Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [22]
COLBERT: If they were unjust, they wouldn’t be authorities.35
As usual, Colbert simply assumes his premise is true, rather than arguing to support it. Here, the missing premise is that an authority must by definition be “just,” when an authority really only has power. Colbert’s abuse of logic is like saying, “I feel the death penalty is wrong. Therefore the death penalty is wrong.” The missing premise is “What I feel is wrong is wrong.” That’s an assumption. There’s no evidence or argument that one morality is true for all or that thinking something wrong necessarily makes it wrong.
The irony is that when Colbert speaks, the unsound premise is often not missing but stated, proudly—no matter how unsound. For instance, in an interview with paleontologist Ted Daeschler, Colbert argues for the value of impulse or “the gut” over reason. Daeschler counters with an evolutionary perspective, and actually integrates Colbert’s own “gut” emphasis, only to meet Colbert’s refusal to reason:
DAESCHLER: When you do learn those facts, it’s in your gut. You know evolution happened. But first you have to get it in your head.
COLBERT: What you’re saying is something actually goes from your head to your gut. Because everything I learn goes in my eyes, ears, or mouth straight to my gut. I don’t include my head in at all. Because it overthinks it.
DAESCHLER: Um, that’s your problem.
COLBERT: Some say problem, some say superpower. I’m impervious to logic… .
DAESCHLER: Evolution is a fact of life.
COLBERT: But then why do I have to believe it?36
Rather than be methodical in his thinking, Colbert asserts right off, directly, that he has no respect for such use of logic, portraying himself as an impenetrable warrior rather than a thinking organism. Further, he demonstrates circular reasoning or using your assumption to support your assumption. He argues: If my gut feels something, then it must be right. But that’s based on the premise that the gut is right because my gut tells me it’s right.
If Colbert were to consider evolution thoroughly, he would need to do more than simply re-label his opponent’s criticism (“Some say problem, some say superpower”) and childishly refuse to reason (“I’m impervious to logic”). Instead he would need to appeal to standards such as—in the case of evolution—the scientific method, which insists that findings be reproducible (whether one agrees or not) and that we eliminate inconsistencies between theory (or what we think) and experiment (or what we observe). What such systematic thinking does is push beyond the impulsivity of “he said, she said” rants to the consistency of disciplined argument or careful observation and analysis.
Hundred Percent Hypo -Analytical: Don’t Like It? Label It!
Analytical:
• prudence in suspending, making, or altering judgments
• querying evidence
• identifying elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions
To Colbert, an analytic reaction feels more like an allergic reaction: it violates his whole system. Disagreeing with one guest, Colbert taunts him, “You can say no, but I can say yes, and my word has three letters” (February 8th, 2007). Avoiding an analytic look at actual reasoning, Colbert tries to quash the dispute by making up criteria for a good argument on the spot—whoever uses the most letters in a one word reply wins.
Such whimsy constitutes the logical fallacy behind wishful thinking: One assumes that wishing something so is enough to make it so. Thus when Colbert dislikes hearing out a counterargument, he simply contradicts it, as if saying the opposite were enough to change the reality.
But the example also illustrates how a red herring can be used to reframe attention, distracting one from the argument at hand. The absurdity of Colbert’s retort directs attention away from reasoning to instead fixate on something as random as letter-count. Such reliance on random criteria fails to provide reasonable support for conclusions,