Attribution
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[edit] Definition
The Fundamental Attribution Error is to explain one's own behavior and opinions as rational reactions to external circumstances and to the available data; while attributing the behavior and opinions of others to their emotional state and psychological biases.
[edit] Example
An interesting example is provided by Shermer and Sulloway's study of why people believe in God[1]. Asked to explain their own belief in God, a majority of respondents cited the Argument from Design, a (supposedly) rational argument from such observations as the beauty and complexity of the universe. Yet asked to explain why other people believe in God a majority cited an emotional need for comfort: the old "religion as a crutch" hypothesis. Hence simple math shows that a substantial tranche of respondents were attributing their own beliefs to an argument which they suppose to be rational, and those of other people to an emotional cause, even when the two beliefs are identical, i.e. that God exists.
Of course this tendency is even more prevalent when people turn to explaining how the people who disagree with them came by their beliefs.
[edit] Discussion
The common or garden crank seems addicted to such practices; which relieve him from the necessity of rational debate. To debate someone on a rational level, it is necessary to assume that the two people debating are reasonable people, and that if they have reached different conclusions, then (at least) one of them must have reached his conclusions by being mislead by subtle fallacies, by unfamiliarity with relevant data, or by having been actually misinformed as to the relevant data: to identify such errors, fallacies and lapses must be the basis of their discussion. By contrast, you cannot argue with someone's emotional biases.
Moreover, the use of the fundamental attribution error as a counter-argument against some proposition is inherently fallacious, and would be even if the attribution was correct! Consider a debate of the following form.
- Protagonist: You believe X just because you want X to be true.
- Antagonist: Not in the least. Here are the arguments which convinced me of X.
- Protagonist: That's just a rationalization of what you want to believe!
Now this is not a counter-argument, and to believe that it is so is a fallacy. The antagonist may very well have been motivated to find or produce arguments for X impelled by a strong desire that X should turn out to be true. But that observation by itself does not invalidate any of the arguments, nor the conclusion.
Foe example, Albert Einstein was strongly motivated to save the principle of Galilean relativity simply because he found the principle beautiful and elegant, and because the way in which classical electromagnetics contradicted that principle seemed annoying and ugly. But this fact concerning his psychological motivations doesn't mean that his arguments were wrong and that the Special Theory of Relativity is invalid. The question, then, of whether an argument may have its origins as a rationalization of a desired conclusion is entirely irrelevant. The important question is whether this process of rationalization has been successful.
A shorter attempt to substitute the Fundamental Attribution Error for actual argument goes like this:
- Protagonist: Show me the evidence and arguments in favor of Y.
- Antagonist: You don't want to believe in Y, so there's no point in showing you the evidence.
- [At which point the Antagonist runs away as fast as his little legs will carry him.]
