I used to be heavily into debate classes in my school days. I have since come to hate the lack of sincerity in the whole thing.
But, I still have many of the collection of books of silly "rules" that I once almost worshiped. And, looking at this little book, it occurred to me that there is one Logical Fallacy that keeps coming up here, that perhaps a lot of people may not fully understand.
So, I thought I would post the definition here to hopefully eradicate some of the possible confusion surrounding the term.
Straw Man
Intentionally caricaturing a person's argument with the aim of attacking the caricature rather than the actual argument is what is meant by “putting up a straw man.” Misrepresenting, misquoting, misconstruing and oversimplifying are all means by which one commits this fallacy. A straw man argument is usually one that is more absurd than the actual argument, making it an easier target to attack and possibly luring a person towards defending the more ridiculous argument rather than the original one.
For example, "My opponent is trying to convince you that we evolved from monkeys who were swinging from trees; a truly ludicrous claim. This is clearly a misrepresentation of what evolutionary biology claims, which is the idea that humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor several million years ago." Misrepresenting the idea is much easier than refuting the evidence for it.
But, I still have many of the collection of books of silly "rules" that I once almost worshiped. And, looking at this little book, it occurred to me that there is one Logical Fallacy that keeps coming up here, that perhaps a lot of people may not fully understand.
So, I thought I would post the definition here to hopefully eradicate some of the possible confusion surrounding the term.
Straw Man
Intentionally caricaturing a person's argument with the aim of attacking the caricature rather than the actual argument is what is meant by “putting up a straw man.” Misrepresenting, misquoting, misconstruing and oversimplifying are all means by which one commits this fallacy. A straw man argument is usually one that is more absurd than the actual argument, making it an easier target to attack and possibly luring a person towards defending the more ridiculous argument rather than the original one.
For example, "My opponent is trying to convince you that we evolved from monkeys who were swinging from trees; a truly ludicrous claim. This is clearly a misrepresentation of what evolutionary biology claims, which is the idea that humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor several million years ago." Misrepresenting the idea is much easier than refuting the evidence for it.
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