Miscellaneous desk
< January 1	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 3 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 2

Logical Fallacy

What is this obsession that some Americans have with so-called 'logical fallacies'. Is this something that is taught in school there or something? It keeps coming up, time and time again here on Wikipedia, but also on other parts of the internet. I'm from the UK, and I don't even recall it ever been said to me even once by a fellow Brit. I see it so often in YouTube comments from teens who are very probably drunk and/or smoking the wacky backy that I even lose the will to find out what it even means. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 06:07, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, logic is part of debating, do Brits never do that either ? It's also part of math and science, of course. And it's an important part of consumer education, so you know exactly when somebody is trying to trick you into an unwise purchase. StuRat (talk) 06:10, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Even the phrase itself is a contradiction in terms. How can it be logical if it's a fallacy? The fallacy itself cannot be logical. That is what defines a fallacy. Why not call it a fallacy in/of logic? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 06:37, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're mixing two senses of the word "logical", one of which is "of or relating to the formal processes used in thinking and reasoning". ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 06:41, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Which, by the way, is one of the most common logical fallacies: eqivocation. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 11:05, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not infrequently, the example of the fallacy is an invitation to debate something or to make a political point. Kind of a mini-coatrack. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:56, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Are you really talking about logical fallacies (such as affirming the consequent), or are you talking about so-called argumentative fallacies or informal fallacies (like ad hominem)? Either way, why do you think the people mentioning them online are Americans? I live in the US and I don't know if I've ever heard the phrase "ad hominem" spoken. -- BenRG (talk) 10:26, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, case in point. I was referring to a particular comment I received, after I had said I would like to recommend that a particular wargame not have a time limit in the stand-alone scenarios, as massive battles such as the various ones at Gettysburg didn't last just 15 minutes or so, and I got this comment (after the others were really polite): Google straw man and learn something in the new year so we don't have to witness this particular logical fallacy in the future from you. which is absolutely unwarranted and total gobberish. I know this guy is American. My question was about is this particular phrase taught/used in America so much so that people use it? I have never heard it in the UK. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 13:57, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can understand, the term applies to False Logic. See List of fallacies and compare this site. I think "logical fallacy" is misleading English on either side of the Atlantic, as it seems to imply a that a logical process has shown a statement to be False. False is not the same as "got the maths wrong", and the sets may overlap. Fiddlersmouth (talk) 14:10, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It would still be interesting to hear whether this stuff is taught in high schools. Perhaps in English, as part of essay-writing. In Britain, KageTora, students who choose Critical Thinking at AS Level would be introduced to logic. Very useful, I think. Would also help if people learnt common courtesy when constructing an argument. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:30, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We were introduced to various scams, fallacies, and types of false advertising in seventh grade in "social studies" as part of the NJ State mandated curriculum. We were expected to know what begging the question was, and an appeal to authority, ad hominem, misleading "sales" which simply meant something was being sold, and how to budget and use per-unit pricing to find scams based on packaging. We also had debates in 9th grade on Fridays in Earth Science, and were introduced to a list of formal fallacies at that point. (One of the debates was, Is the Earth Shrinking or Expanding, which was mentioned recently at the ref desk. That was fun since I argued both sides.) There was a political debate club for 10th-12th graders where noting a formal fallacy in another student's argument was counted in your favor. We also had formal geometric proofs in 9th grade geometry, but we were more focused on axioms, postulates, and corollaries than on fallacies per se. Fallacy would also have been a vocabulary word we would be expected to be able to define in our own words in 10th grade English. Basically you'd have had to go to a vocational school not to have exposure to certain types of fallacies and be able to point them out. μηδείς (talk) 21:14, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As for the questions here,about half seem to be simple troling, and ways to smuggle in debate as has been stated above. μηδείς (talk) 21:14, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

