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In this blog, I introduce a fallacy to the list of “Cardinal Fallacies” in Logic-Based Therapy. I call this fallacy the Fact-Loading Fallacy because it involves embedding a value judgment (often unintentionally) in a premise of emotional reasoning that is supposed to report a fact. This fallacy can conceal, augment, legitimize, and sustain the self-disturbing effects of other fallacies in people’s emotional reasoning.
According to Logic-Based Therapy (LBT), people upset themselves by making self-destructive value judgments based on irrational or fallacious premises. LBT thus helps people to replace such fallacious emotional reasoning with rational reasoning, that is, reasoning that does not have fallacies in its premises.
What Is Emotional Reasoning?
Emotional reasoning is the reasoning people do when they upset themselves about problems of living. It consists of two premises. One of these premises is a report or description of an intentional object. It is an empirical premise; that is, a premise that can be confirmed by observation or inference from observation.
The other premise is a rule that tells a person how to evaluate this object. It is not usually explicitly spoken by a person but instead works in the background to direct the inference. LBT adds it so that clients can see what rules are active in processing their (cognitive) emotions. For example,
Rule: If I lose my job, then evaluate it as the worst thing in the world.
Report: I lost my job.
Conclusion: it’s the worst thing in the world.
This reasoning is fallacious because its Rule clearly commits the fallacy of awfulizing. It exaggerates just how bad the job loss is by telling you to evaluate it as even worse than earthquakes, tsunamis, and mass murder!
Illustrations of Emotional Reasoning That Commit the Fact-Loading Fallacy
In contrast, compare emotional reasoning where the Report is “I lost the best job in the world” such that the client’s reasoning is:
If I lost the best job in the world, then evaluate it as the worst thing in the world.
I lost the best job in the world.
Therefore, it’s the worst thing in the world that I lost the best job in the world.
The fallacy inherent in this reasoning involves “loading” (embedding) a negative evaluation into a premise that masquerades as a factual report. It is like loading a set of dice to get a particular outcome. In this case, one loads a premise to drive home a particular negative conclusion. In this manner, you may feel even more compelled to feel down about losing your job and overlook the blatant awfulizing fallacy in your reasoning.
Deconstructing the Fact-Loading Fallacy involves challenging yourself to unload your report premise. For example, you could reframe it as “I feel as though I lost the best job in the world.” This statement is a confirmable fact-claim since it is a subjective report about the client’s feelings, to which the client has access through introspection. In this manner, the client’s revised reasoning becomes:
If I feel as though I lost the best job in the world, then evaluate the loss as the worst thing in the world.
I feel as though I lost the best job in the world.
Therefore, it’s the worst thing in the world that I lost my job.
In contrast to the loaded reasoning, this reasoning can more easily be exposed for the fallacious reasoning that it is. Indeed, we all experience very strong feelings, but just because you feel like you lost the best job in the world does not mean it’s the worst thing in the world that you lost it.
By exposing the Fact-Loading Fallacy, you are now in a better position to work through your awfulizing because you now see that this is not about some external fact about the job you lost being the best job in the world. Rather, it is about your subjective feelings about the job loss, which were concealed by the Fact-Loading Fallacy. Having now exposed these feelings, you are better situated to work them through—for example, by coming to see that there can be other job possibilities to explore that might prove to be equally or more satisfying.
Importantly, locutions such as “I lost the best job in the world” have an evaluative force. This means that they perform one or more evaluative speech acts in addition to reporting or describing. This one is reporting a job loss. It also appears to be reporting strong feelings about this loss.
However, in addition, it is superlatively praising the job in question. At the same time, it is using this act of appraisal to lament its loss. Because it performs one or more evaluative speech acts, in addition to reporting or describing something or other, it is a proper subject of deconstruction. The goal of deconstruction is then to unload its evaluative speech acts, leaving intact just the reportative or descriptive acts, as in “I feel as though I lost the best job in the world.”
A Case of Self-Damning
The Fact-Loading Fallacy can also be embedded in report premises of reasoning with evaluative forces other than awfulizing. A common variant often occurs in reasoning involving damning oneself, one’s life, others, or the world. Here is a self-damning example:
If I made a horrible mistake, then evaluate me as a big loser.
I made a horrible mistake.
So, I am a big loser
Here, you are loading the fact that you made a mistake with the modifier “horrible.” The strong negative force of making a horrible mistake makes it seem more compelling to call yourself a “big loser.” This can incline you to ignore, sustain, legitimize, and even amplify the negative force of the self-damning fallacy you are committing. However, when you unload the evaluative content of the report premise by removing the evaluative component (“horrible”), the case is far less compelling:
If I made a mistake, then evaluate me as a big loser.
I made a mistake.
So, I am a big loser
Clearly, if making a mistake made you a “big loser,” then we’d all be big losers because we all make mistakes. But this is plainly absurd!
How to Avoid the Fact-Loading Fallacy
In summary, the process for addressing the Fact-Loading Fallacy involves 3 steps:
- Ask yourself if you are loading your report by embedding any evaluations in it.
- If so, deconstruct your report premise so that you unload its evaluative speech acts.
- Reassess your reasoning using your unloaded report.
In this way, you can avoid disturbing yourself with fallacious emotional reasoning by which you seduce yourself into thinking you have a strong case for feeling down. Expose this self-disturbing line of thinking by unloading it!
