conclusion absolutely, positively, without a doubt, is true, and this is a good thing! In the inductive realm, that a conclusion likely will follow from premises means that the argument is strong (or weak if the conclusion likely does not follow). When an argument is strong and all the premises are true, the argument is said to be a good, cogent argument. The conclusion is most likely or probably true, and this is a good thing too!
So, as rational, adult critical thinkers we must always go through this two‐step procedure of checking our own arguments and the arguments of others to see if (A) the conclusion follows from the premises (is the argument deductively valid or inductively strong?) and (B) all of the premises are true. If the argument fails to meet either (A) or (B) or both, then we should reject it, thereby rejecting the person's conclusion as either absolutely false or probably false. For example, Cartman's argument for pooling together the boys' teeth is probably a bad one because Premise 2 seems false, given the information. It is not true that if they get money from the Tooth Fairy then they will be able to buy a Sega Dreamcast, because the Tooth Fairy only gave Cartman $2.00. The sum of $2.00 × 4 boys is $8.00 and, provided we are talking about a new one from the store, that is not enough to buy a Sega Dreamcast. So in the case of this particular deductive argument, the conclusion “If the boys combine their teeth, then they can get a Sega Dreamcast” is false. On the other hand, the Towelie argument was a good one. It was true that the few times they mentioned towel‐related things, Towelie showed up. And given this fact, they had a strong case for drawing the conclusion that he would show up again asking, of course, “Wanna get high?”
“If Chewbacca Lives on Endor, You Must Acquit”
At times, checking to see if conclusions follow from premises and if premises are true can be very difficult. Some words have multilevel meanings. And some people will try to convince us of the truth of claims in order to deceive us, or sell us something, or get us to vote for them, or become part of their group, or share their ideology. Often, people will try to convince us that a conclusion follows from a premise or premises when, in fact, it does not, kind of like what the cartoon Cochran does with the Chewbacca defense in the episode, “Chef Aid,” a satire of Cochran's actual closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson case.
In the episode, Alanis Morissette comes out with a hit song “Stinky Britches,” which, it turns out, Chef had written some 20 years ago. Chef produces a tape of himself performing the song, and takes the record company to court, asking only that he be credited for writing the hit. The record company executives then hire Cochran. In his defense of the record company, Cochran shows the jury a picture of Chewbacca and claims that, because Chewbacca is from Kashyyyk and lives on Endor with the Ewoks, “It does not make sense.” Cochran continues: “Why would a Wookie, an eight‐foot‐tall Wookie, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two‐foot‐tall Ewoks? That does not make sense … If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.” The jury is so convinced by Cochran's “argument,” that not only do they apparently deny Chef's request for credit recognition but they also find Chef guilty of harassing a major record label, fining him $2 million to be paid within 24 hours. Friends of Chef then organize “Chef Aid” to pay his fine.
We laugh at Cochran's defense because it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual case. We laugh all the more at the absurdity when the Chewbacca defense is also used to find Chef guilty of harassing the very record company that had produced a stolen song. The issue of Chewbacca living on Endor has absolutely nothing to do with, and is in no way logically related to, the issues of whether Chef should receive credit for the song, or whether he has harassed the record company. As rational thinkers, we recognize this, laugh at the absurdities, and wonder why anyone in their right mind would be convinced that the Chewbacca defense and the other issues are related.
As we have seen in Section 2.1, logicians have a special term for these bad arguments in which the conclusion does not follow from a premise. They call it a fallacy, and a fallacy occurs when we inappropriately or incorrectly draw a conclusion from reasons that do not support the conclusion. Fallacies are so common that logicians have names for different types of fallacies.
The Chewbacca defense is an example of a red herring fallacy, which gets its name from a police dog exercise in which police officers, while trying to discern the best trail hunters, use strong‐smelling red herring fishes in an attempt to throw dogs off the trail of a scent. In a red‐herring fallacy, someone uses claims and arguments that have nothing to do with the issue at hand in order to get someone to draw a conclusion that they believe to be true. So, the claims and arguments are the “red herrings” they use to throw you off the “trail” of reasoning that would lead to another, probably more appropriate, conclusion altogether. In the episode “Weight Gain 4000,” Wendy seems to have a legitimate complaint that Cartman cheated to win the essay contest, but people refuse to draw that conclusion given that they are diverted by the idea of Kathy Lee Gifford coming to town. Even after Wendy produces the evidence that Cartman had really handed in a copy of Walden as his essay, they simply do not care about drawing the conclusion that Cartman had cheated. In a lot of South Park episodes, people are thrown off the track of issues or arguments by other circumstances or events that capture their attention. This is a humorous way for Trey and Matt to make their points about people's faulty and crazy reasoning.
Slippery Slopes
The slippery slope is another fallacy often lampooned on South Park. This fallacy occurs when one inappropriately concludes that some further chain of events, ideas, or beliefs will follow from some initial event, idea, or belief and thus we should reject the initial event, idea, or belief. It is as if there is an unavoidable “slippery” slope that one is on, and there is no way to avoid sliding down it. Mrs. Broflovski's reasoning about the Terrance and Phillip Show being taken off the air might go something like this: “If we allow a show like the Terence and Phillip Show on the air, then it will corrupt my kid, then it will corrupt your kid, then it will corrupt all of our kids, then shows like this one will crop up all over the TV, then more and more kids will be corrupted, then all of TV will be corrupted, then the corrupt TV producers will corrupt other areas of our life, etc., etc., etc. So, we must take the Terrance and Phillip Show off the air; otherwise, it will lead to all of these other corruptions!” If I have accurately characterized Mrs. Broflovski's reasoning here, then we can see the slippery slope. It does not follow that the corrupt TV producers will corrupt other areas of our life. All of a sudden we're at the bottom of the slope! What just happened!
In “Clubhouses,” Mrs. Marsh uses a kind of slippery‐slope fallacy in combination with a hasty generalization in response to Stan's grabbing a cookie. Here, we can see the obvious humor involved, as she is going through a rough separation time with her husband: “You men are all alike. First you get a cookie and then you criticize the way I dress, and then it's the way I cook! Next you'll be telling me that you need your space, and that I'm sabotaging your creativity! Go ahead Stanley, get your damn cookie!” Her conclusion is obviously that Stan should not grab a cookie because, otherwise, all of these other things will happen. Further, the “you men are all alike” comment is the result of a hasty generalization.
A false dilemma is the fallacy of concluding something based upon premises that include only two options, when, in fact, there are three or more options. People are inclined to an “all‐or‐nothing” approach to matters, and this usually is reflective of a false dilemma in their thinking. In some situation, could it be that we have a little bit of both, so that we get a both‐and, rather than an either‐or as our conclusion? In “Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo,” the people of South Park have an all‐or‐nothing kind of thinking when they conclude that the only way not to offend anyone is to rid the Christmas show of any and all Christmas references. This kind of logic has disastrous consequences, as the show is ruined and people wind up fighting over it. Could they have included a few other religious traditions, instead of excluding all of them? Now the both‐and strategy, which can avoid a false dilemma,
