Re: [CR]Straw-man (was: re: 80s Masis)

(Example: Framebuilding)

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 22:18:04 -0800
From: "Chuck Schmidt" <chuckschmidt@earthlink.net>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]Straw-man (was: re: 80s Masis)
References: <20050128044712.41026.qmail@web42005.mail.yahoo.com>


Joe Starck wrote:
>
> --- chasds@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> > Joe Starck wrote:
> >
> > Charles,
> >
> > Creating a "straw man or straw men," is a literary
> > technique emplowed by a single author, who both
> > creates the straw-man and blows it away; it's not a
> > two-author activity.
> >
> >
> > ********
> >
> > A straw-man is being offered when a person gives
> > a refutation for an argument no-one has actually
> > made.
> >
>
> Charles,
> I think your definition above is called something
> else, I don't know what it is formally called, but
> maybe informally, "changing the argument?" or
> comparing apples to oranges?"
>
> I may have been impolite in the way I made a bug-aboo
> about your interpretation of "strawman," but only
> because the way I learned it stuck. As I recall,
> "strawman is an argumentative technique in which you,
> yourself, as author or speaker, will refute what you
> initially stated. It's what you might use for a tough
> audience or when you really want to buck the status
> quo, for instance. It's subtle though, if done well
> your audience isn't onto your intentions untill they
> realize that their viewpoint has been changed, even
> shattered, if not completely, but at least partially,
> and the persuaded are almost always perplexed and
> surprised at having their viewpoint changed. It's
> called "strawman" because the initial argument is like
> a strawman in that the author or speaker knows, and
> only he knows, that he plans to gradually, gently,
> blow away his earlier argument straw by straw until
> it's entirely blown away and replaced with his
> intentioned stronger argument. I think the technique
> was coined "strawman" because that's another way of
> referring to a "frontman," a figurehead, and so it's
> somewhat analogous to the creation of the "strawman's"
> position in an essay of persuasion. I can't recall any
> famous examples, like from Jonathan Swift, or the
> like, but it seems to me that only writers ant the top
> of their craft can pull it off; it requires a high
> degree of art. If I come across a good example I'll
> surely let you know.
> Joe Starck,
> masidon, wi

Does this help?

The Straw Man Argument

To identify a Straw Man Argument, you must be familiar enough with the topic in question to recognize when someone is setting up a caricature. Understanding when someone is using this deceptive tactic is the best way to call attention to the weakness of the straw man position.

A Straw Man Argument is a statement a person makes if they want to more easily attack an opposing position.

Let's take the following position: "Evolution has been the main engine of speciation throughout natural history."

A person using a Straw Man against that position will intentionally make a ridiculous caricature of evolution, one that only the most ignorant might believe. These are the steps they might use to try to "disprove evolution".

Steps used in creating and using a straw man argument:

Step 1: Build the Straw Man: "Evolution is false! How could a mouse evolve into an elephant!?"

Step 2: Knock down the Straw Man by any means necessary: "How could a mouse evolve into an elephant? There would have to be billions of changes for that to occur, and nobody has ever seen speciation anyway!"

Step 3: Connect the original position to the Straw Man:"So it's silly...who has ever seen a mouse evolve into an elephant? Nobody!!"

Step 4: Claim to negate the opposing position by the connection in 3. "Therefore, evolution must be false!"

It's easy for the perpetrator to knock down their own Straw Man because they can make the Straw Man themselves. It's a tailor-made position for the person using it. Usually, the person using the argument will knock down the unrealistic caricature in Step 2 as quickly as possible, and then proclaim that the opposing position has been demolished because they were so cleverly able to knock down their own manufactured Straw Man.

They pretend that the Straw Man is the real argument, not the ridiculous caricature they created with deliberate ignorance and made-up facts. A real counter-position could cite facts to support their position. You can point out to them that they just knocked down their own caricature of evolution. Not the facts that support evolution. Straw men are ineffectual in that they leave the facts untouched.

Unfortunately, this tactic fools a lot of people because it can be subtle. In the case of evolution, an anti-evolutionist can take a slightly ridiculous point of view that seems born out of ignorance of science or fact. They then refuse to listen to rational facts, and escalate the ignorance until it's a full-blown Straw Man. This is a related tactic called deliberate ignorance. It will also include attempts to generate numbers out of the air to defend a Straw Man position.

