resinsculpture-deactivated20221:

cop-appreciator71:

resinsculpture-deactivated20221:

Something I’m genuinely curious about it where the whole “logical fallacies” meme came from. The idea that political/religious debate is or should be conducted in the framework of formal deductive logic, and hence that anyone who makes use of rhetoric or inductive reasoning must have a technical misunderstanding about formal logic is so brain-meltingly stupid that I have to assume there was some totally different context feeding into this.

I mean there’s obviously a healthy middle between extreme pedantry for formal logic, and like the absolute incoherence and idiocy of, say, politicians who don’t even believe what they’re saying, just making statements in the right tone of voice and cadence so utter nonsense sounds “soaring”.

If you completely disregard logical fallacies as being relevant to any discussion except in academic mathematics, then you have no way to simply say “what the fuck are you talking about, that doesn’t make any sense” in an argument.

You don’t have to make perfect sense in every statement you make, but you have to make some sense.

So, I agree that logical coherency is good, but the bizarre thing to me about “pointing out logical fallacies” is the assumption that deviations from logical coherency need to be pointed out in most cases. Like, okay, sometimes someone is putting forward a complex chain of reasoning with a subtly disguised circularity - but even then, you can just point to the circularity, you don’t need to explain that circular arguments aren’t logically valid.

And if someone responds to your well-reasoned argument by calling you a sellout cuck, they are not under the impression that “you’re a sellout cuck” is a logical refutation of your claims. No one who is listening is under that impression. They’re not missing some fact about syllogisms that will complete their understanding and convert them to your side. “That’s an ad hominem” is as pointlessly obtuse of a response as explaining to them that good things are better than bad things, or that true statements have greater validity than false ones. It’s a “confusion” of levels so straightforward as to be almost necessarily bad faith.

My textbooks in school made the point of listing and defining some logical fallacies to look out for that rendered an argument not even wrong, In a way that was probably both Cold War “don’t get taken in by emotional arguments that don’t start and end with the assumptions of the existing world!” and a plea from the developing educated minority to the classroom masses: “oh my god, you gotta stop falling for this boob bait!”