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2 

ANALYSIS OF LAST ISSUE'S PASSAGE 

In Vol. I, No.1 we printed the following passage (from 
the final examination for our freshman Applied Logic course at 
the University of Windsor), and invited critiques from our readers. 

Background: In the last year or so there have been many allegations 
and 'revelations' about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) 
and their activities. Against this background, the following 
letter was addressed to the Windsor Star (April, 1978) from T.P.: 

Sir: For the past several months, we have been subjected 
to numerous articles and editorials castigating the RCMP for 
"searching premises under open warrant, wiretapping, opening 
mail, breaking and entering, and arson." 

I have no doubt that most Canadians appreciate that these 
actions are necessary if we are to maintain our freedom and 
democratic way of life. Rest assured that if our security 
forces are denied the basic tools of their profession, we 
will soon be taken over by a totalitarian regime. 

And once that happens, the police would be empowered to 
search our premises any time under an "open" warrant, tap 
our telephones, open' our mail, break into our homes and 
offices, and burn our property. Surely no one would want 
to hamper the splendid work of the RCMP in saving us from 
such tyranny. 

Here is the most probing critique we received: 

The author of this letter to the editor is obviously writing 
tongue-in-cheek. He argues that, in order to save ourselves from 
a society in which the police are empowered to search our premises 
at any time under an open warrant, tap our telephones, open our 
mail, break into our homes and offices, and burn our property, 
we must empower our federal police to search our premises at any 
time under an open warrant, tap our telephones, and so forth. 
Since he gives no reason for wanting to save ourselves from such 
a totalitarian tyranny other than these excessive police powers, 
the contradiction is patent: the actions supposedly designed 
to save us from a totalitarian police state in fact constitute 
the objectionable features of a totalitarian police state. 

The writer expects his or her reader to notice this contra-
diction and to conclude that the powers of the RCMP should be 
limited. He or she is offering a reductio ad absurdum of the 
position of those who defend the recent activities of the RCMP. 

An initial difficulty with this strategy of arg~ing is that 
it is likely to go over the heads of most readers. The plausibility 
of the argument that one must give the police extraordinary powers 
to combat those who do not respect the ground-rules of democracy 
is likely to convince many readers to accept the ostensible 
conclusion of this letter. The author may persuade more people 
of the "wrong" conclusion than of the "right" conclusion. 



3 

This, however, is only a psychological comment. The crucial 
question is not whether the letter succeeds in convincing its 
readers, but whether it deserves to convince them. The strength 
of the letter is in highlighting a contradiction in one possible 
defence of illegal and otherwise questionable RCMP activities. 
Its weakness is that there may be other, much more circumspect 
defences which this reductio ad absurdum does not consider. If 
so, the author is guilty of attacking a straw man. 

It is worth considering where one such circumspect defence 
might take us. Let us begin by assuming that, other things 
being equal, we prefer a society in which the police are prohibited 
from forcibly entering our homes, tapping our telephones or 
opening our mail--we value our privacy. It is reasonable to 
suppose that, if this privacy were absolute, the police would be 
severely hampered in their ability to detect crime and gather 
evidence to support a prosecution. These difficulties would 
occur particularly with respect to professional criminal activities 
--those of organized crime, or of terrorist or seditious groups. 
To avoid the undesirable consequences of a spread of such 
activities, therefore, we should be prepared to countenance 
some restrictions on our right of privacy. However, the opposite 
dangers of letting the police themselves determi~e when circum-
stances justify these invasions of privacy--namely, the inclination 
to abuse this power--dictate some independent control over their 
invasion of individual privacy. Such control can be provided 
by authorizing the police to search premises, tap telephones or 
open mail only in cases where they are able to convince an 
independent judicial authority that grounds exist for doing so. 
If they cannot convince such an authority, it is reasonable to 
believe that they do not need extraordinary powers in that situation. 

This more circumspect position implies that none of the 
RCMP activities mentioned in the letter--some of which are legal, 
some not--should be allowed, except that there may be a case 
for allowing wiretapping and opening mail under warrant from a 
judge. I find it hard to conceive of a cogent argument for 
extending police powers further. Certainly the commonly heard 
argument that those who have committed no crime have nothing to 
fear from unrestricted police powers is a fatuous one. Policemen 
are no less inclined than other members of the population to 
harbour prejudices and to take sides on political issues and 
in labour disputes. Giving them unrestrained power to invade 
personal privacy opens the door to harrassment of law-abiding 
citizens who take an unpopular political position, belong to a 
stigmatized ethnic group or have the wrong hair style. The 
RCMP activities involved precisely such harrassment. 

It goes without saying that a legal prohibition on unauthorized 
entry, wiretapping or mail-opening is otiose unless there is a 
penalty for its violation. The most extraordinary feature of 
the past several months' revelations of illeg al police activities 
is that to date (August 3, 197a) there has been not one single 
prosecution launched. 

I 

I 



4 

NOTE: Informal logic texts generally ignore the ironical reduction 
to absurdity of an opponent's position, even though it is a common 
argumentative strategy in political debate, letters to the editor 
and editorials. Although rhetorically persuasive, the strategy 
suffers from the difficulty that, in order for the irony to be 
broad enough to be seen through, the position being attacked 
must usually be oversimplified to the point of distortion. 

EDITORS' COMMENT 

David Hitchcock 
McMaster University 

We have only one note to add to Professor Hitchcock's 
an~l~sis., His a,ssum~tion that the,letter's author was "obviously 
wr1t1ng w1th tongue 1n cheek" requ1red invoking the Principle of 
Charity in the interpretation of the letter. Taken at face 
v~lue, the writer a~pears to contradict himself (or herself), as 
H1tchcock notes. E1ther the writer commits an elementary logical 
blunder, or else he deliberately contradicts himself in order 
to make his point. Charity requires attributing to him the 
latter intention. 

We agree with Professor Hitchcock, but the point raises 
interesting and unresolved theoretical issues. What is the 
proper formulation of the Principle of Charity invoked here? 
What are the limits on its application? It would seem that not 
every logical mistake justifies interpreting the argument in 
which it appears in such a way as to remove the blunder even 
where it is poss.ible to do so. ' 

ALTERNATIVE TO INDUCTIVE-DEDUCTIVE PARADIGM 

Some of us who teach informal logic have been having some 
doubts about the adequacy of the old inductive-deductive paradigm 
and the idea that all arguments fit one or the other of these two 
paradigms. Professor Trudy Govier of Trent University was good 
enough to send along the following information: 

"In an ethics course I am working through Carl Wellman's 
book, Challenge and Response. Wellman argues that not all sound 
arguments are deductive or inductive and that there is another 
form of argument which he baptizes conductive. Many moral arguments, 
he says, fall into this category. E.G.: "You should pay your 
rent since you promised to do so." Or: "Abortion should not be 
illegal, .because making it illegal leads to backstreet abortions 
which are physically dangerous to the women who undergo them." 
What is characteristic about these arguments is that they cite 
something as a reason tor the conclusion and not necessarily as 
an overwhelming or conclusive reason. Thus one may weigh pros and 
cons, or various reasons may cumulate."