This is one of the most unethical and cowardly of debating tactics, since the person using the Straw Man has so little confidence in their own position that they cannot even address the real position of their opponent! At the heart of the Straw Man Argument is deception.

When people use Straw Man arguments, ask for facts. Straw Man arguments are rarely based on undistorted fact.

The Hypocrite's Straw Men

Another type of Straw Man that anti-evolutionists use is a hypocrite's caricature in which they use criteria for judging evolutionary theory which they will not equally apply to any other discipline. For instance....

"Old hoaxes prove that all of evolutionary theory must be false."

This is also a Straw Man argument. One can remind such people that hoaxes abound all through human history, not just in evolutionary theory. Some examples are:

Spiritual: Religious artifacts, pieces of the "true cross", astrology, ghosts, spirtualism, UFOlogy, etc.

Medicine: Most extreme medical treatments pre-1900, snake oil, modern hoaxes, etc.

Science (recent): Falsification of new heavy element data, cold fusion.

A sane person would not invalidate medicine because of the hoaxes perpetrated by some unscrupulous people in the past. Medicine has come a long way, and is certainly much more advanced than it was. It would be illogical to expect someone to turn away from medical treatment because medicine once had occasional hoaxes and frauds.

You won't hear someone say, "Modern medicine is full of crap because quacks and hoaxes exist! (see for example QuackWatch). Would you expect people to stop going to doctors and deny themselves treatment because past and present frauds "must" prove all of medicine wrong?

Likewise, trying to discredit evolution with stories of previous hoaxes is again a Straw Man. Someone studying evolution won't discredit evolution because of hoaxes earlier in this century, because there are many, many fine studies over the years that are scientific, repeatable, and rigorous, that all point to evolution, and many more of those good studies than the handful of hoaxes the anti-evolutionists like to fixate on.

Ask the people using that kind of Straw Man if they've given up medicine and religion as well as evolutionary theory, on that same criteria? Sometimes they'll pretend they have, just to hold on to their straw man...and sometimes, that can be rather fun to watch.

Some real evidence for evolution can be found in many solid, repeatable scientific experiments. For a link to only 100 of them (you can find many more within this database by searching!), take a look at this PubMed webpage.

Having fun with Straw Men

Of course, there are many more examples. The Straw Man position is a "lazy argument" which doesn't bother to use facts or knowledge to try to create and defend a real position. The simple fact that you can show that a statement is really a Straw Man will expose their attempts at deception. Using real facts with reference is the only way to avoid using a Straw Man argument.

Understanding the deceptive basis of this tactic will empower you in debate, or help you avoid wasteful debate.

Straw Man statements include:

"Evolution is all random chance." (Note: In fact, evolution does not state that things evolved by chance. That Straw Man urban myth has been, and continues to be, spread by anti-evolutionists to cause doubt and confusion. Actually, half of evolution is non-random: natural selection. If natural selection were random, evolution wouldn't work!

"Evolution says we all came from monkeys."

"How could complex organs like the eye evolve from chance?"

"How could complex organs like the eye just come into existence?"

"How could life arise from nothing?"

Of course there are far too many examples to list.

With thanks to Dave Matson for the inspiration! -- Doctoress

Straw man fallacy

"Another well known, and much used, device is to misrepresent my position and attack things I have never said."

Rachel Carson 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In a straw man fallacy the opponents argument is distorted, misrepresented or simply made up. This makes the argument easier to defeat, and can also be used to make opponents look like ignorant extremists. Examples:

"Environmentalists often think that only government action can solve a crisis" (Sanera and Shaw, page 37). This neglects the large amount of advice on how individuals and companies can protect the environment. and the large number of lawsuits that environmental groups have filed against government agencies.

"The Rowland and Molina theory says that CFCs are so inert that there are no sinks (nothing to capture or destroy them) in the troposphere (the portion of the atmosphere below the stratosphere). Therefore, CFCs have very long lifetimes in the atmosphere." (Maduro and Schauerhammer, page 6) This is complete nonsense. The long lifetimes are based on the production rates of CFCs and their buildup in the atmosphere. And no scientist ever claimed that there were no tropospheric sinks.

"The ozone depletion propagandists dismiss this natural chlorine by arguing that not an ounce of it reaches the stratosphere." (Maduro and Schauerhammer, page 23) No scientist ever made such a claim. F Sherwood Rowland, one of the leading "propagandists" wrote (page 21) "The very large volcanic eruption of El Chichon in 1982 increased the total amount of stratospheric chlorine by about 10%, only to fade into the CFC background in about a year."

