Monday, January 6, 2014

Best of the Web Today: The Moralistic Fallacy - WSJ.com

Best of the Web Today: The Moralistic Fallacy - WSJ.com: "It could also be that the causation runs in the other direction--that economic mobility makes it easier or more advantageous to form families. Or some other factor may account for both mobility and the propensity to marry.

That said, Hymowitz's hypothesis that family breakdown causes "boy troubles" is an entirely plausible one. But there's still a problem with it: That framing makes the argument circular. Recall that she posed the question as (among other things) why "poor and working-class boys" fail to become "reliable husbands and fathers." She ends up concluding that the cause of fatherlessness is . . . fatherlessness."

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