Falácias

1. Não conhecia as falácias compendiadas na "retórica da reacção". Em Outras Margens: Ainda Lisboa e os automóveis ela é referida no quadro da discussão dos argumentos apresentados contra a aplicação de uma taxa de congestão ao trânsito em Lisboa. A nota é muito interessante por isso mesmo, e deve ser lida. Fica aqui um excerto para enquadrar o conceito, mas também para ilustrar aquela discussão - no 2º ponto da nota reproduzo uma síntese do que é a "retórica da reacção".

   "A resposta é típica daquilo a que, um dia, outro economista chamou a "retórica da reacção": um pessimismo supostamente "realista", que aponta efeitos nulos ou mesmo perversos a uma proposta de mudança, e que avança, em alternativa, um chavão genérico. Mas se é "pessimismo realista" que queremos, aí vai: enquanto não houver barreiras significativas à entrada de veículos em Lisboa, as câmaras dos concelhos limítrofes e o Governo podem ficar descansados. Podem continuar a acrescentar faixas de rodagem às estradas que acedem a Lisboa, sem que as pessoas que lá vivem sintam real necessidade de exigir mais e melhores transportes públicos, especialmente dos locais onde vivem para os terminais ferroviários e fluviais. Podem dar prioridade a mais umas rotundas com fontes no meio, em vez de construírem parques de estacionamento junto a esses terminais. Podem continuar a dizer que "não há meios". Que o "verdadeiro problema" é outro (é sempre outro). E podem fazer reuniões, seminários e debates sobre esse "verdadeiro problema". Por exemplo, a "constituição da região político-administrativa de Lisboa". Boa sorte com isso, então. "

2. Retirado de Issue for Week of November 27, 2005:

   "One of the texts I want to briefly summarize for you is Albert O. Hirschman's The Rhetoric of Reaction. Hirschman wrote this book for a think tank during the Reagan administration when liberals were horrified at what conservatives were doing to our safety nets (like having places to house and care for the mentall ill, that Reagan disbanded and did not replace in California). With the objective of getting liberals and conservatives to listen to one another in good faith in the interest of understanding the need for safety nets for the poor and those in crisis or catastrophe, Hirschman listened carefully to both sides. He came up with the startling conclusion that neither side was listening to the other. Both liberals and conservatives were using the same basic arguments to deny any need to hear the Other.

   Hisrchman classified these denials as:

   The Perversity Thesis This reaction to an opponent says that no matter what he does, it's going to turn out just the opposite of what he intended.

   Here's how Hirschman puts it, on p. 11:

   "This is, at first blush, a daring intellectual maneuver. The structure of the argument is admirably simple, whereas the claim being made is rather extreme. It is not just asserted that a movement or a policy will fall short of its goal or will occasion unexpected costs or negative side effects: rather so goes the argument, the attempt to push society in a certain direction will result in its moving all right, but in the oppostie direction. Simple, intriguing, and devastating (if true), the argument has proven popular with generations of "reactionaries" as well as fairly effective with the public at large. In current debates it is often invoked as the counterintuitive, counterproductive, or most to the point, perverse effect of some "progressive" or "well-intentioned" public policy. (fn. omitted) Attempts to reach for liberty will make society sink into slavefy, the quest for democracy will produce oligarchy and tyranny, and social welfare programs will create more, rather than less, poverty. Everything backfires.

   The Futility Thesis This reaction to an opponent says that no matter how much you struggle to change it, it always comes back to the same thing, greed. You can't change that. So where the perversity argument suggest that you can get change, but that change goes in the opposite direction from what you plan, the futility argument suggests that you can really get fundamental change, period.

   Here's how Hirschman puts it on p.43-44:

   "[The futility] argument . . . says that the attempt at change is abortive, that in ine way or another any alleged change is, was, or will be largely surface, facade, cosmetic, heance illusory, as the "deep" structures of society remain wholly untouched." . . . "[O]ne of the best-known (and best) jokes to come out of Eastern Europe after the installation of Communist regimes there in the wake of World War II: "What is the difference between capitalism and socialism?" The answer: "In capitalism, man exploits man; in socialism, it's the other way round." Here was an effective way of asserting that nothing basic had changed in spite of the total transformation in property relations.Finally, Lewis Carroll's proverbial saying in Alice in Wonderland, "Her it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place" expresses yet another facet of the futility thesis, placing it in a dynamic setting."

   The Jeopardy Thesis The Jeopardy Thesis acknowledges that change can take place without going in the opposite direction to the one you planned, or without only superficial changes occuring, but it suggests that the cost of such change is so prohibitive that it places the whole society in jeopardy. In other words, you may get a poverty safety net, but only at the cost of taking the righteously earned profits of the rich (who make the law as the holders of power). Or you might pay the social security you promised to the elderly, but only at the cost of having to give up your pet wars.

   Here's how Hirschman puts it on p. 81:

   "The arguments of the perverse effect and of the futility thesis proceed along very different lines, but they have something in common: both are remakably simple and bald___therein, of course, lies much of their appeal [in dominant discourse]. In both cases it is shown how actions undertaken to achieve a certain purpose fail miserably to do so. Either no change at all occurs or the action yields an outcome that is the opposite of the one that was intended. It is actually surprising that I was able to account for a large and important portion of the reactionary arguments with these two extreme categories. For there is a third, more commonsensical and moderate way of arguing against a change which, because of the prevailing state of public opinion, one does not care to attack head-on (this, I have claimed, is a hallmark of "reactionary" rhetoric): it asserts that the proposed change, though perhaps desirable in itself, involves unacceptable costs or consequences of one sort or another."

   I hope these brief examples of Hirschman's work will help you see the complexity of getting us into real substantive discourse. It's so much easier to stop with the simple perverse or fertility thesis, or hide behind the jeopardy of overwhelming "costs." I have put up a brief bit of exchange from transform_dom. Check it out, look at the actual exchanges, and consider how comfortably and securely we avoid good faith efforts to hear one another.

   Mevysen fusses or "corrects," in the hope it will make you listen in good faith; I coerce by luring you with points on which we can agree; Beau overwhelms us with erudition we can't match; Kathleen gently persuades us. We all struggle with avoiding the rhetoric of reaction in different ways. My own assessment, despite circumstances dragging me away from the participation I hoped for, is that you're doing a pretty good job of dragging each other, sometimes gently, sometimes roughly, toward paths around what Hirschman described as the pitfalls of substantive discourse.

Ora bem: apliquemos o conhecimento destas falácias à desmontagem de alguns discursos políticos em presença, e sejamos por isso melhores cidadãos - bem precisamos disso (e eu não estou a falar da abstenção).