part of the paper—is the ‘‘most invisible and unacknowledged’’

category of bias that affects scientific knowledge. She supports this by providing

accounts of some of the more mundane sources of bias, such as personal animosity,

intellectual infatuation with one’s own ideas, and economic interests. What this adds

up to is a more or less convincing case that there are a large number of individual

characteristics (e.g. beliefs and values involving race, gender, class, etc.) that canbias the results and methods of individual scientists. This is eminently plausible, and

Haack would surely accept this point. The next step in Bleier’s argument is to claim

that everyone is ‘situated’ with respect to at least some of these individual

characteristics; that is (Bleier 1988, p. 100):

[S]cientists are human and, like everyone else, each has a unique life history as

well as specific location with respect to gender, class, race, and ethnicity, and

consequently, a set of values, beliefs, viewpoints and needs.

Again, this seems plausible enough, and Haack would surely concede that all

people have values and beliefs and that some of these are bound up with gender,

race, class, etc. It is only the next, and last, premise in Bleier’s argument that is

controversial. In this last premise, Bleier asserts that a scientist’s situation with

366 W. Goodwin

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respect to these sorts of individual characteristics (along with some assumptions

absorbed during scientific training) determines both what conclusions the scientist

will reach and what evidence he or she will accept as legitimate. Bleier expresses

herself thus (Bleier 1988, pp. 99–100):

Every scientist has (and was trained within) a distinctive set of scientific and

nonscientific viewpoints and assumptions (presuppositions, premises, givens)

that determine his/her particular research interests and questions, approaches,

methods, interpretations, and conclusions.

Now if Bleier is right about this, then no beliefs—at least scientific ones—are

held for good reasons (or perhaps for reasons at all). What someone believes is a

result of their situation and not any facts about what the evidence shows (at best,

what one believes about the evidence might affect what one believes about the

world). It seems fair enough to describe such a world as one in which bias is

ubiquitous, or better still, where the notion of objectivity has no place.

We must next consider what role the individual case of gender bias characterized

in the first part of Bleier’s paper is supposed to play in this argument. There does not

seem to be any need to invoke this case in support of Bleier’s first two premises. The

individual case of gender bias could be taken to show that assumptions about

gender, or values attached to gender roles, have the potential to undermine the

objectivity of scientists. Furthermore, gender is a feature that quite plausibly has

some manifestation in everyone’s belief and/or value system. Nonetheless, since

neither of these first two premises is especially controversial, it seems more

charitable to me to try to understand how the case of gender bias might plausibly

support Bleier’s controversial premise—the claim that one’s situation determineswhat one believes. We typically understand one another as believing things for

reasons, or in light of evidence of various sorts. As a result, proponents of strong

belief determinism, such as Bleier (or Hume), seem to be restricted to the following

approaches: either they provide a negative argument purporting to show that reason

and evidence cannot possibly account for what we believe, or they provide a

positive argument in which some alternative causal story provides a better (or the

best) account of what we believe. In the best cases, such as Hume’s arguments about

unobserved matter of fact beliefs, a convincing negative argument is backed up by a

plausible alternative story. Bleier doesn’t have much to say about why evidence or

reason cannot have a role in what we believe, though other writers who end up in

much the same position as Bleier do frequently supply such negative arguments.2

Bleier’s positive alternative story about how beliefs are generated must, therefore,

bear the weight of her controversial premise. In turn, if we are to be maximally

charitable, then we must try to understand how the example of gender bias is

supposed to support the alternative explanation of our believing what we do on the

basis of our situation.

To understand how an individual example of gender bias might help with

Bleier’s alternative causal story, I think we must take a hint from Bleier’s

2 See Blackburn (2005, Chaps. 2, 3) for a very general characterization of the dialectic between

‘‘relativists’’ and ‘‘absolutists.’’


