The Logical Fallacy of The Missing Subjunctive

An example of the fallacy, in general terms:

The state of the world has not improved,

therefore the effort intended to improve the

state of the world has not been effective.

The fallacy is in ignoring what the state would have been in the absence of the effort. The valid basis for comparison is ignored and probably unknowable.

The Fallacy of The Missing Subjunctive is related to the better known post hoc ergo propter hoc error. In the latter the cause is argued by a later effect that may in fact be unrelated. In the missing subjunctive fallacy the cause is disproved in the absence of a missing fact: what the state would have been in the absence of the cause.

This fallacy is particularly popular for arguing the failure of opposing politicians.

Examples:

1. "The authors begin with statistics about the steep rise in the number of prisoners, but they ignore the fact that crime has neither increased nor decreased much in comparison. Imprisonment has not solved the problem." (from IEEE publication letter to editor)

Unknown: what the effect today would have been in the absence of the intended cause: imprisonment. If without the increased imprisonment the crime rate would have been much higher then the imprisonment solved the problem of increasing crime rate. The crime rate is less than it would have been.

2. "The 'War Against Poverty' has not worked; there are more people on welfare than before."

Unknown: the number on welfare if there had been no "War Against Poverty."

3. "The war against drugs has failed."

Unknown: the state of the drug problem if there had been no war.

(The drug war is a monumental blunder, nevertheless the statement above is invariably based on the subjunctive fallacy and loses its effectiveness for that reason.)

4. "Although not necessarily weather related, in 1275 Geoffroy de Briel, a major figure in medieval Greece, died during a military campaign of dysentery, a disease often exacerbated by cold wet conditions." in *Global Warming* by Thomas Gale Moore

Unknown: how many more would have died of dysentery in *warm* wet conditions. Tropical travellers of the liberal ideology would attest to many more. (This is only one of the more humorous of the countless twists of logic in this ideological tour de force, an outstanding example of the genre. I am indebted to John McCarthy of Stanford for displaying it on the Internet, as well as his developing essay on ideology and logic.)

5. "The U.S. intervention in Somalia was a failure."

Unknown: how many more would have starved if the U.S. had not intervened.

Watch for missing subjunctives. They are in your daily newspaper.