Is this what a 'straw man' is? I've always been told that it is giving your opponents worst argument so that you can defeat it easily, hence, "setting up a straw man" refers to the act of choosing the worst argument. Hmm. --MichaelTinkler
I don't see the distinction between what the entry says and what you just said. I'm coming to suspect that I must be dense, though. :-) --
Koyaanis Qatsi
I think the distinction is that Michael's taking about actively messing someone's mind, whereas the article is passive: the person believes the fallacy... and also, Michael refers to the opponents true argument, not someone elses...
Maybe. [Dave McKee]
For "straw man", perhaps in place of
- A logical fallacy in which a person misattributes a position to a person who does not hold it and then refutes it, therefore, to the unperceptive, proving the person "wrong."
the following would be more accurate
- A logical fallacy in which an advocate presents an argument for the opposing position which is invalid and then refutes it, seeming, to the unperceptive, to prove the opposing position "wrong."
Right, but I thought the misattribution was part of it: that, regardless of whether the argument is invalid, it also had to be one that the person did not hold. Else why would it be a logical fallicy to prove an invalid argument invalid?
yep, I think that straw men are not logical fallacies but rhetorical tactics. They are distortions, but not untruths - your opponent holds the position, but you are
caricaturing it.
Well, as far as I can tell, in most cases the Straw Man fallacy refers generally to the practice of refuting weaker arguments than your opponents actually offer. The terminology is based on a combat metaphor -- instead of grappling with your opponent's real arguments, you set up a straw man which is easier to knock down.
This can be done in a number of ways:
- By presenting one of your opponent's lesser arguments then refuting it and then going on as if you've refuted her whole argument.
- By presenting a modified version of your opponents argument which is weaker than their real argument and then treating the refutation of the weaker argument as a refutation of her real argument.
- By presenting an poor defender of a position as the defender of that position and then defeating her arguments, and acting as tha that were a refutation of the position.
I suppose some folks might want to limit the use of "straw man" to only one of the above situations, but I don't think we should treat these special cases as the standard. All of the above situations are commonly referred to as "setting up a straw man" and I think we should follow common use. I also think that common use allows for unintentionally setting up a straw man, by accidentally misrepresenting your opponent's argument. -- Mark Christensen
My (old, battered) logic textbook does indeed refer to it as only #2 above. But we should concede to common usage, I suppose, though perhaps with some caveat about whichever sense is most commonly strictly in the study of logic. --
Koyaanis Qatsi
Of course it is not a fallacy to prove an invalid argument invalid. It
is a fallacy to believe that doing so disproves the
conclusion of the invalid argument.
I'll modify my above description to mention that some logic books treat the second case as the definitive, and to make clear that the fallacy is not the refutation of a week argument, but treating the refutation of the week argument as a refutation for all the arguments for that position. Then I'll replace the current page. There's far more information about the straw man fallacy here, than there is on the original page. --
Mark Christensen
Is "master dixit" really correct? I would have thought the Latin would be "magister dixit". (There's also "ipse dixit", which is essentially the same thing.) --
Zundark, 2001 Sep 26
Calling the "no true Scotsman" argument a fallacy is incorrect. Allow me some examples:
A: No person of the Jewish Faith eats pork.
R: But my friend Chaim eats pork.
Rb: Ah yes, but no true person of the Jewish Faith eats pork.
I know several Jews who would consider this a perfectly correct example of the fallacy, as they consider themselves Jews and enjoy pork.
- Well, fine. I think my point is still pretty clear, and someone kindly fixed up the entry to my satisfaction, except that I removed that part about "atrocities of religions..." as it seemed to be mean-spirited and contrary to NPOV. --Alex Kennedy
- I disagree on both points. (A) Many Jews most certainly do eat pork. And eating pork is a clear violation of Jewish law. But it happens. Are these people thus not Jews? Nope - they are still Jews, they just are violating their law, and there are many of them. (B) The "No true Scottsman" argument certainly must be related to religious atrocities, as it is almost exclusivley used to justify murder and oppression in the name of God. I can't tell you how many people have said that "No Christian would be an anti-Semite", which is perhaps as ludricrous as claiming that "No true Jew would eat pork". Both statements are absolutely false. They intend on using dictionary definitions to argue away reprehensible religious atrocities, which have been found in people of all faiths. RK
--
A: No pacifist believes in using the atom bomb on civilians.