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characterization of gender as the ‘‘most invisible and unacknowledged’’ source of

bias infecting scientific belief. To maintain that what we believe in the general case

is determined by some antecedent set of situation dependent beliefs and desires, one

must have a lot of confidence that ‘‘dark forces’’3 are at work in our mental life. The

dark forces that in fact cause us to believe what we believe are not recognizable as

having this effect—this is why they are dark. If we recognize ourselves as believing

something merely because of our situation, this typically undermines our belief. To

end up as a situation belief determinist, one must convince oneself that forces

unrecognizable to yourself, and unidentifiable in the general case, must somehow be

responsible for everything that you believe. It is because gender is so invisible, and

typically unrecognized (at least according to Bleier), that a case of gender bias is

supposed to help convince (or, should I say cause) us to accept Bleier’s

controversial premise that what we believe is determined by our situation. Gender,

we are supposed to recognize, is ever present and insidious. It creeps in and

determines, or has a hand in determining, what we believe about things ostensibly

unrelated to gender at all—what appropriate editorial policies at a journal should be,

for example. If the editor of Science, who—one hopes—regards himself as choosing

to publish articles only on the basis of their objective scientific merit, can end up

disseminating beliefs with little to recommend them because of the resonance

between those beliefs and the ideologies of his androcentric society, then so might

anyone. Bleier’s case of gender bias is not meant to support directly the conclusion

that bias is ubiquitous and objectivity an illusion. Rather, the case of gender bias is

supposed to make it plausible that ‘‘dark forces’’ are at work in causing us to believe

what we do. It is these dark forces in turn that underwrite the thought that our

situation, and not any objective assessment of the evidence, determines what we

believe. Finally, it is this controversial premise, which is frequently supported by

additional arguments, that does the work for Bleier in driving objectivity out of the

world.

3 What is Fallacious About the Passes-For Fallacy?

In her presentations of the passes-for fallacy, Haack describes this inference as

‘‘obviously invalid’’ (see Haack 1999a, b). I think that it is most plausible to

understand her as regarding the passes-for fallacy as invalid because it is a version of

the more general fallacy of hasty generalization. The fallacy of hasty generalization

has been described in a variety of different ways by a variety of different authors, but

the core idea is that in such fallacious inferences a fact about a non-representative

sample or instance is used to license a general conclusion.4 Understood in these

terms, what is fallacious about the passes-for fallacy is that it moves from one case of

3 This term, too, is from Blackburn. See Blackburn (2005, p. xvi) where he describes the relativist as

maintaining that: ‘‘The dark forces of language, culture, power, gender, class, economic status, ideology

and desire are always assailing us, but their works remain dangerously hidden in our blindspots, waiting

only to be revealed by future generations who will have other blindspots of their own.’’4 Walton (1999) provides a useful general account of the fallacy of Hasty Generalization, as well as

references to a variety of formulations of this fallacy.

368 W. Goodwin

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purported knowledge which was not in fact knowledge to the general conclusion that

all cases of purported knowledge are not in fact knowledge. This understanding of

why Haack regards the passes-for fallacy as ‘‘manifestly’’ invalid (Haack 1995/96, p.

328) is supported by the psychological/sociological diagnosis that she occasionally

offers for its widespread acceptance. Haack claims that the prevalence of propaganda

and misinformation in the broader society results in the ‘‘ubiquitous’’ use of scare

quotes around epistemic success terms (like ‘‘knowledge’’ and ‘‘objectivity’’). These

scare quotes indicate that the claims to which they are applied are merely promoted,

or passed off, as having the epistemic characteristics attributed to them. When such

scare quotes have become ubiquitous, this indicates a general cynicism about truth

claims. In such a context, it can seem ‘‘irresistible’’ that the notions of objective truth

and evidence are ‘‘ideological humbug.’’(see Haack 2005, 1995, for explanations of

the prevalence of the passes-for fallacy). In other words, a general cultural distrust of

truth claims (as indicated by the prevalence of scare quotes) lubricates the inference

from an individual case of purported knowledge which was not what it was claimed

to be, to the general conclusion that all purported knowledge is not what it claims to

be (that is, true and/or objective). This move is fallacious insofar as the particular

case considered is not representative of the general class pronounced upon in the

conclusion.

Of course, not all generalization is hasty. Sometimes it is possible to infer that all

members of a class have a property on the basis of having established that a

representative individual has that property. If the individual considered is in fact

representative of the class of individuals pronounced upon in the conclusion, then

such reasoning might well be cogent. It is, perhaps, because Haack can find no

argument or evidence that the particular case of false purported knowledge serving

as a premise in a (passes-for) fallacious inference is representative of our knowledge

claims generally that she regards the inference as an obvious case of hasty

generalization. To her opponent, who presumably has reasons for thinking the

particular case of false purported knowledge is representative of our knowledge

claims generally, the conclusion of the passes-for inference might well be made

more compelling by considering this particular case. Framed in this way, the dispute

between Haack and those who are accused of the passes-for fallacy is not really

about the legitimacy of a certain form of inference, but instead about the plausibility

of the generalizing assumptions that either do, or do not, support understanding the

particular case of false purported knowledge as representative of knowledge

generally. Rather than trying to identify a step in the reasoning of those who commit

the passes-for fallacy that can be recognized to be illegitimate on the basis of its

form, then, I want to try to identify what is wrong with these sorts of arguments by

analyzing the appropriateness of the generalizing assumptions, which supposedly

support the idea that the particular case is representative of knowledge generally.

