Philosophy
Great article over at Scientific American Mind by Yvonne Raley and Bob Talisse called "Getting Duped." In it they play with a question I've broached here in slightly different terms in the past. They look at a variant of the strawman fallacy wherein you actually can find an opponent pushing a weak view.
A strawman argument reconstructs the opponent's view to be weaker than it is. In logic, we have what we call the principle of charity, wherein one must argue against the strongest interpretation of your opponent's argument. But suppose you have many opponents, and you don't misconstrue anyone's argument, they just give a weaker version.
The obvious line is that while you may not be uncharitable to the one opponent, you are being uncharitable to the whole of the other side by elevating that clearly flawed view above the other stronger arguments and therefore wrongly denigrating the position as a whole. Well done, Yvonne and Bob.
But there's another question that seem to come out of it and I'm not sure what I think about it. What do you think: Can your opponent be proud and refuse your argumentative charity and if so, are you then committing a strawman or weakman fallacy by taking them at their flawed word?
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As someone who teaches critical thinking for a living, I am more than aware that fallacious reasoning is often psychologically very powerful. Despite what certain Enlightenment thinkers might say, we are not wired for reason. We often find bad arguments...
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There's a wonderful article in the forthcoming edition of Argumentation by our friend Bob Talisse -- he of the weakman arguments. Talisse, along with Scott Aikin, look at the rhetorical use of repeating someone's words back to them with an incredulous...
- New Fallacy: Pulling A Falstaff Or Attacking A Blogger
There is a standard rhetorical trick called "Attacking a Strawman" in which an opposing view is claimed to be refuted by ignoring the actual counter-argument, and instead creating a weaker, more easily attacked version of their position which is then...
- Logical Fallacies Classification - Formal And Informal Fallacies
Logical fallacies are classified in many different ways since there is still no agreement between thinkers for that matter. What are logical fallacies? The best definition of a fallacy in logic is an argument with poor reasoning (critical thinking rules...
Philosophy
On Weakman Arguments
Great article over at Scientific American Mind by Yvonne Raley and Bob Talisse called "Getting Duped." In it they play with a question I've broached here in slightly different terms in the past. They look at a variant of the strawman fallacy wherein you actually can find an opponent pushing a weak view.
A strawman argument reconstructs the opponent's view to be weaker than it is. In logic, we have what we call the principle of charity, wherein one must argue against the strongest interpretation of your opponent's argument. But suppose you have many opponents, and you don't misconstrue anyone's argument, they just give a weaker version.
In what Talisse dubs a weak man argument, a person sets up the opposition?s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival?s position as the straw man argument does.You may not be picking on the scarecrow, but you are the logical equivalent of the cowardly lion. It may be true that you've avoided the strawman charge by giving a faithful representation to your opponent's reasoning, but in taking an opponent who is not at the top of the intellectual weight class, by cherry picking the low hanging fruit (is it a mixed metaphor if both metaphors make the same reference?), is it still a violation of the principle of charity? You are not being uncharitable to the opponent you've selected to respond to.
The obvious line is that while you may not be uncharitable to the one opponent, you are being uncharitable to the whole of the other side by elevating that clearly flawed view above the other stronger arguments and therefore wrongly denigrating the position as a whole. Well done, Yvonne and Bob.
But there's another question that seem to come out of it and I'm not sure what I think about it. What do you think: Can your opponent be proud and refuse your argumentative charity and if so, are you then committing a strawman or weakman fallacy by taking them at their flawed word?
- Poe's Law Nevermore?
Our friends Scott Aiken and bob Talisse have an interesting post up about the argumentative effects of Poe's law. Poe's law is: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such...
- How Do They Get Away With It?
As someone who teaches critical thinking for a living, I am more than aware that fallacious reasoning is often psychologically very powerful. Despite what certain Enlightenment thinkers might say, we are not wired for reason. We often find bad arguments...
- Modus Tonens And The Psychological/rational Tension
There's a wonderful article in the forthcoming edition of Argumentation by our friend Bob Talisse -- he of the weakman arguments. Talisse, along with Scott Aikin, look at the rhetorical use of repeating someone's words back to them with an incredulous...
- New Fallacy: Pulling A Falstaff Or Attacking A Blogger
There is a standard rhetorical trick called "Attacking a Strawman" in which an opposing view is claimed to be refuted by ignoring the actual counter-argument, and instead creating a weaker, more easily attacked version of their position which is then...
- Logical Fallacies Classification - Formal And Informal Fallacies
Logical fallacies are classified in many different ways since there is still no agreement between thinkers for that matter. What are logical fallacies? The best definition of a fallacy in logic is an argument with poor reasoning (critical thinking rules...