The Fallacy of the Appeal to Radical Empiricism?

While perusing the scientific literature on medical insurance plans, I came across the professional publication of the following incorrect reasoning [emphasis added]:

"We use the case of consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs), the pillar of the Bush administration's private-sector health reform efforts, to illustrate the limitations of viewing health policy reform through the lens of Improving Health Care. We conclude that the speculative efficiency gains from CDHPs need to be balanced against well-documented equity concerns within a normative framework. Moreover, other important ethical issues arise with regard to the risks imposed on the population by the introduction of policies that are based on a faith in markets rather than empirical evidence."

My knee-jerk reaction to this knee-jerk reaction of these authors, was to immediately try to understand the error by putting a label on it. The first label that came to my mind, regarding the positivist mistake of these authors, was to make the bold conjecture of a new logical fallacy: The Fallacy of the Appeal to Radical Empiricism.

However, lacking the global perspective that this online forum so effectively provides, I figured that -- before I go and puff up my chest and call the authors of textbooks in logic and philosophy (to tell them that they need to include my new conjecture as an official new logical fallacy), I had better run it up the flagpole here and see if anyone salutes it (or throws tomatoes, for that matter!).

Am I on to something here, or is there already an existing fallacy which captures the wrong reasoning of these professionals at the Harvard School of Public Health?

Ed

Reference:

Rosenthal, M., Daniels, N. (2006). Beyond competition: the normative implications of consumer-driven health plans. J Health Polit Policy Law. 31(3):671-85.

Post 1

Sunday, April 20, 2008 - 10:02am

Ed,

I don't see the fallacy you're talking about. The authors are saying the returns they expect from a consumer-based economic model is speculative, and that to believe in them as certain would be an act of faith. Nothing wrong with that.

Meanwhile, they claim that the inequalities in health plan markets are well-founded and should be considered. So if anything, they are appealing to equality (which Objectivists might object to) and rejecting looking solely at speculative market outcomes for guidance (which Objectivists shouldn't but also might object to) in plotting policy for health plans.

(I work with health plans all day, fyi.)

Jordan

Post 2

Sunday, April 20, 2008 - 12:25pm

Jordan, thank you for responding. You admit:

I don't see the fallacy you're talking about.

It's where you take something (e.g., markets) that no longer requires proof, and you sit there and demand proof, instead of accepting the known reality and adjusting arguments to that reality. Here's a simple example of the fallacy:

You roll a pair of dice 10 times and you don't get any "snake eyes" (i.e., a roll of "two"). You keep rolling the dice and notice that you hardly ever get snake eyes. You find, with repeated investigations, that you don't ever get a predominance of "snake eyes" (more than 50) -- for every 100-roll stretch that you investigate. You have an "Aha!" moment, and develop the hypothesis that snake eyes won't predominate in 100-roll stretches of dice-rolling. Years later, you are still doing your rolling, and still getting this same result.

I come along and ask you what you are doing. You say that you're just double-checking something empirically, to see if your hypothesis is true. When I hear about your hypothesis (that you predict that you aren't going to get over 50 snake eyes in any 100-roll stretch), then I laugh. I ask you to stop your dice rolling for a second so that we can sit down and talk. I proceed to tell you that there is something in the very nature of dice rolling which -- without (any further) experiment -- which will allow you to be more sure than that your car will start tomorrow, that you won't get over 50 snake eyes in a 100-roll stretch.

You retort that my being able to (supposedly) know this -- without empirical investigation into the matter -- must be a matter of faith -- because we only ever know those things that are a result of direct (read: radical) empirical-investigation, not ever anything beyond that. How could I know that it's more probable that your car won't start (something on which you rely upon daily) than that you'd get this predominance of snake eyes? How could I know that questioning your hypothesis is epistemologically wrong, because of the astronomic possibility involved?

You tell me that your years of empirical investigation into this dice-rolling matter aren't a waste of your time, because empirical investigation is the only way to know things. You tell me that when folks claim to know something which they haven't personally empirically-investigated, then that means that they're depending on faith. I criticize you for incorrectly using your mind, and for the harm -- or, at least, non-benefit -- that will result from you using your mind that way. I tell you that you are unwittingly using a logical fallacy -- though I'm not sure it has been named yet (by logicians).

Do you see this fallacy now (in the dice example above)?

(I work with rationality all day, fyi.)

;-)

Ed

Post 3

Sunday, April 20, 2008 - 12:44pm

Jordan,

I hope that my extensive cantankerousness isn't a source of frustration for you. I would appreciate your feedback on a project I just submitted in my current college course: Health Care Organizations and Delivery Systems! ...

:-)

Ed

Post 4

Sunday, April 20, 2008 - 9:13pm

Hi Ed,

Given your dice example, it now looks like you're identifying the "arrested knowledge fallacy" -- Just cause you can't know or be certain of anythin doesn't mean you know nothing.

I'll respond regarding your project via email. Thanks for the invite.

Per your

Post 5

Sunday, April 20, 2008 - 11:51pm

Jordan,

I admit I haven't researched it, but your explanation of the arrested-knowledge fallacy doesn't seem accurate (which would be due to an imperfection in my analogy).

