{"id":961,"date":"2008-10-31T15:22:17","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T19:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=961"},"modified":"2008-10-31T16:01:35","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T20:01:35","slug":"fallacy-fallacy-fallacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=961","title":{"rendered":"Fallacy fallacy fallacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The fallacy fallacy consists in thinking a conclusion false because it is the product of a fallacious argument.&nbsp; I often get accused of that.&nbsp; Such accusations reveal a manifest ignorance of how proving stuff works.&nbsp; The fallacy fallacy fallacy consists in thinking it fallacious (usually an ad hominem) to accuse people of having committed fallacies.&nbsp; So if I point out, for instance, that someone has reasoned poorly, and that person responds that I am attacking them personally, then that person has committed the fallacy fallacy fallacy.&nbsp; I think in fact that this occurs quite often.&nbsp; Here, for instance, is an imperfect example from that intellectual giant, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.abcnews.com\/politicalradar\/2008\/10\/palin-fears-med.html\">Sarah Palin<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama&#39;s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate&#39;s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,&quot; Palin told host Chris Plante, &quot;then I don&#39;t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions <strong>without fear of attacks by the mainstream media<\/strong>.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Got that?&nbsp; You can&#39;t criticize Palin&#39;s guilt-by-association tactics, because that&#39;s &quot;attacking the person.&quot;&nbsp; Dumb.<\/p>\n<p>For the fallacy fallacy, all the credit goes to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.humbughunting.net\/\">Humbugonline<\/a>.&nbsp; For the above Palin quotation, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2008_10\/015460.php\">Washington Monthly<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fallacy fallacy consists in thinking a conclusion false because it is the product of a fallacious argument.&nbsp; I often get accused of that.&nbsp; Such accusations reveal a manifest ignorance of how proving stuff works.&nbsp; The fallacy fallacy fallacy consists in thinking it fallacious (usually an ad hominem) to accuse people of having committed fallacies.&nbsp; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=961\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fallacy fallacy fallacy<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,204],"tags":[371,370,288],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-problems","category-specious-allegations-of-fallacy","tag-fallacy-fallacy","tag-fallacy-fallacy-fallacy","tag-sarah-palin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}