4Real Forums: Logical fallacies

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Topic: Logical fallacies

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momwise
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Joined: March 28 2005
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Posted: March 31 2005 at 7:58am \| IP Logged

Boy...there are a lot of them hanging around these days in the press. What I'm confused about is the difference between a Red Herring and a Straw Man.

I'm amazed (not surprised) by the number of letters in the papers whose authors gloat over Terri's defenders. They're either being sarcastic about the sanctity of marriage, the "killing of thousands in Iraq," the death penalty, etc.etc.

Pull these letters out and dissect them with your kids. Construct a list of fallacies and refute them. Would somebody mind posting an answer to the above question? Thanks!

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Gwen in Denver

Willa
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Posted: April 01 2005 at 12:33pm \| IP Logged

A straw man is a particular type of red herring. Red herrings are irrelevant points put in to distract from the main focus of the argument. "Some of the Renaissance popes were evil" (when the argument is about Peter and the Keys of the Kingdom). A straw man argument is when you misrepresent your opponent's argument in order to have an easier time refuting it "you Catholics all worship Mary" -- that kind of thing. I'm

making it sound like fallacies are always intentional but sometimes people just don't know how to keep to a focused argument and sometimes what seems like a red herring to one person, ie the evil Renaissance popes, may come down to a real question to the other person -- perhaps the argument hasn't been fully defined yet and the opponents are actually making separate points. That's part of the constructive purpose of arguments, to clarify what you yourself think and what the opponent is actually thinking.

Here's a site I found defining the terms:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/redherrf.html

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Willa
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stefoodie
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Joined: Feb 17 2005
Location: Ohio
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Posted: April 01 2005 at 12:45pm \| IP Logged

my favorite logical fallacy sites:

From Wikipedia

Stephen Downes' Guide

i provided the links because these explain it so much better than i possibly can.

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stef

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