People shouting 'fallacy' when there is no fallacy

[Beelzebuddy]

Actually, way I learned it, the No True Scotsman fallacy is a special form of circular reasoning.

Wikipedia defines it as a special form of begging the question, exactly as others have been using it. Which is also the way I learned it, plus, hey, Wikipedia.

Also from that page:

For the practice of wearing a kilt without undergarments, see True Scotsman.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, begging the question is circular reasoning, so it would seem we're in agreement there.

 

[gnome]

Nuh-uh... TRUE circular reasoning is religious in nature.

 

[Taarkin]

"Ghengis Kahn was a Scotsman."
No he wasn't.
"GRAAH you used the no true Scotsman fallacy!"
No I didn't that's a strawman!

edit- here's an almost foolproof plan to test whether your post is a strawman: does it start with "So"? ex:
"Hamlet is overrated. I think The Tempest and Othello better capture the angst of a man torn between love and duty"
"So basically you're saying you're a gay pedophile who likes to kill babies with your best friend Adolph Hitler??!?"

 

[gnome]

Here's another one for straw men... based on Taarkin's idea (which is an interesting rule of thumb)

Sometimes a straw man argument is made from an extension of what the other person said... the debator knows that isn't what the other person intends, but challenges them to qualify their argument in order to avoid the straw argument.

An example:

A: "People who don't pay off their loans should go to jail until they're paid."
B: "So for people that have no way of raising more money, you're saying they should stay in jail forever?"
A: "Strawman! I never said that!"

It isn't really a straw man argument--it's B trying to get A to qualify their proposition. Or, sometimes, B isn't sure how far A wants to take it...

A: "All Muslims should be deported!"
B: "All, like every single one?"
A: "Yep, all of them."
B: "So you want to deport American citizens if they're Muslims?"
A: "What? When did I say that? Straw Man!"

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, yeah, things are more complex. Isn't that usually the case?

But I think that one should also be aware of extensional vs intensional contexts.

A) In an extensional or referentially-transparent context, you can substitute identicals: if X=Y and P(X) then P(Y). Best known as Leibniz's Law. E.g., if Batman is Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne has a butler named Alfred, then Batman has a butler named Alfred.

B) In an intensional or referentially-opaque context, Leibniz's Law doesn't apply. In fact, that's pretty much the definition of such a context. Usually just about anything that involves personal opinions, or stuff like "knows", "believes", "says", is intensional. So is just about any modal context.

E.g., Clark Kent is Superman, Lois Lane says she knows where Clark Kent lives, therefore Lois Lane says she knows where Superman lives... is quite false, actually. That's not at all what she's saying. As far as she knows or says, she doesn't know who Superman is or where he lives.

E.g., to use a proper masked man Don Diego de la Vega is Zorro, Sgt. Pedro Gonzales is an enemy of Zorro, therefore Sgt. Pedro Gonzales is an enemy of Don Diego de la Vega... again is actually quite false. The sergeant is actually a friend of Diego, not having any idea that he's Zorro.

While that's not strictly a strawman -- it's actually the Masked Man Fallacy -- it sure looks that way to someone who doesn't even know, or thought it through that the two entities are identicals or even intersect.

So, yeah, if you're saying "so you're saying that", it's usually a good sign that it's a fallacy. Unless that person explicitly said exactly that.

I do understand that at times it's a very useful device to make someone realize the enormity implied by what they're saying, but strictly speaking it is a fallacy.

 

[daenku32]

Recent one I saw was in topic to acceptance of AGW. The author stated that IPCC report is sufficient to accept global warming, and a critical yelled (to his keyboard) that "argument from authority".

I don't think referring to peer review conclusion is a fallacy.

 

[Bram Kaandorp]

Recent one I saw was in topic to acceptance of AGW. The author stated that IPCC report is sufficient to accept global warming, and a critical yelled (to his keyboard) that "argument from authority".

I don't think referring to peer review conclusion is a fallacy.

In fact, saying that "it's an argument from authority" is in itself a logical fallacy. At least, if the person shouting logical fallacy is referring to the fact that it's peer reviewed.

