Just say informal logical fallacies aren’t real and ask them to prove to you that they’re actual logical fallacies worth caring about. Even Wikipedia has this blurb:
All these nerds did was memorize the Wikipedia list on informal logical fallacies without understanding what informal logical fallacies are supposed to be. Appeal to authority is a good example. It’s all well and good until it has the “it isn’t appeal to authority if the source is an actual authority” clause. But therein lies the rub. Everyone appeals to what they believe to be an actual authority. Nobody appeals to the authority of who they believe to be an incompetent person. So, the informal logical fallacy called appeal to authority doesn’t exist because no one is foolish enough to purposely appeal to a source that they themselves feel isn’t an actual authority. I could go on. The vast majority of claims of ad hominem aren’t actually ad hominem, but just generic insults. And even with actual ad hominem, ad hominem presupposes that there’s no casual link between a person’s idea and a person’s action or character. You can see this with the type of ad hominem tu quoque. Tu quoque is just calling your opponent a hypocrite, but if one didn’t separate one’s thoughts from one’s actions like some idealist liberal, then suddenly tu quoque isn’t so fallacious. Why haven’t your argument materialize in the real world, as demonstrated by you failing to live up to what you’ve just argued? Could it be that your argument is actually trash and you are completely full of shit?
formal fallacies also kind of aren’t fully real either. at least within the confines of discourse, it’s not like formal/deductive logic is hugely applicable to rhetoric anyway imo.
i think just drawing upon fallacies in general is a bit pointless, most debate is centred around premise acceptability and not argument structure.
Would you say something about ‘tone policing’? Rejecting tone policing can be quite handy to prevent ‘civil’ liberals from ignoring substance and shutting down a discussion. But as it’s ultimately a rejection of a type of ad hominem and you’re being quite persuasive about the flaws in such fallacies, I’m wondering what your view is.
Just say informal logical fallacies aren’t real and ask them to prove to you that they’re actual logical fallacies worth caring about. Even Wikipedia has this blurb:
All these nerds did was memorize the Wikipedia list on informal logical fallacies without understanding what informal logical fallacies are supposed to be. Appeal to authority is a good example. It’s all well and good until it has the “it isn’t appeal to authority if the source is an actual authority” clause. But therein lies the rub. Everyone appeals to what they believe to be an actual authority. Nobody appeals to the authority of who they believe to be an incompetent person. So, the informal logical fallacy called appeal to authority doesn’t exist because no one is foolish enough to purposely appeal to a source that they themselves feel isn’t an actual authority. I could go on. The vast majority of claims of ad hominem aren’t actually ad hominem, but just generic insults. And even with actual ad hominem, ad hominem presupposes that there’s no casual link between a person’s idea and a person’s action or character. You can see this with the type of ad hominem tu quoque. Tu quoque is just calling your opponent a hypocrite, but if one didn’t separate one’s thoughts from one’s actions like some idealist liberal, then suddenly tu quoque isn’t so fallacious. Why haven’t your argument materialize in the real world, as demonstrated by you failing to live up to what you’ve just argued? Could it be that your argument is actually trash and you are completely full of shit?
formal fallacies also kind of aren’t fully real either. at least within the confines of discourse, it’s not like formal/deductive logic is hugely applicable to rhetoric anyway imo. i think just drawing upon fallacies in general is a bit pointless, most debate is centred around premise acceptability and not argument structure.
Well said o7
Would you say something about ‘tone policing’? Rejecting tone policing can be quite handy to prevent ‘civil’ liberals from ignoring substance and shutting down a discussion. But as it’s ultimately a rejection of a type of ad hominem and you’re being quite persuasive about the flaws in such fallacies, I’m wondering what your view is.