Then again I've had discussions where every second argument of my opponent was some version of "if anyone thinks that, they're pretty stupid". edit ... which I guess is like a reverse ad hominem?
Then again I've had discussions where every second argument of my opponent was some version of "if anyone thinks that, they're pretty stupid".
edit ... which I guess is like a reverse ad hominem?
The “discursive hygiene” picture of fallacy theory sees fallacies as mistakes that a good arguer will avoid. Indeed, armed with a new toolbox of Latin names for fallacies, eager students all too often delight in spotting fallacies in the wild, shouting out their Latin names (ad hominem!; secundum quid!) as if they were magic spells. This is what Scott Aikin and John Casey, in their delightful book Straw Man Arguments, call the Harry Potter fallacy: the “troublesome practice of invoking fallacy names in place of substantive discussion”.
Related web comic: The Adventures of Fallacy Man (Existential Comics).
Then again I've had discussions where every second argument of my opponent was some version of "if anyone thinks that, they're pretty stupid".
edit ... which I guess is like a reverse ad hominem?
Archived.