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Originally posted by Lebell
You can choose to redefine "a strawman" arguement as you wish, but I suggest that unless your credentials match or exceed Dr. Stephen Downs, of the University of Alberta, I think I'll go with his definition and not yours. (link above. Did you read it?)
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Look, Lebell, I'm not redefining straw man. You misunderstood Dr. Downs' definition. I read his link and my credentials aren't particularly relevant--yet, suffice to say that although my degree isn't in logic, law relies a great deal upon logical constructions.
Here are some more examples so you can better understand the gist of a straw man argument:
Fallacy: Straw Man
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The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
Examples of Straw Man
Prof. Jones: "The university just cut our yearly budget by $10,000."
Prof. Smith: "What are we going to do?"
Prof. Brown: "I think we should eliminate one of the teaching assistant positions. That would take care of it."
Prof. Jones: "We could reduce our scheduled raises instead."
Prof. Brown: " I can't understand why you want to bleed us dry like that, Jones."
"Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."
Bill and Jill are arguing about cleaning out their closets:
Jill: "We should clean out the closets. They are getting a bit messy."
Bill: "Why, we just went through those closets last year. Do we have to clean them out everyday?"
Jill: "I never said anything about cleaning them out every day. You just want too keep all your junk forever, which is just ridiculous."
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Quote:
So.
Entering a debate with a definition of a word used improperly by another debater is not an ad hominim attack, especially if you put "tongue-in-cheek" in the post?
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Neither posting a correct definition of a word nor the fact that the last paragraph of that definition was written tongue in cheek is by no stretch of the imagination an attack against a person's character.