R: But my friend Mohandas wants to use such a bomb Pakistani civilians!
Rb: Ah yes, but no true pacifist wants to use the atom bomb on civilians.
The fact that someone can claim to be something they are not, or that someone can be thought to be something they are not, makes this argument not necessarily a fallacy.
- Correct. It is not strictly a logical fallicy. Rather, it is a misleading argument in which one uses a dictionary's theoretical abstractions to distract people from the actions that occur in the real world. It is a logical hand-waving distraction. As LDC points out, it is an after-the-fact, and rarely justified narrowing of a definition in order to dance around counter-examples. RK
I think there is a logically fallacy here, although maybe it's not clearly explained: it is the fallacy of narrowing your definitions after-the-fact to dance around counterexamples. This is a popular pastime of Creationists: those are just "microevolutions", not real evolution; OK, new species can evolve, but not "created kinds". What's a "created kind"? Well, the ones that God created. Where are the dividing lines? Well, wherever we need to draw them to avoid the evidence. --LDC
I think this is not so much a fallacy as an unsound argument (or is it invalid argument?). It results from using a different definition of a word than your opponent in a logical debate uses. Thus, in the above example the first speaker's definition of "Jew" includes "does not eat pork." The second speaker's definition does not include this. --
KamikazeArchon
Notice that I carefully said "person of the Jewish Faith," however. It is contrary to what is commonly defined as the Jewish Faith to eat pork.
Of course, it was a pretty poor example. I was looking for a borderline example to show that there are degrees of applicability to that form of argument. --Alex Kennedy
Okay. This is an American, Juuitchan, speaking. Since you-know-what happened, I have heard a lot of people saying various things about America and patriotism. A number of these things seem to fall under the "No true Scotsman" fallacy: such as, every true American speaks fluent English (or is in the process of learning to do so), is a Christian, etc. Anybody got any more of these?
Moved from "Other logical fallacies"
Some fallacies are used freely in the media and politics, for example,
the "Argumentum ad hominem", the argument by the authority of
a person. Every time a politician says another "You don't have
moral authority to say that" is using that fallacy, not attacking the argument, but the person who uses it. In the opposite direction is the use of "Celebrity Speakerpersons": that product
is good because (put your favorite celebrity here) endorses it.
Actually, I think this should just be added to
logical fallacy (maybe). On the
logical fallacy page you could make a subpage, like /List of fallacies, if you didn't want to list the fallacies right there on the page.
What do you call this fallacy?
Someone's new oven has a thermostat that, at a given setting, gives a cooler temperature than their old oven at the same setting. The person assumes the new oven is miscalibrated, when it could be that the old oven is miscalibrated.
The above seems to be an instance of the False dilemma fallacy:
Two alternative points of view[?] are set up[?] as if they were
the only two options, namely:
Further, in referring to the given statement as "this fallacy",
an argument is made against the first alternative, and the second alternative
is thereby concluded.
But another possibility is that the premisses of the given statement don't take any one particular truth value at all, and that the statement is no logical argument, but plainly inconsistent and 'not even wrong'.
This third possibility evidently obtains, since:
- two distinct settings are not one and the same setting, and
- if calibration of any one in relation to itself is obtained at all, then it necessarily succeeded.
Best regards, Frank W ~@) R, Jan 4, 2003.
Frank, I think you completely missed the point.
First of all, they were the "same setting" (number of degrees Fahrenheit). And by "calibrated " I mean that, when you set the thermostat to N degrees, the oven heats up to a temperature of N degrees and remains close to that temperature indefinitely. --J
As for: Frank, I think you completely missed the point.