What it is that you describe is what it is that I call the Appeal to Omniscience -- or having to first be able to know everything before you can say you know anything. What I meant to convey with my analogy is a situation where you CAN know things, but that you can only know things empirically evidenced (hence the term: radical empiricism).

Omniscience isn't required to know things according to radical empiricism, but witnessing empirical evidence is. The telling point of the analogy was how I could know about the outcomes of dice rolls without rolling any dice, myself.

The reason that I can know these things I didn't witness, is because there's more to knowledge than the mere witness of empirical evidence. The fallacy I'm trying to coin is the fallacy of disagreeing with this truth and holding that there actually isn't more to knowledge than the mere witness of empirical evidence (which is the position called: radical empiricism).

If it helps, an apparent pseudonym for radical empiricism is: logical positivism.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 4/20, 11:56pm)

Post 6

Monday, April 21, 2008 - 1:01pm

Hi Ed,

What it is that you describe is what it is that I call the Appeal to Omniscience

Yeah, I think Rand referred to it as arrested knowledge, which is why I put that out there, but it sounds like the same thing.

The telling point of the analogy was how I could know about the outcomes of dice rolls without rolling any dice, myself.

Hmm. The dice might be loaded. I think they need to be rolled to find out. I don't think you can tell what they will do unless you've got some observations under your belt about those dice, or at least dice in general. So I'm not seeing the fallacy the way you're putting it.

Maybe another example?

Jordan

Post 7

Monday, April 21, 2008 - 2:12pm

Addendum: re-reading your original example, now I'm thinking you were peeved cause the authors of that article refused to accept that markets would necessarily or even probably be successful, even though markets have been shown to be successful at least in other areas time and time again.

Still not really a fallacy that I can tell.

Jordan

Post 8

Monday, April 21, 2008 - 7:26pm

Jordan, you "addend"-ed:

=========
re-reading your original example, now I'm thinking you were peeved cause the authors of that article refused to accept that markets would necessarily or even probably be successful, even though markets have been shown to be successful at least in other areas time and time again.
=========

That's almost it! Here's the same wording with the "dice-rolls" substituted for the "market":

=========
the man of that analogy refused to accept that dice-rolls would necessarily or even probably not predominantly come up snake-eyes, even though dice-rolls have been shown to not predominantly come up snake-eyes -- at least in other areas time and time again.
=========

But that's not totally "it" yet -- because there's still an appeal to induction via simple enumeration in your addendum (and in my rephrasing of it).

Instead, I was originally attempting to go beyond simple enumeration (relative frequencies). Those guilty of the fallacy of the Appeal to Radical Empiricism don't/can't see beyond relative frequencies. That's their fallacy.

Ed

Post 9

Monday, April 21, 2008 - 8:33pm

Ed,

Now it just seems like you might flat out be rejecting induction. Or perhaps you're identifying the fallacy of slothful induction? Or maybe you're a Popperian at heart who rejects induction as an efficacious method by which to test hypothesis and accumulate knowledge.

Jordan

Post 10

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - 8:45pm

Jordan,

You must've missed (or merely misunderstood) my essay validating induction. Please view (or review) it to see if you would still stand by these recent statements of yours ...

http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Thompson/The_Philosophic_Validation_of_Inductive_Inference.shtml

Ed

Post 11

Thursday, April 24, 2008 - 4:37pm

Yep, I missed it. But I don't really want to read it. Here I'm just trying to help you identify what's bugging you about the quotation you provided at the beginning of this thread. From skimming your induction article, I suspect you're not chucking induction, so let's abandon that possibility. However, I still think you might be annoyed with *slothful induction*. How bout that?

Jordan

Post 12

Thursday, April 24, 2008 - 7:11pm

Jordan,

Slothful induction is just another version of hasty generalization. While it's definitely wrong to do, it's not the fallacy that I have tried hard to describe to you.

The fallacy which I have tried hard to describe to you involves folks who ask too much for too much "counting." And slothful or hasty induction involves folks who try to get by with too little "counting."

Ed

Post 13

Thursday, April 24, 2008 - 10:23pm

Ed,

It really sounds like you're talking about slothful induction. It's pretty much the opposite of hasty generalization. Hasty generalization draws a conclusion without sufficient evidence. Slothful induction refuses to draw a conclusion despite vast amounts of evidence.

Jordan

Post 14

Saturday, April 26, 2008 - 8:23am

Jordan, you are correct.

In first viewing this fallacy "slothful induction" I had taken it to mean an integration of the following 2 words:

Slothful (lazy)

and

Induction (making inferences)

In short, I had presumed that the fallacy of slothful induction must be the fallacy of making lazy inferences. Apparently, I was being "too logical" for the logical fallacy-coiners here -- and, for that, I apologize.

;-)

Apparently, there was a benefit to being less logical and more empirical; in evaluating this fallacy!

:-/

What an irony, huh?!

Ed

Post 15

Saturday, April 26, 2008 - 6:46pm