KT, are you asking about straw man in particular, or fallacies in general? Straw man is obviously not a formal logical fallacy, since it simply consists of putting words in your opponents mouth, and then arguing against what you report his position to be, rather than his actual position. Assuming the statement you quote from your opponent is the whole story, he simply seems to be using big words he doesn't quite understand, since your point seems valid on its own, without regard to your report o the positions of others. The term "straw man" is in very common usage in the US, as is the term "beg the question". But the latter is used more often wrongly to mean "to raise the question" than the actual fallacy of using the point at question as evidence of its own truth. μηδείς (talk) 01:41, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I was actually asking about fallacies - I know what the word means, but very rarely use that in conversation. In fact, saying to anyone that their idea is a fallacy is actually rude in the UK. We'd rather say "That's not quite true" (even though in this case my argument definitely was true). Never heard of 'straw man', and didn't bother Googling it because when someone is rude to me as this chap was, I don't have the incentive to do what he tells me to do. That was, indeed, the only message I got from him, so that was the full story. We didn't have logic or philosophy or anything like that when I was in High School, and in university, students who studied that were considered to be dreamers (completely unpractical subjects when getting a job). And I disagree - 'that begs the question' means 'what you have just said brings me to a related question'. E.g. [Speaker A] "We have only XXXXXXX money left, so we need to spend it on industry, small businesses, and military", [Speaker B] "Well, that begs the question, what do we do about education and health care?" KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 14:29, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Begging the question Widneymanor (talk) 16:46, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting. Telling someone they are committing a fallacy is not rude in itself in the US, assuming they actually are committing a fallacy, and you can demonstrate it. Not that that means a person will want to hear it. I am reminded of the British usage of refute. In Britain "I refute your position" merely means I argue against it, while in the US refute doesn't mean merely oppose; it means conclusively disprove; as in the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment refuted the contemporary theory of the luminiferous aether. μηδείς (talk) 18:48, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the OED says of "refute" used in the sense of "repudiate": "Criticized as erroneous in usage guides in the 20th cent." Wiktionary has both meanings with the note: "The second meaning of refute (to deny the truth of) is proscribed as erroneous by some (compare Merriam Webster,1994). An alternative term with such a meaning is repudiate, which means to reject or refuse to acknowledge, but without the implication of justification. However, this distinction does not exist in the original Latin refūtō (“oppose, resist, rebut”), which can apply to both senses." It's rather like using less when you should use fewer. Dbfirs 21:34, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My point was to indicate the difference, not claim one usage was prior. "Irrefutable", however is used to mean not capable of disproof, not incapable of being argued against. I remember being shocked when I first heard Judy Dench's character on As Time Goes By say, "I refute that!" and then remain silent. I chastised the TV screen, "No, you haven't!" μηδείς (talk) 00:27, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree that "irrefutable" derives from only one of the meanings of "refute" (the preferred one). The OED has cites of the usage to which you object, but none of them are from "good" writers. I chastise the TV screen when I hear "less" where "fewer" is intended, and when I hear "... someone and I" as the object of a sentence. Dbfirs 09:43, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. I will leave the room as a courtesy if someone else's favorite show is on in and find I can't resist correcting its barbarisms or untruths. (Of course we all yell at the TV during Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.) But this was Judy Dench for gosh sakes! μηδείς (talk) 18:35, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Google's Ngram Viewer suggests that use of "straw man" was substantially higher in the U.S. than in the UK for much of the 20th century, though it's more or less equal now: [1][2]. But use of "ad hominem" has seemingly been fairly consistent on both sides of the pond: [3][4]. I didn't look at "begging the question" because there's no way to separate the traditional meaning from the raising-the-question meaning. -- BenRG (talk) 06:39, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not to be confused with "man of straw" a rather old-fashioned British expression meaning a weak willed person. Alansplodge (talk) 19:22, 5 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ancient Egypt

What symbolism does the Uraeus (Cobra) on the Nemes (headress) and how does it associate with the sphinx? Venustar84 21:50, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

You do not have a main verb in your first question, so it's impossible to understand. What symbolism does it what, exactly? "Have"? In that case, read the article you linked to, and the answer is in the first sentence. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 13:52, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This question popped up a year ago. My answers weren't great, but I don't think they've gotten any worse with time. InedibleHulk (talk) 00:39, 5 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]