 

[HansMustermann]

It's an argument from authority, if something is supposed to be true because of who said it. And peer review is cute as support of that fallacy, but still doesn't make it anything else than a fallacy. In fact, lots of peer reviewed authorities are wrong.

The geocentric epicycles system had had some two thousand years of peer review and consensus at the time of Galileo and it was wrong. Einstein's cosmological constant, at least how he originally set it, was coming from one heck of an expert and was peer reviewed, but even he himself later described it as his biggest mistake. Psycholanalysis of the Freudian kind had a heck of a lot of peer review and experts and universities, but now we know that Freud just made crap up, and that memories just don't work that way, and generally it all doesn't work that way.

Chiropractic has a heck of a lot of peer review, and even peer review boards consisting of other chiropractors, but it's still bogus. Acupuncture is subject to peer review by other acupuncture experts and authorities, but is still bogus. Astrology books are sometimes (though not always) reviewed by other astrology experts first, but we know that astrology is bogus anyway. Even ID has at least a dozen papers that have gone through a thorough peer review... by other ID-ers, and, make no mistake, there is no doubt among ID-ers that the irreducible complexity or NFL "theories" are correct and evolution is wrong. Too bad it's bogus too.

Ultimately whether something is true or false must follow from data and logic or maths, not from which authority said it and not from what authority reviewed it. Period.

In informal logic you are allowed to shortcircuit the whole checking the evidence, and just evaluate the credibility of the evidence and decide whose conclusion you'll just trust. But that doesn't mean it actually makes the conclusion true or false. It just means you're allowed to do a guess about whether you believe it to be right or wrong, which isn't the same thing as it actually being right or wrong.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Well. . . an argument from authority is inappropriate in certain circumstances:
When it's not necessary (when there is direct evidence one way or the other, an expert's opinion isn't despositive).
When the authority isn't an authority on the subject at hand (and for some subjects there can be no authority).
When the authority is not disinterested.

(This is taken straight from the Fallacy Files.)

I would add that the primary role of an authority is to summarize or characterize the result of a lot of inductive reasoning (experiments, studies, the literature in a field). It really is more like weighing evidence than a deductive logical proof.

So an appeal to misleading authority is inappropriate or "fallacious" in a different way than most of the fallacies we've been talking about. It does speak to the truth value of propositions (again in inductive reasoning) rather than merely point out that the conclusion doesn't validly flow from the premises.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

RE: Strawman Fallacy

So, yeah, if you're saying "so you're saying that", it's usually a good sign that it's a fallacy. Unless that person explicitly said exactly that.

Amen. A stronger sign is when you invent quotations (words no one said) and put them in your opponent's mouth. Even worse is when you act out both sides of an argument in order to get your opponent to say things in just a certain way.

I point that this is pretty strong evidence you're arguing against a straw man over on the Politics subforums with alarming regularity. (Search the US Politics one using "I'll say it again" because I try to preface my comment with "I've said it before and I'll say it again" whenever I point this out.)

Despite how often we discuss and explicate fallacious reasoning on these forums, it's amazing that people still do this here, and relatively frequently. (I've got one person who seems to think if he just writes up the fake dialogue but doesn't use quotation marks that it's not arguing against a straw man.)

 

[Taarkin]

A lot of this can be avoided by just asking them if X is good instead of accusing them "So you think X is good?".
Even worse is preemptive strawmanning, where you ascribe an opinion to someone before they even say anything. Watch, gnome is going to come in here and say preemptive strawmanning is a good thing.

Even worse is when you act out both sides of an argument in order to get your opponent to say things in just a certain way.

 

[gnome]

I saw what you did there...

Really I'm not... your comment was the first time actually that I've thought about the wording in such situations. It is useful to consider if a different wording would encourage a more constructive response.

 

[ZirconBlue]

I have some examples too. This is the best one from my personal experiences: I had been out to dinner with a friend, his girlfriend and some of their friends, and was walking to the subway with a couple that had been at the dinner. Somehow the conversation touched on the subject of prostitution, and the female half of the couple said something to the effect that paying for sex is an evil, abusive thing to do because these women don't really want to do what they're doing. I tried to explain that the first part of that doesn't really follow from the second, by saying that e.g. a cleaning lady may not like to do what she's doing for money either. By her logic, it would be morally wrong to hire a cleaning lady. She went completely ******* because I had "compared" having a boring job with being raped for money, and started accusing me of being a horrible, evil, rape-supporting *******. It was really unpleasant.

