{"id":4611,"date":"2014-01-08T09:26:50","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T14:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4611"},"modified":"2014-01-08T09:26:50","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T14:26:50","slug":"fallacy-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4611","title":{"rendered":"Fallacy Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Existential Comics has a nice series on Fallacy Man<\/a>, a guy dressed as Zoro who jumps into conversations to point out fallacies.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a nice way to show the dialectical error of only pointing out fallacies – namely, that naming a fallacy form isn’t helpful feedback for the argument.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to explain why a premise is irrelevant, or how some forms of inference are based on incorrect data.\u00c2\u00a0 Those are all dialectical requirements of reason – exchange.\u00c2\u00a0 The best part, of course, is that there’s also the problem of the fallacy fallacy<\/strong>. (You’ve got to read to the end of the comic.)<\/p>\n

Now, the fallacy fallacy requires additional dialectical baggage, and I don’t see it in the comic posted.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s the basic form of fallacy fallacy:<\/p>\n

Premise: The opposition’s case for their view (P) is fallacious. (Then the list of the fallacy forms identified).<\/p>\n

Conclusion 1: The opposition’s view, P, is false.<\/p>\n

Conclusion 2: And, further, my view is true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, so far, just listing all the fallacy forms you identify in the opposition’s case isn’t yet proof that their view is false or that your view is true.\u00c2\u00a0 BUT: there are a number of considerations that might undercut that.\u00c2\u00a0 Note, the opposition may have the entirety of the burden of proof.\u00c2\u00a0 And so, were the opposition to have the view that, say, there’s an elephant in the room, and they can’t prove it except fallaciously, then there’s reason to believe that there’s no elephant in the room.\u00c2\u00a0 (Otherwise, there’d be evidence).\u00c2\u00a0 Or consider this in a legal context — all the defense has to do is point out the failures of argument from the prosecution, because the burden of proof is entirely on those who argue for guilty.\u00c2\u00a0 In those cases, there are default conclusions, <\/em><\/strong>and when the case to the contrary fails, we revert to them.\u00c2\u00a0 So in those cases, fallacy fallacy is no fallacy. To further clarify John’s got a great post on the Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Existential Comics has a nice series on Fallacy Man, a guy dressed as Zoro who jumps into conversations to point out fallacies.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a nice way to show the dialectical error of only pointing out fallacies – namely, that naming a fallacy form isn’t helpful feedback for the argument.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to explain why a … Continue reading Fallacy Man<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,1,4,204],"tags":[371,370],"class_list":["post-4611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argument-problems","category-general","category-fallacies","category-specious-allegations-of-fallacy","tag-fallacy-fallacy","tag-fallacy-fallacy-fallacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4613,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4611\/revisions\/4613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}