"On the other hand, claims that all pesticides are persistent or highly toxic have been found to be wrong, as have claims that pesticides pose a serious threat to human health." (Bast et. al, page 91, emphasis in original). I don't know of anyone who has claimed that all pesticides are persistent or highly toxic.

One of the strangest (and most obvious) is found in Steven Milloy and Michael Gough's Silencing Science (pages 5 to 7). The authors are in favor of human cloning research, but not because cloning humans is a good thing. Instead we are told that such research may lead to other discoveries, ("On a more mundane level, nonstick Teflon was only a byproduct of putting a man on the moon." But Teflon was discovered accidentally in 1938, when going to the moon was the stuff of science fiction.) We are also told that some research should be banned for ethical reasons. Their examples include the Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and human radiation experiments in the United States. Then on page 7 they write that "By associating cloning with such horrific experiments, getting a ban on human cloning research will come about as fast--and easily--as a Michael Jordan slam-dunk." But wait; it is Milloy and Gough themselves who did the associating, not the opponents of human cloning! You don't need to be a professional magician to see through such verbal slight of hand.

References

Bast, Joseph l., Peter J. Hill, and Richard C. Rue, Eco-Sanity: A common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism, Madison Books, 1994.

Limbaugh, Rush, The Way Things Ought to Be, Pocket Books, 1992.

Maduro, Rogelio A. and Ralf Schauerhammer, The Holes in the Ozone Scare: The Scientific Evidence That he Sky Isn't Falling, 21st Century Science Associates, 1992.

Milloy, Steven and Michael Gough, Silencing Science, Cato Institute, 1998.

Rowland, Sherwood, "The CFC controversy: Issues and answers", ASHRAE Journal, December 1992, pp 20-27.

Sanera, Michael and Jane S. Shaw, Facts not Fear: A Parent's Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment, Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1996. Now in a second edition.

Notes:

1. From a speech to the Women's National Press Club on December 5, 1962. Quoted on page 308 in Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson: The Writer at Work, Sierra Club Books, 1972-1989.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Written by Jim Norton

Visit my anti-environmental myths home page.

Visit my Practical skepticism page

The text on these pages may be freely copied, distributed and posted as long as my name, this statement and the URL (http://info-pollution.com/straw.htm) are included.

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.

straw man

A made-up version of an opponent’s argument that can easily be defeated. To accuse people of attacking a straw man is to suggest that they are avoiding worthier opponents and more valid criticisms of their own position: “His speech had emotional appeal, but it wasn’t really convincing because he attacked a straw man rather than addressing the real issues.”

Straw Man

DictionaryDefinition a weak or imaginary opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted.

Also one of the early stages in the specification of AdaLanguage.

A candidate definition or statement presented to invite discussion, attack and modification. See StakeInTheGround.
>From MemesShmemes: "A StrawMan has two features: it is easy to knock down, and it is a poor substitute for a real man." This sums it up nicely.
>From SocialProblemsOfLisp: "A StrawMan isn't the same as a weak argument. A StrawMan is when a weak argument is attributed to the opposition, and then (easily) refuted -- in order to make it appear that you've refuted the opponent's entire position."

For those who prefer pithy witticism: "A refutation of a caricature can be no more than a caricature of a refutation." -- Amos Tversky

Presenting an imaginary opposition in an argument is not always a bad idea, if this AntiThesis? is plausible enough. see http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/Counterarg.html

Someone should probably give a better example of a straw man than what goes on below.

Example Straw Man: Let's pretend that I think that the Federation from StarTrek is disrespectful to local cultures. I attempt to prove this by arguing that Captain Kirk is often disrespectful to local cultures. But this is a Straw Man; the example itself may be true, but it's a distraction from the larger issue, and doesn't (necessarily) map onto the entire Federation.

[This is not a good example - because Kirk is not set up in opposition to the point you are arguing. He is arguing FOR your position, not against it.]

A Better Example Straw Man: Arguing that the Federation is disrespectful it local cultures.... Captain Kirk says that we are ARE respectful to local cultures, citing the Federations required sensitivity training.

