{"id":5258,"date":"2017-05-25T08:40:14","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T13:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5258"},"modified":"2017-05-26T09:23:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T14:23:03","slug":"straw-figures-and-analogies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5258","title":{"rendered":"Straw Figures and Analogies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When one makes a straw figure of an interlocutor’s position, one casts it in worse lights than it deserves.\u00c2\u00a0 And so, one interprets a ‘most’ as an ‘all,’ or a prima facie <\/em>duty as an absolute one.\u00c2\u00a0 And so with Mallard Fillmore’s recent comic, we have an imagined critical discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 The person in the black turtleneck says “we should be more like Scandinavia.”\u00c2\u00a0 Fillmore’s rebuttal is that there’s a brewery in Scandinavia that makes beer from urine, presumably with the thought that this is a counter-example.\u00c2\u00a0 He then predicts that this should have “no impact” on the black turtleneck guy’s thesis.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s a joke.\u00c2\u00a0 But the humor in the joke, I presume, is that the urine-beer point is supposed to be a kind of analogy-breaker, instead of a counter-example.<\/p>\n

So, in the first instance, the Fillmore argument is a straw figure.\u00c2\u00a0 He interprets black turtlenecks’ thesis as: we should do all<\/em> the things that Scandinavians do.\u00c2\u00a0 All it takes is one counter example.\u00c2\u00a0 So pee beer.\u00c2\u00a0 You could also have other things.\u00c2\u00a0 Black Metal, weird furniture design, love of Schnapps, obsessions with wool mittens.\u00c2\u00a0 Those are things that Americans could probably take the pass on.\u00c2\u00a0 (Sidebar: I’ve always thought I should <\/em>like Black Metal, but I just can’t seem to get into it.)<\/p>\n

As I take it, black turtleneck won’t be phased by the urine beer counter-example, because his argument isn’t that we should do all <\/em> the things they do, just those from a relevant class.\u00c2\u00a0 So, decent treatment of workers, living wage, encouraging bicycles, social safety net.<\/p>\n

So, here’s how I think that Fillmore’s argument works in the second instance.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s supposed to be a kind of analogy-breaker, and the line is that if you’re comfortable with all the social things that come with being a Northern European Socialist Utopia, then there are other things that come along for the ride. External costs.\u00c2\u00a0 And urine beer is just one of those things.\u00c2\u00a0 So the thought is that if you experiment with society to a certain degree, you break common sense.\u00c2\u00a0 And you end up with piss beer.<\/p>\n

The irony, of course, is that if reductio of social policy can be done by way of what kind of beer a society produces, then we are in for some trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 And Fillmore implicitly recognizes that point.\u00c2\u00a0 See the next comic:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>What’s funny, of course, is not just that Fillmore recognizes the\u00c2\u00a0 implication for American beers, but that he’s really hung up on the Danish piss brew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When one makes a straw figure of an interlocutor’s position, one casts it in worse lights than it deserves.\u00c2\u00a0 And so, one interprets a ‘most’ as an ‘all,’ or a prima facie duty as an absolute one.\u00c2\u00a0 And so with Mallard Fillmore’s recent comic, we have an imagined critical discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 The person in the black … Continue reading Straw Figures and Analogies<\/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":[95,12,23],"tags":[733,1171,1964],"class_list":["post-5258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fallacies-of-ambiguity-fallacies-argument-problems","category-straw-man","category-weak-analogy","tag-false-analogy","tag-mallard-fillmore","tag-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258","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=5258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5264,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions\/5264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}