> I posted Joe privately on this matter, but since he
> posted
> the list as well, I wanted
> to post these links for others to see. The usual
> definition
> of a straw-man argument
> is as I described it: refuting an argument that was
> never
> made, or refuting a highly
> distorted version of an argument.
Charles, I swear to God, The Devil and Albert Eisentraut that I did not know your message was private. That's no excuse though, I should have looked. I stand corrected (or should I say "I sit in the corner corrected?") on "strawman." I'm not happy about it though, 'cause I like that name for the process I described. "Strawman" wasn't in my Logic textbook.(Maybe Logic 2 covers it.) I'm curious as to when the name was applied to what you rightly described as commonplace discourse in politics. During two years in Journalism School, and then for several years afterward, I read two newspapers daily, one left-leaning, and one right-leaning; it gave me a good grasp of the skewing going on from both sides. I didn't know I was deciphering "strawmen." I have been a registered Independent since then though! Thanks for the info from the sites you and Chuck Schmidt provided. I don't think that this "strawman" thing merits inclusion as a formal fallacy thouugh. In one of the examples from Chuck, the "strawman" is created by reducing the theory of evolution to a characature, and then from there begins the attack. But in the first step, in order to reduce the theory's complexity to oversimplicity, one would have to commit a number of fallacies before event beginning to attack the strawman created. I mean, it's a loaded-up process of extreme falsehood and disingenuity, so it seems to me that "strawman" is more a fallacious process and not a single fallacy. And maybe it's not in my textbook because this kind of behavior is of less interest to the study of logic and of more interest to the study of ethics! On another note, there really can be an argumentative process as I described in an earlier post, in which I rightly or wrongly called it "strawman." The difference though, is that in creating this kind of "strawman," one doesn't skew or distort an opponent's position; there's none of this kind of lying. For example, let's say back in the days when it was believed Earth was flat, you decide to argue that it's round. So you publicise a presentation, "How to keep from falling off the edges of Earth." (You're already beginning the construction of your strawman.) So everybody shows up and you first lay out statements supporting flatness, but you do so in such a manner so that you can use these same statements to support your argument that Earth is round. And so, you create a strawman from these statements of flat theory that the tough audience is comfortable with, and then gradually blow these straws away in a proof that Earth is round. (The reward for successfull persuasion here is progress. But if at the end of your presentation the people ask, "Yeah, but how do we keep from falling off?", you're pretty much left to reply, "Believe Earth is round." And then you get tarred and feathered and ran outta town, sorta like I'll probably get ran outta CR-land for this post.) I guess I'll drop "strawman" for my process though. Thanks for the 'learnin Chuck y Chuck.
In The Gospels, Pilate said to Jesus, "Are you King of the Jews?" Jesus replied, "The words are yours." Jesus should have added, "And quit trying to pull that strawman crap on me!"
Joe Starck, masidon, wi
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