A fallacy of ambiguity.
The straw man refers to a debating technique where a weak (or false) version of an opponent’s argument is presented, and then attacked. If you want to be convincing in an argumentative essay or debate then, when you have established your common ground, be meticulous in understanding your opponent’s point of view so that you argue against their strongest position not a weakened version.
I often hear straw man arguments from religious fundamentalists, usually in debates about the origin of life or the Universe.
If you don’t believe in God then you believe that everything was made by nothing, which is crazy.
In that example the straw man is that the only alternative to divine creation is “nothing creating everything”.
Proposal: We should relax the amount of filtering applied to the boys’ Internet access.
Response: It would be irresponsible of us to give the boys unrestricted internet access when we have a duty of care to protect them.
The response to this proposal is to set up a straw man of “unrestricted internet access” when the suggestion was only to relax the filtering.
Suggestion: The European Union countries should accept their fair share of Syrian refugees.
Rebuttal: Britain does not have the room to accommodate an unlimited number of immigrants.
You can probably spot the fallacy here.
.
The following video features the original straw man, used to practice bayonet training. It is a British army training film (edited by some anonymous YouTuber) from the late 1980s. I find the training sergeant utterly frightening and it brings back scary memories from my four years in the army cadets as a schoolboy.
Comments