Rhetorical Fallacies with Rachel Hadlock: Common Sense
Bo Brusco | January 24, 2020
(650 Words: 3 Minute Read)
Image by @dole777 from Unsplash
During these times of heightened political polarization, many social media users are finding themselves in the trenches of the comment sections, trying to defend their political opinion. A robust debate should be free of rhetorical pitfalls and logical fallacies. Today, Rachel Hadlock, a former adjunct professor of Rhetoric and Argumentation, advises readers to avoid defending their political stances by merely suggesting them to be “common sense.”
Making Sense of Common Sense
Social Media users have read it and heard it a thousand times over: such-and-such a political statement is correct because it is “common sense.” One example of this comes from a PragerU Instagram post on December 16, 2020. The post is a four and a half minute long video of Greg Gutfeld, a political commentator and author, explaining “WHY THE RIGHT IS RIGHT.” To add their support to the video’s claim, a user named @jacksoninmt wrote, “It’s common sense, which is why none of this will ever make sense to a liberal.”
Screen shot of the comment section in PragerU’s Instagram profile.
Common Sense is Relative to Perspective
“Perspective obviously comes into play here,” says Rachel Hadlock, a former English professor from Brigham Young University Idaho, “For some people, certain things are common knowledge, but that doesn’t mean it’s common knowledge for everyone.”
Explaining how what is considered common sense varies greatly depending on lifestyle, culture, and geographical location, Hadlock worries that simply chalking one’s argument up to be common sense is unsubstantial. “Well, for one, it’s vague,” she says, “so to make that claim is an oversimplification because it’s not common sense to everyone who doesn’t share that same perspective.” For example, two U.S. citizens can have incongruent ideas of what knowledge constitutes common sense; i.e., what is common sense for someone who grew up in Brooklyn, NY might be very different from someone who grew up in Whitefish, MT.
Rachel Hadlock was an adjunct professor of Brigham Young University Idaho’s English department until her and her husband, Zach Hadlock, moved to Georgia at the beginning of 2021.
Self-Defeating Logic and Validation
Hadlock also suggests a test to see whether or not an appeal to common sense could be effective in an argument, saying that “In most cases, the opposing side can make the same statement using the same logic for their side of the argument.” Essentially, if the person you are debating can use the same rhetorical tactic against your claim, avoid using such a tactic.
When asked why some of us are tempted to suggest that our ideological opposition lack common sense, Hadlock said she believes it is a way to signal our tribal loyalty. “One of the main functions of social media is to provide validation,” she says, “and so that guy who said, ‘oh, it’s common sense, how could you not get it?’ He is not necessarily looking for Liberals to tell him he’s wrong — he’s not looking to be opposed — he’s looking for his hype people to come and agree with him.” Elaborating further, Hadlock explains, “He’s looking for that support group to say ‘yes, you are absolutely correct and you are one of us.’”
Consider This
Social media has been a hot topic of debate, especially since the Conservative-favored platform Parler was shut down following the events at the nation’s Capitol on January 6th. The majority of Americans are beginning to believe that social media does more harm than good, as a Pew Research study found that as of October 2020, “64% of Americans say social media have a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the U.S. today.”
If you are on social media and feel tempted to accuse your ideological opposition of not having common sense, Hadlock suggests elaborating on which particular piece of knowledge should be familiar to them and why, “to avoid ambiguity, generalization, and oversimplification,” she says. Regardless of where one stands on the spectrum, the chances are that your ideological opposition has a different understanding of political common sense. In fact, one might argue that the whole debate revolves around that very difference: whose political philosophy makes the most sense?
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