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At this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturit

At this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturity. That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. It also isn't how people have ever been able to access any sort of truth. Western philosophy has been incredibly effective at tearing apart everything that exists, but utterly ineffective in building anything back up from the ashes. It's only after you've tried, many times over, in futility, to build a coherent & effective belief system from first principles that you'll realize this approach is a dead end. All we have are beliefs, and our brains retroactively make up stories about why we think they are true. In this framework it is actually very useful to illustrate how your ideological opponent came to their beliefs. Then people can determine whether they find that story relatable.

mulmen 6y ago
Perhaps the value in philosophy is destruction. As you say our brains already build up beliefs, why do we need a formal system for that? What we don't do naturally is re-evaluate those beliefs in the presence of new information.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  Popper was onto something with putting everything under criticism. And yet, as every piece of computer hardware needs an OS to be more than a brick, one yearns for an explanation of what "is" as badly as "what is not".
smitty1e 6y ago
Maybe a more conversational approach where - trust is established, - a relationship built, and - questions are asked in a sincere effort to trigger reflection could produce better results. Takes more patience and effort than we typically invest these days.
- XorNot 6y ago
  How do you really propose to establish trust though? Based on what? Trust requires the initial establishment of some reason to believe the other person, and we're mid discussing why we don't.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    "Conversational" implies dialogue. We're by no means the same, but the Venn has substanital overlap. By the time we speak to people, we often find them far less monstrous than we imagine, even if their traditions differ.
bitexploder 6y ago
This is why I love Greek philosophy so much. They were keen observers of the human condition, but they didn’t bind it all up in (formal) logic. Their philosophies were aimed at being practical life philosophies. How to live a good life (according to the philosophers). I find much in stoicism to be of particular use in modern life. CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, has many similarities with and could even be viewed as strongly influenced by stoicism. CBT really works for a lot of people and is one of the most successful therapeutic approaches in modern psychology at improving people’s outlook and fighting depression.
hans1729 6y ago
The solution, I think, lays in systems thinking. “Premise, premise, conclusion” can be rightfully used to represent (better: project) a perspective of a frame of a system. Simple causality doesn’t do the intricate complexity of existence and the patterns that govern it justice, but you can surely map systemic obervations, much like you can project a timestamp of a 3D-room on a lower-dimensional surface. Just don’t act like that’s the whole truth, because it isn’t, and it won’t be.
taeric 6y ago
The point of the fallacies is inline with your point. These are arguments we believe, even though they are not logically sound. That is, learning them will help you identify your own beliefs that are worth questioning. And, in this case, what behavior you may use that makes it hard to engage with others on their beliefs.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Fallacies are your failure to apply scientific method. The fact that you are aware of them doesn’t change the fact that you don’t know how to use it. It’s like a blind person learning this something isn’t red. They’ll continue guessing until they came up with the right colour.
  - taeric 6y ago
    While not wrong, this seems less than helpful. Not all of us have the equipment/context to replicate experiments. Such that the existence of a fallacy does not equal the existence that something is false. That is itself a logical fallacy.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      Logical fallacies are just glorified cargo cults
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Fallacies are your failure to apply scientific method No, they are mostly failures to apply sound abstract logic.
- notahacker 6y ago
  > That is, learning them will help you identify your own beliefs that are worth questioning. But the OP's point is that they're actually not a particularly good way of identifying that (particularly the rhetorical fallacies). Many if not most things people believe which are incorrect do not involve any logical fallacy. Conversely, if I wanted to identify which of my current beliefs are probably incorrect, beliefs I hold largely because of the appeal of authorities supporting them, for example, would probably be a very bad place to focus my doubts.
m94710 6y ago
That’s ironic because haven’t you presented your argument in a formal format here? And attempted to build something for a coherent and effective belief system? And passed on sharing the relatable story that would allow others to understand how you’ve come to believe what you’ve outlined? Just because you haven’t been able to access any truth through philosophizing doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
yters 6y ago
Well, I for one encounter this fallacy constantly and discussion would be a net boost if all participants recognized and avoided said fallacy.
anthony_romeo 6y ago
I've read an interesting opinion on this in the past, something like: trying to improve one's argumentative skill by studying fallacies is like trying to improve one's mastery of the violin by studying examples of poor technique. There's value to it, but its not a way to reach true greatness in a field.
