Logical Fallacies

In high school, senior Eng­lish intro­duced me to the cod­i­fied world of fal­la­cious rea­son­ing. Through­out col­lege I learned a bit more about it, but it seems the only peo­ple who real­ly under­stand log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es thor­ough­ly are philosophes and rhetori­cists. They’ve always been con­sid­ered bad things, and in strict terms of argu­ment-in-order-to-win, I sup­pose they are. But I think they can do some good too.

If one assumes that a dis­cus­sion is tak­ing place with the goal of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and under­stand­ing instead of the goal of vic­to­ry of opin­ion, then the delib­er­ate and open use of fal­la­cious log­ic can serve to test the effi­ca­cy of each argu­ment. The true test of an argu­ment is against anoth­er argu­ment just as effi­ca­cious, but by run­ning the log­i­cal fal­la­cy gaunt­let I think that any the­o­ry can be tem­pered. At the very least it will force the peo­ple wrestling with the idea to con­sid­er mul­ti­ple appli­ca­tions or dis­cov­er the pos­si­ble flaws in their posi­tion.

That is the kind of dia­logue that I try to par­tic­i­pate in. When peo­ple don’t want to “be right” or “win” an argu­ment; when they want mutu­al under­stand­ing; those are the dis­cus­sions I enjoy most. I love hav­ing a long chat and end­ing by stand­ing on the same piece of ground as some­one else, even if we’re look­ing in dif­fer­ent direc­tions.

I think I end up doing that here an awful lot. I set up straw men and more often than not throw my own straw men at them. I’m not even argu­ing with myself.