This will involve engaging, at least to a certain extent, with the general theories of

belief and/or knowledge that are behind these assumptions.5 As a consequence, at

5 This may also mean that there is no formal or structural criterion by which a bit of reasoning can be

identified as committing the passes-for fallacy. Instead this ‘fallacy’ would be a common mistake made in

certain epistemological contexts.


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least initially, the more general philosophical approaches of individuals accused of

the passes for fallacy must be considered.

In Bleier’s case, it is the general situation determination of scientific beliefs that,

as we have seen, leads her to the conclusion that bias is omnipresent and objectivity

impossible. Likewise, it would be this same general situation determination that

would, presumably, show that the case of gender bias by the editors of Science is in

fact representative of scientific beliefs more generally. Put in this way, the

individual case of false purported knowledge seems otiose—it is only a represen-

tative case under the assumption of the general situation determination of scientific

belief, but under this assumption, the conclusion follows directly and there is no

need to appeal to the particular case. Recall, however, that the role of the individual

case of gender bias in Bleier’s argument (as I reconstructed it, at least) was to

support the idea that ‘‘dark forces’’ were in fact responsible for what we believe,

rather than reason and evidence. Gender bias was supposed to be a particularly good

way of establishing the role of these dark forces because not only is everyone (or

almost everyone) situated with respect to gender, but also beliefs and values issuing

from this aspect of our situation play an ‘‘invisible and unacknowledged’’ role in

causing us to believe what we do. The particular case of gender bias that Bleier

considers is intended to make it plausible that gender operates as a dark force even

in those cases where do not expect it to, such as when ‘‘sensitive social issues like

gender or race are not involved’’ (Bleier 1988, p. 99).

A particular case of gender bias can support the general situation determination

of belief if it is plausibly seen as representing the most difficult or unlikely situation

in which dark forces would determine what we believe. If gender plays a role even

in these unlikely circumstances, then surely it makes it more plausible that gender,

and other aspects of one’s situation, are playing similar roles in other beliefs, even

when there is no outward indication that this is the case. If this reconstruction of

Bleier’s argument is right, then the particular case of gender bias only supports the

general situation determination of belief (which in turn leads to the omnipresence of

bias and the lack of objectivity) if it is plausibly seen as showing how dark forces

determine what we believe in the most unlikely of situations.

Bleier’s individual case of gender bias cannot do the work that she hopes for

several reasons. The first reason is that the particular case that she chose is not

plausibly regarded as the hardest case for the role of gender assumptions in

influencing what we believe. The editors of Science, and the neuroanatomy

community more generally, were alleged to be biased in the treatment of theories

about gender differences in brain structure. This is exactly the sort of case where

one would expect gender bias to occur, and not the sort of situation where no one

would expect such dark forces to be at play. It would have been much more

convincing, in this regard, if Bleier had managed to establish a case of gender bias

in theories of ocean sedimentation or plasma physics. As it is, the fact that gender

assumptions played a role in the acceptance of theories about gender is not at all

surprising and does nothing to show that gender plays a role in theories that are not

socially sensitive.

The second reason that Bleier’s individual case of bias does not do what she

hopes is structural, and may generalize to others who are alleged to have committed

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the passes-for fallacy. In order to establish that gender bias was responsible for the

continued promotion of poorly supported theories of gender-associated structural

differences in the human brain, Bleier had to first establish that these theories were

in fact poorly supported by the evidence. This she did in a perfectly standard way:

by considering what the evidence for these theories was and then evaluating how

well it supported them as opposed to their potential rival theories. Her charge of

gender bias is grounded in its capacity to explain the discrepancy between the

standing of the structural difference theories and the evidence for them. Without this

discrepancy between evidence and theory, there would be no reason to suppose that

gender bias has played any role in the establishment and promotion of structural

difference theories. Bias cannot be observed. We have no direct access to the

process by which scientists, or anyone else, come to have the beliefs that they do.