Well...this 3 hour course, which hasn't been updated in years, has been proven to have little effect on an officer's ability to interact with other cultures. Therefore, the Federation is disrespectful to local cultures. Captain Kirk (and his argument) are the straw-man, since they set us up to refute them, in an effort to prove a point. -- MikeCole

so a WickerMan? must be a weak argument put forward to be burnt down in a huge ball of flames? Preferrably with your opponent inside.

A straw man or man of straw is, in its literal sense, a dummy in the shape of a man created by stuffing straw into clothes or some other container. Straw men have been used as scarecrows, combat-training targets, or effigies to be burned. This led to a long history of metaphoric and rhetorical uses to refer a person or thing that is weak or ineffective, especially if it was created specifically to be weak.

In the sport of rodeo, the straw man is a dummy made of a shirt and pants stuffed with straw, traditionally propped up with a broom. The straw man is placed in the arena during bullriding events as a safety measure. It is intended to distract the bull after the rider has dismounted (or has been thrown), with the idea that the bull will attack the straw man rather than attack its former rider. Two so-called rodeo clowns--people dressed in bright colors whose job it is to distract the bull if the rider is injured--are in the ring as well and are usually far more effective than the straw man.

Contents 1 Rhetorical use 2 Decision making 3 Straw man in law 4 In literature 5 External links

Rhetorical use

The straw-man rhetorical technique is the practice of refuting weaker arguments than one's opponents actually offer. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to your opponent.

One can set up a straw man in several different ways:

1.Present only a portion of the opponent's arguments (often a weak one), refute it, and pretend that all of their arguments have been refuted. 2.Present the opponent's argument in weakened form, refute it, and pretend that the original has been refuted. 3.Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted. 4.Present someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, refute their arguments, and pretend that every argument for that position has been refuted. 5.Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are criticised, and pretend that that person represents a group that the speaker is critical of.

Some logic textbooks define the straw-man fallacy only as a misrepresented argument. It is now common, however, to use the term to refer to all of these tactics. The straw-man technique is also used as a form of media manipulation.

Decision making

A "straw-man proposal" is a simple draft proposal intended to generate discussion of its disadvantages and to provoke the generation of new and better proposals. As the document is revised, it may be given other edition names, i.e. "stone-man", "iron-man", etc.

Straw man in law

The term straw man can refer to a third party that acts as a "front" in a transaction (i.e., who is an agent for another) for the purpose of taking title to real property or some other kind of transaction where the principal remains hidden or to do something else which is not allowed. A straw man is also "a person of no means," or one who deliberately accepts a liability or other monetary responsibility without the resources to fulfill it, usually to shield another party.

At one time, men of straw were men that could be found in the courts who placed a piece of straw in their shoes (also called straw-shoes). Jurists knew that these men of straw were available to testify for a price, and they would be asked leading questions: Don't you remember that you saw him at the market at the time of the murder? And the straw-shoe's rejoinder would be: yes. Then the straw-shoes would perjure himself for a price in court, just as the jurist had so cleverly (but fraudulently) suggested.

In literature

Heinrich Mann's Man of Straw (1918) is the first book in his Das Kaiserreich trilogy and an unremitting critique of Wilhelmine Germany at the turn of the Twentieth Century. It portrays the life of a man, Diederich Hessling, a fanatic admirer of Emperor Wilhelm II, who becomes a straw man for authority and the existing order. Throughout the story, Diederich's inflexible ideals are often contradicted by his actions: he preaches bravery but is a coward; he is the strongest proponent of the military but seeks early relief from service; his greatest political opponents are the revolutionary Social-Democrats, yet he uses his influence to help send his hometown’s SPD candidate to the Reichstag so as to defeat his Liberal competitors in business; he starts vicious rumours against the latter and then dissociates himself from these; he preaches and enforces Christian virtues upon others but lies, cheats and regularly commits infidelity.

Diederich’s ideals: blood and iron, and the might of opulent power are exposed as hollowness and weakness. Diederich Hessling, the informer child (and later adult), the Neo-Teuton, the Doctor of chemistry, the paper manufacturer, and eventually the most influential man in town, is a critical allegory depicting German society’s increasing susceptibility to chauvinism, jingoism, ultra-nationalism, anti-Semitism and proto-fascism. His character is often juxtaposed, in both words and appearance to another man of straw, the Emperor, Prince Wilhelm II. 'It almost seems to me. You look so very much like - His ...'

Man of Straw. Penguin Books, London, 1984, c1918. (ISBN 0140065849)

Chuck Schmidt SoPas, SoCal

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