- J, the point I was trying to make was that your question was not very well posed, and could therefore (in your view) be missed. This possibility itself may constitute a logical fallacy which I'd be interested in resolving.
As for: First of all, they were the "same setting" (number of degrees Fahrenheit).
- One particular (real number) value of "degrees Fahrenheit" is a commensurate value of temperature. If the two ovens are equal by this measure, then they their temperature was equal.
- However, you seem to be referring only to some sort of labels or indicators.
As for: And by "calibrated " I mean that, when you set the thermostat to N degrees, the oven heats up to a temperature of N degrees and remains close to that temperature indefinitely
- Then we seem to be using different notions of "calibration". I understand an indicator scale Σ oven and one particular set of real-valued numbers Θ to be calibrated if a map Θ f Σ oven is available as a relation between them: Θ fΣ oven : Σ oven ⇔ Θ, θ = Θ f Σ oven( σ oven ).
- If two distinct ovens, A and B, are being considered, each with its own ideosynchratic scale, Σ A and Σ B, respectively, and suitable calibration maps Θ fΣ A and Θ fΣ B have been determined for both, then we can also consider the commensurate calibration relation between their individual scales, namely requiring that
- θ = Θ f Σ A( σ A ) = Θ f Σ B( σ B ).
- Surely it is a fallacy even to consider expressions such as "Θ f Σ A( σ B )"
i.e. to apply the calibration map Θ f Σ A of one oven to a scale indicator argument of another oven, σ B ...
- Best regards, Frank W ~@) R 20:23 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC).
Fwappler, you haven't defined what a scale Σ A actually is. Are you just spouting symbols to confuse or is there meaning behind them? At any rate, it seems a little too conplex and concoluted for a simple article on logic. -- Tarquin 10:12 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)
- This is why I don't trust symbols: it's too easy to lose track of the meaning. I reason as follows: It is reasonable to expect that when you turn the knob of an oven to 350 degrees, you will, after the oven finishes heating up, have (close to) 350 degrees. If you do this to TWO ovens, you will have two temperatures both close to 350 degrees, and (one would suppose) close to each other. Frank, why don't you take a break from the symbols for a while, and go have a beer and/or watch basketball on TV? --J
As for: It is reasonable to expect that when you turn the knob of an oven to 350 degrees, you will, after the oven finishes heating up, have (close to) 350 degrees.
- You still don't seem to distinguish between a measured temperature value, and some arbitrary label to which the knob is turned.
- If that label didn't look like "350 degrees", but if it were altered or damaged or intentionally designed to look like, say, "35 eee"; or for some other oven "__0 __gr___" ... could your supposed question still be reasonably formulated to begin with?
As for: This is why I don't trust symbols: it's too easy to lose track of the meaning.
- This is why I distrust claims of supposed "meaning" if they can't be formally expressed, for everyone to be understood equally ...
Regards, Frank W ~@) R 10:21 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC).
I for one move that we take the
logical out of
fallacy. That is retitle this listpage. I am not quite
bold enough to do it by
fiat, but I do feel quite strongly about it. Many significant types of fallacies are not of the logical variety!
Cimon avaro 09:27 May 15, 2003 (UTC)
I think this is a perfect time to start a minor overhaul of the sub-page structure. I'll start things up with
faulty generalization, see what you think of the way I structure and present things.
Cimon avaro 01:19 18 May 2003 (UTC)
- I suggest there should be a distinction between informal fallacies and (formal) logical fallacies, I read a bit about this in another (external) article, but I'm don't think I got the terms right, any light over the matter? --Rotem Dan 01:27 18 May 2003 (UTC)
Would someone please check my definition of
suppressed correlative, because I cannot find any references and did it from memory! --
Chris Q 06:48 29 May 2003 (UTC)
- Definition now changed -- Chris Q 07:52 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)