Most of the time we can come to appreciate what someone’s reasons for their beliefs

are (this may be a condition of regarding them as rational creatures in the first

place). Bias, of whatever kind, is a promising explanation of why people believe

what they do only when our capacity to understand their belief as being held for

good reasons, or on the basis of the evidence, breaks down. This is why bringing a

case of bias to light involves a prior investigation of the standing of the relevant

belief with respect to the evidence. This is a problem for Bleier because she wishes

to use a case of bias that she has brought to light by establishing that there is a

discrepancy between the evidence for a belief and its standing in order to make it

plausible that bias is operating in cases where there is absolutely no (concrete)

reason to suppose that there is a discrepancy between the evidence and the beliefs in

question. She wishes to move from cases of bias brought to light against a

background evidential discrepancy, to the unknown and unidentifiable dark forces

biasing everything that we believe. But by moving bias into the dark, Bleier has

detached it from the conditions of its plausible attribution. No one, presumably

including Bleier, would put forward a charge of bias in a particular case without

finding that there was a discrepancy to explain, nor should anyone accept that dark

forces are biasing all of our beliefs unless, per impossible,6 they were to find that

there is a discrepancy between all of our beliefs and our evidence for them.

This last point dovetails with Haack’s suggestion that the passes-for fallacy is

self-undermining. According to Haack, the passes-for fallacy is self-undermining

because the objective status of the claim that a particular piece of purported

knowledge is no such thing is undermined by the conclusion that it is used to

support. If there is no true knowledge or objective evidence, then it cannot be the

case that one knows, or has good evidence for, the claim that a particular piece of

purported knowledge is no such thing. Presumably, then, by undermining the

epistemic status of its premise, this would undermine any reason for accepting the

conclusion of the passes-for inference. Admittedly, for those of us not tempted by

the conclusion of the passes-for fallacy in the first place, this looks like another good

reason not to jump into the relativist bramble bush. However, those who do not

6 This is impossible because in order find a discrepancy between some belief and the evidence for it, our

beliefs about the evidence must have a positive epistemological standing, but then there could not be a

discrepancy between the evidence and our evidence for it.


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think there is any such thing as good reasons or true knowledge will surely not

exempt their own claims. Instead they will have to see their own arguments as

attempts to cause others to believe the same things they do, and as being effective in

this regard according to the situations of those who engage with the argument.7

Apparently, those who go in for the passes-for fallacy are able to make their peace

with this reconceptualization of what they are doing when they describe a particular

case of bias (or false purported knowledge) and then conclude with a general claim

about the non-objective status of our scientific claims. If, as I have suggested, the

conclusion of the passes-for fallacy is seen to undermine the concept of bias itself

(or at least the application conditions for this concept), then perhaps this kind of

argument will be less tempting to those scientists and philosophers drawn to this sort

of relativistic position by the prevalence of bias in the more local contexts where

they began. A charge of bias makes sense only against a background conception of

better and worse evidence for a hypothesis. Bias only sticks when the evidence isn’t

good, and all those who commit the passes-for fallacy know this because this is how

they established that the particular piece of purported knowledge with which they

began was in fact no such thing. To accept the conclusion of the passes-for fallacy is

to accept that the cases of bias with which they started are not what they seemed to

be, because the concept of bias has been stretched to the point where it is no longer

contentful. One hopes that those who are frustrated by what they take to be the role

of bias in determining what others believe in some particular context will be

confident enough in their own diagnosis of the situation and estimation of the

evidence, that they are unwilling to surrender the conclusion that others are

maintaining their beliefs for criticizeable reasons.

4 Re-thinking Critical Thinking

Charges of bias, and the notion of criticism itself, are threatened by the conclusion

of the passes-for fallacy. Those who get to this conclusion by way of a piece of

compelling local criticism must surrender the cogency of this criticism in order to

have their general epistemological conclusion. By succumbing to what Bernard

Williams describes as the ‘‘familiar desire to say something at once hugely general,

deeply important, and reassuring simple’’ (Williams 2002, p. 6) they put themselves

in a position where the sorts of detailed local criticisms of scientific hypotheses and

the evidence for them with which they began are no longer required or even

sensible. This is a shame because it discourages the uncovering of compelling cases

of bias by those for whom the concept has lost touch with its evidential application

conditions. This is not only bad for the individual local disciplines, which would

benefit from cogent criticism, but also for critical reflection on the sciences

generally. The idea that a charge of bias can be made independent of any established

7 There is a long-standing philosophical debate about the coherence of relativist positions. See Blackburn

(2005) for an introduction to this debate. Chapters 2 and 3 of Blackburn’s book are a sustained attempt to

show the defensibility of the relativist position in the face of charges that the position is somehow self-

undermining. Whether the relativist can hold his or her own in the end is up for dispute, but Blackburn

makes it plausible that there is no straightforward refutation of his or her position.

