Argumentum ad Lapidem?

According to Wikipedia, the argumentum ad lapidem, or appeal to the stone, "consists in dismissing a statement as absurd without giving a proof of its absurdity."

This supposed fallacy takes its name from the following incident reported in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson:

57. Refutation of Bishop Berkeley
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."
Boswell: Life

But where is the fallacy? If the good bishop really did maintain the nonexistence of material objects such as stones, then Johnson really did refute him by drawing Boswell's attention to a massive stone and the resistance it offered to Johnson's foot.  But of course Berkeley was not an eliminativist about material objects.  He did not maintain that rocks and trees do not exist; he did not question WHETHER they are; he offered an unusual ontological account of WHAT they are, namely ideas in the divine mind.  If you know your Berkeley you know that what I just wrote is true and that the bishop cannot be refuted by kicking a stone.

Johnson's mistake, therefore, was not that he simply dismissed Berkeley's thesis without argument; his mistake was that he took Berkeley to be maintaining something other than what he in fact maintained, and then went on, stupidly, to refute this other proposition.

Johnson's fallacy was the ignoratio elenchi, not the ad lapidem.  The very name 'ad lapidem' shows misunderstanding.

I suggest that there is something fallacious in the very notion of the ad lapidem fallacy.  I rather doubt that we have any need to add this so-called fallacy to the grab-bag list of informal fallacies.  Surely it cannot be the case that it is always wrong to dismiss a statement as false or even absurd without proof.  Some claims are refutable by kicking.  Suppose you maintain that there are no pains.  Without saying anything, I kick you in the shins with steel-tipped boots, or perhaps I kick you a bit higher up.  I will have brought home to you the plain falsehood of your claim.  The fallacy behind ad lapidem is the notion that no assertion can be legitimately dismissed, that every assertion, no matter what, must be paid the respect of an explicit discursive rebuttal.

Or suppose sophomore Sam  says that there is no truth.  I would be fully within my epistemic rights to respond, 'Is that so?' and then walk away.

Some claims are beneath refutation.

Related articles

The No True Scotsman or No True Muslim Fallacy

The MavPhil Doctrine of Abrogation

Nothing is Written in Stone

Comments

[FuzzyBunny]

Would you say that someone would be within their epistemic rights to dismiss claims that free will, morality, and the mind are illusions and reducible entirely to materialist mechanisms brought about by evolution, as absurd, and without argumentation?

[Bill Vallicella]

Short answer: No. Those claims warrant explicit refutation.

If someone said that consciousness is an illusion I would be tempted to dismiss him on the spot as a sophist, but in some cases the dismissal would come after a couple of sentences: "An illusion is an illusion to consciousness; so you are presupposing what you are trying to eliminate."

[FuzzyBunny]

Does the same hold true for claims that morality is an illusion? It's easy for me to imagine some sophist arguing with an intelligent, though philosophically-uninformed, person that there is no such thing as right and wrong.

And it seems to me that one's common sense is enough to justify waiving such claims off. In other words: our philosophically-uninformed interlocutor may not be able to answer intelligently the nihilist's objections (maybe he can't see his way around the claim that morality is just an evolutionary mechanism), but he nonetheless can see that these claims are "absurd" or ridiculous, and that to accept them would entail accepting a kind of insanity.

[Bill Vallicella]

I don't think so. If the claim that morality is an illusion is equivalent to the claim that there are no objective moral values, then this thesis has been urged by serious and highly-ranked philosophers who are decidedly not sophists. I refer you to "The Subjectivity of Values," ch. 1 of J L Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong.

[FuzzyBunny]

I understand what you're saying.

I guess my concern is that the "common man" or the non-professional (such as myself) often does not have the expertise or perhaps even the intellectual capacity to examine or refute these claims, and I'm not quite comfortable with the idea that if someone doesn't have the ability to refute the claims of some nihilist (or materialist or whatever), they must accept that morality (or mind or free will) is an illusion.

In other words, I can understand holding professionals to these requirements, but I wonder to what degree the layman can be held to the same standards.

[Bill Vallicella]

Suppose you lack the 'chops' to refute Mackie's arguments for the subjectivity of values. It doesn't follow that you must accept his conclusions.

You could say this: "I have a deep and abiding sense of the objectivity of values, and because Mackie's position has been rejected by experts in the field, I am within my rights in holding to my position."

[FuzzyBunny]

That makes sense.

My questions are part of larger question in my mind, which is: to what extent can a common man or a philosophical layman have the epistemic right to hold their beliefs?

I'm a struggling and discerning conservative Catholic. I think it goes without saying that the academy is predominately liberal and atheist. Surveys taken of the intelligence of these groups tend to say that those learning left and more secular are more intelligent than their right-wing, religious counterparts. As much as it pains me to say it, I've found that this jives with my experience.

So my question is: if a majority of experts, and indeed of intelligent people generally, believe something, what epistemic right do I have to disagree?

I think this is an important question for those of us who are not academically-trained thinkers, but who wish to declare the right to hold onto our most cherished beliefs.