So, where did you hide the body?

 

[Dave Rogers]

So, yeah, if you're saying "so you're saying that", it's usually a good sign that it's a fallacy. Unless that person explicitly said exactly that.

I do understand that at times it's a very useful device to make someone realize the enormity implied by what they're saying, but strictly speaking it is a fallacy.

It can be a good way of exposing a logical contradiction in someone else's argument, however. To take Gnome's example:

A: "All Muslims should be deported!"
B: "All, like every single one?"
A: "Yep, all of them."

A reasonable continuation might be to ask whether this includes Muslims who are US citizens, and, if not, to point out the contradiction and ask for a resolution.

Dave

 

[gnome]

In a sense that a strawman argument will take the form of attributing an argument to someone, "so you are saying..." definitely qualifies.

But to be a straw man it also has to be intentionally inaccurate. It being used as a legitimate inquiry, and giving the person the opportunity to distinguish their opinion from it, need not be straw man.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

But to be a straw man it also has to be intentionally inaccurate.

I disagree. The intention is irrelevant.

ETA: If it were relevant, then "honest" stupidity and ignorance would be a defense against ever committing a strawman. (Also, if one unintentionally mischaracterizes a position, and then refutes that position, that refutation can't stand as a refutation against the actual position just because there was no intention to create a strawman.) And I put "honest" in scare quotes because it's a blurry line between laziness and intentional ignorance. But, logically, it's plain that intention is irrelevant. If you refute a mischaracterization of a position, the actual position is not refuted. This is the basic point of the strawman "fallacy".

 

[gnome]

You know, I think you're right. So I'll drop the word "intentionally" from my above statement. But I believe "So you are saying that..." need not automatically be suspected of strawman except that only arguments attributed to others could be a strawman.

It still needs to be actually a mischaracterization, and that phrasing doesn't really clue you in as to whether it is or isn't.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

You know, I think you're right. So I'll drop the word "intentionally" from my above statement. But I believe "So you are saying that..." need not automatically be suspected of strawman except that only arguments attributed to others could be a strawman.

It still needs to be actually a mischaracterization, and that phrasing doesn't really clue you in as to whether it is or isn't.

I agree there. Asking for clarification is not arguing against a strawman.

Well. . not in itself. I've seen people proceed to purport to refute their made up version of an opponent's position in the guise of "Just Asking Questions".

But I stand by the observation that if you're making up fake quotes and putting those words into your opponent's mouth, it's pretty strong evidence that you're probably arguing against a strawman.

Asking for clarification is sometimes an excuse for doing just that. (Or even for attempting to trap your opponent into agreeing to a particular wording of their position that they didn't originally make just because that wording contains a weakness that the original wording did not.)

ETA: I guess that means I don't agree so much, because I think it *is* reasonable to be suspicious when someone says, "So you're saying that. . ." rather than responding to what the person actually said. If what they actually said is vague or ambiguous, pointing out that the wording is vague or ambiguous is a legitimate refutation of what they actually said. That person might then re-state their position without those problems, and then you can respond to that.

 

[ladmo]

I've got two more good examples of this.

"Abortion stops a beating heart."
"So does slaughtering a cow to make beef."
"You can't compare a child to a cow!"
"I wasn't. Try this: some kinds of open heart surgery stop a beating human heart, does it follow from that that it's morally wrong?"

And worse was the fallout when one of the skeptical magazines said exactly what I'd been saying about putting the 9/11 terrorism attacks into perspective: more Americans are killed in traffic fatalities about every 6 weeks than were killed on 9/11. I thought this was especially important when tens of billions of dollars went to Homeland Security to keep us safe from terrorism.

People right away--even the subscribers to the skeptical magazine--complained that you can't compare these deaths. My question is, is a death in the family due to an auto accident less tragic than a death from a huge newsworthy terrorism attack? Are the loss of those lives more important or significant than the loss of other lives? More importantly, does any of that somehow alter the cost/benefit analysis of what we spend our federal dollars on?

Excellent comments but it may not get play as it makes perfect sense.