372 W. Goodwin

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evidential discrepancy on the basis of a very general and abstract theory of belief

formation is an example of lazy reason. Lazy reason is Kant’s term for ‘‘any

principle that makes one regard his investigation into nature, whatever it may be, as

absolutely complete, so reason can take a rest, as though it had fully accomplished

its business’’ (Kant 1998, A 690/B717). No longer must one understand the

intricacies of a local debate in the special sciences in order to levy a charge of bias

against the participants. Bias is guaranteed by the fact that the participants each

have their own situations and those situations determine their beliefs. Abstract

epistemological principles take the place of the admittedly difficult business of

knowing what you are talking about and making a sensible assessment of the status

of the debate. Not only will lazy reason of this sort ensure that philosophical or

humanistic criticism of scientific debates has nothing to contribute to those debates,

but it will also rapidly cultivate a mistrust of the intentions, or seriousness, of

humanistic criticism directed at science. For these reasons, a robust critical role for

philosophy and the humanities generally requires resisting the temptation towards

intellectual indolence.

Haack’s passes-for fallacy can be seen as an example of how the humanities are

tempted into lazy reason by particular cases of criticism, but it is surely not the only

such example. Hopefully, however, the lessons learned in trying to articulate why

the passes-for fallacy was fallacious will be portable to these other, similar, cases.

When reflecting on the status of historical knowledge, or the interpretation of texts,

humanists have likewise been tempted to infer from revealed cases of bias to very

general philosophical doctrines espousing the ubiquity of such bias, or the

impossibility of a correct interpretation. With such general doctrines in place, it is

no longer necessary, or interesting, to engage with the first order arguments about,

say, who killed Captain Cook, or what the Second Amendment means. This has the

consequence of disengaging philosophy, or humanistic criticism more generally,

from these issues. I take it that this is not only bad for history and law—where

philosophy might have something sensible to add about what it takes to interpret the

actions of other people or what it means to have a right—but also for philosophy. If

such cases begin with well-established cases of bias, just like the passes-for fallacy,

then they too may perhaps be made to look less appealing by reflecting on whether

the initial charge of bias makes any sense given the general conclusion. If not, then

one can hope that the critical spirit that got the entire argument off the ground

outweighs Williams’ familiar desire to say something at once grand, general, and

simple.

As scholars who care about a critical role for the humanities in reflecting upon

other avenues of inquiry, we have the obligation to make it clear to our students

what is required in order to produce compelling and relevant criticism. It may be

that the only way to do this is by engaging with actual works of successful, local

criticism, with all of the intricacy that this involves. Only by seeing what is required

in order to establish a real case of bias in a concrete circumstance will our

humanities students have a feel for what is at stake if they go in for the general

epistemological doctrines that make such hard work unnecessary or irrelevant. As is

so often the case, the cure for intellectual laziness is hard work, but it is work we

must do if we want to keep engaged, critical thinking alive in the humanities.


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References

Blackburn, S. 2005. Truth: A guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bleier, R. 1988. Science and the construction of meaning in the neurosciences. In Feminism within thescience, health care professions: Overcoming resistance, ed. S. Rosser. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Brugge, J., S. Friedman, J. Leavitt, and J. Rose. 1988. On the death of Professor Ruth Bleier. NWSAJournal 1: 3–6.

Haack, S. 1995/96. Science is neither sacred nor a confidence trick. Foundations of Science 3: 323–335.

Haack, S. 1998. Manifesto of a passionate moderate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Haack, S. 1999a. Staying for an answer. The Times Literary Supplement, July 9, 1999.

Haack, S. 1999b. A fallibilist among the cynics. Skeptical Inquirer 23 (1): 47–50.

Haack, S. 2003. Defending science—within reason. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Haack, S. 2005. The unity of truth and the plurality of truths. Principia 9 (1–2): 87–110.

Kant, I. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason, ed. P. Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Walton, D. 1999. Rethinking the fallacy of hasty generalization. Argumentation 13: 53–71.

Williams, B. 2002. Truth and truthfulness. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

374 W. Goodwin

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Documents

The ‘Passes-For’ Fallacy and the Future of Critical Thinking