Five Ways Logical Fallacies Get Misidentified & Abused

EXCERPT: . . . the human mind is the irrational elephant in the room, causing many thinkers to misidentify and abuse logical fallacies over the course of a debate. Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society, pointed out a variety of these abuses in his book, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. What follows are five logical fallacies, along with descriptions of how they can be misused and abused.

1. Argument From Authority: [...] too often people misapply the "argument from authority" fallacy to dismiss a solid scientific consensus. [...]

2. Correlation and Causation: Correlation does not prove causation. [...] However, correlation absolutely can be evidence for causation, the quality of which depends [...]

3. Ad Hominem: [...] personal attacks aren't necessarily ad hominem fallacies. As Novella wrote, "If I impolitely state that someone with whom I disagree is a jackass, that's not an ad hominem fallacy. If I say their argument is wrong because they are a jackass, then that is a fallacy. [...]"

4. Argument From Ignorance: "[...] it's not strictly true," Novella writes. "Absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of absence. It's just not absolute proof of absence."

5. The Fallacy Fallacy: It is itself a fallacy to reason that just because you proved an opponent's argument to be logically fallacious, you've shown their conclusion to be wrong.[...] It is also a fallacy to incorrectly claim that somebody else is using a fallacy [...]

DETAILS: Five Ways Logical Fallacies Get Misidentified and Abused

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Quote:1. Argument From Authority: [...] too often people misapply the "argument from authority" fallacy to dismiss a solid scientific consensus. [...]

I think we should be cautious in taking scientific consensus as a sign of truth. That does seem to me a lazy appeal to authority in lieu of an objective review of the merits of the theory or phenomenon itself.

Quote:3. Ad Hominem: [...] personal attacks aren't necessarily ad hominem fallacies. As Novella wrote, "If I impolitely state that someone with whom I disagree is a jackass, that's not an ad hominem fallacy. If I say their argument is wrong because they are a jackass, then that is a fallacy.

I disagree with that. Any time during a debate you attack or belittle your opponent you are essentially undermining the argument by undermining the debater. There is no necessity to explicitly point that out. Just doing it does it. If you call them stupid, then you have undermined their argument by saying their argument is stupid too. If you call them a fool, then you have undermined their argument by calling it foolish. The undermining is performed not necessarily spoken about.

(Jan 4, 2019 03:57 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:

Quote:1. Argument From Authority: [...] too often people misapply the "argument from authority" fallacy to dismiss a solid scientific consensus. [...]

I think we should be cautious in taking scientific consensus as a sign of truth. That does seem to me a lazy appeal to authority in lieu of an objective review of the merits of the theory or phenomenon itself.

Since no one can be credited as all-knowledgeable, meaningful discourse would be impossible without reference to the expertise of others. Thereby for the fallacy to even make any sense, its usage of "authority" is either stripped down to signifying higher administrative rank, reputation, etc alone... or denotes appeal to improper expertise (an institution, profession, or licensed individual dispensing "facts" about an area which is actually outside their field).

No doubt this logical taboo is routinely violated in varying degrees due to everyday practicalities revolving around what would otherwise be the enormous time-consumption and exhaustive tedium of validating and detailing how each specific "expert knowledge" is proper and warranted according to _X_ standards of societal structure. In some cases sources circularly referencing each other indirectly in the course of wide branching loops of epistemic complexity (vaguely similar to how words in a dictionary simply pass to the semantic buck on to each other without ever leaping outside to the phenomenal world they're supposed to represent -- barring the occasional picture). Thus the expectations conditioned in us by ordinary life conventions substitute instead ("have faith in the system, go with the flow of how things work, it just is a set of approved facts or data").

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Quote:3. Ad Hominem: [...] personal attacks aren't necessarily ad hominem fallacies. As Novella wrote, "If I impolitely state that someone with whom I disagree is a jackass, that's not an ad hominem fallacy. If I say their argument is wrong because they are a jackass, then that is a fallacy.

I disagree with that. Any time during a debate you attack or belittle the opponent you are essentially undermining the argument by undermining the debater. There is no necessity to explicitly point that out. Just doing it does it. If you call them stupid, then you have undermined their argument by saying their argument is stupid too. If you call them a fool, then you have undermined their argument by calling it foolish. The undermining is performed not necessarily spoken about.

Yah, the big joke is that fallacies are knowingly exploited as weapons of war by professional endeavors. I.e., the non-idealized world of actual human interaction wants/needs to use them -- also perhaps a kind of do it or get run over situation. Only in very artificial setups or refereed academic environments (like classrooms) does intellectual sparring incur disfavor, penalties or points-loss for coloring outside the lines of correct thinking. Like proper conduct in school winning student awards and teacher's pet status, but the same devotion to formal template may garner verbal or physical torment in the playground or older adolescent hangouts. (Opportunistic Eddie Haskell two-faced personalities possibly excluded, but lack of consequences hopefully restricted to peers. )

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(Jan 4, 2019 03:57 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:

Quote:3. Ad Hominem: [...] personal attacks aren't necessarily ad hominem fallacies. As Novella wrote, "If I impolitely state that someone with whom I disagree is a jackass, that's not an ad hominem fallacy. If I say their argument is wrong because they are a jackass, then that is a fallacy.

I disagree with that. Any time during a debate you attack or belittle your opponent you are essentially undermining the argument by undermining the debater. There is no necessity to explicitly point that out. Just doing it does it. If you call them stupid, then you have undermined their argument by saying their argument is stupid too. If you call them a fool, then you have undermined their argument by calling it foolish. The undermining is performed not necessarily spoken about.

Ah, I see you've taken your whining red herring (of which ad hominem is a form) over here.

What you describe would be, at best, poisoning the well. But since no attempt is made to use personal traits to refute or avoid arguments, it's not even that.
Insults in addition to valid arguments, rather than in lieu of them, is not ad hominem.
But in the realm of ad hominem fallacies, your whining is tone policing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fa..._fallacies
You also regularly use the traitorous critic fallacy or appeal to motive when you attempt to discredit arguments with things like "skeptic agenda". That literally addresses the arguer instead of the argument...literally the definition of ad hominem.

So...if you say someone is a sinner, all their actions must be sins? O_o
If you say someone is foolish, all their thoughts must be foolish?
Nope, that doesn't follow.

If you really believe that, you are committing a faulty generalization. It is not valid to assume all of anything must be one way based on the weak premise that even much of a person's behavior is so.