- steve_g 6y ago
  It's probably not the path to greatness. I'd say it's more a way to have a basic foundation for thinking. The thing about fallacies is that they can be persuasive. But if you recognize them for what they are, you can defend against the error. To extend your metaphor, very few people will be masters of the violin. But it's pretty cool to play it it anyway.
Bayart 6y ago
>That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. Why would anybody have to be persuaded ? The point of thinking isn't just to manipulate people.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  The original article is about a manipulation technique, hence the focus on that aspect
- ahelwer 6y ago
  This comment reminds me of a tweet I saw years ago, that roughly said "programmers read posts like a compiler: stopping immediately & printing an error when they see something they disagree with" Read the very next couple of sentences in my original comment.
- hitekker 6y ago
  The point is to persuade yourself. Or rather, to satisfy the collection of niggling doubts[1] we call the "inner critic". That voice constantly questioning us in our own heads, poking holes in our logic, and ensuring we're actually thinking and not pretending to think. The problem with fallacies, as I see it, is they're often employed to fool that inner critic. They can dress up any emotional, thoughtless reaction in the guise of reason. "I thought that person was rude" becomes "I believe this person is engaging in an ad-hominen attack." Or "they have a belief I don't like" becomes "Clearly, the other person has a case of confirmation bias." I think our inner critic will detect us taking such mental shortcuts; it won't be quieted so easily. I also think that's why fallacy-first thinkers will spam their views across threads. Unable to persuade themselves, let alone others, they resort to rhetoric to silence their own creeping doubts. [1] http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html
baby 6y ago
The limit of your vocabulary is the limit of your world. If you don’t know about fallacies then you don’t truly understand their existence.
Buldak 6y ago
For what it's worth, I don't identify preoccupation with identifying fallacies, or with rhetorical classifications like "bulverism" or "steelmanning" with philosophy. At least, if you take a degree in philosophy I think you'll find that it's very much not like this. In my experience, this approach is much more characteristic of online forum argumentation, and subcultures like new atheism and rationalism. (Case in point: I mean "rationalism" in the LessWrong sense, not the Cartesian sense!) I agree with you that the style is irritating and superficial.
imgabe 6y ago
I don't understand, so you just pick beliefs and ignore that the reasoning behind them may be fallacious? A fallacy might not point you towards the truth, but it can identify when something is not the truth.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Striving for a single “The Truth” seems like a fundamentally losing battle when I’d have to convince 8+ billion other humans to agree with me in every aspect of how I see the world, but an entire world that could fit in my single viewport would be a very narrow world indeed.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    I agree, striving to find a single great Truth and convince everyone of it does sound like a losing battle. Luckily this is neither desirable or necessary. Ascertaining the small-t truth of individual beliefs is useful insofar as it enables you to better achieve things you want to do with tangible results in the real world. There is no need to convince anyone of anything in this endeavor, because they can observe the results for themselves.
- BurritoAlPastor 6y ago
  A fallacy can not identify when something is not the truth. A fallacious statement is not a necessary result of the argument that led to it, but it can still be completely true. There’s even a fallacy about it! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
- ahelwer 6y ago
  This isn't me saying how people should pick their beliefs. This is me saying how people do pick their beliefs. It's an exhortation to know thyself, and to let go of the delusion that you're different. If you're stuck in the illusion that your beliefs all follow logically from some carefully-chosen first principles, you have a muddier view of the world (and yourself) than someone who hasn't put the least thought whatsoever into choosing their beliefs.
courtf 6y ago
They're all just buzzword shortcuts for rapidly dismissing people and arguments we don't like. If we're going to hold arguments up to the standards of pure logic during any mildly subjective debate, one can only conclude that both opponents are wrong and always will be. All that's left after that is the political game of winning over the audience, which is almost certainly the reason the debate has held in the first place.
drewcoo 6y ago
The intent is something more like studying the chess tricks and traps books[1]. Humans learn new things by exploring the boundaries of those things. This is as true for secondhand stories of explorations as it is for firsthand experiences. I think it's just humans a-human-ing. Nothing immature about learning. [1] There are a bunch of them. Here's more on one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8051867-the-greatest-ever-chess-tricks-and-traps https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8051867-the-greatest-eve...
dragonwriter 6y ago
> At this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturity. That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. Escaping the rhetorical tricks that facilitate persuasion independent of the merits of a position is actually the point; the approach you are attacking is a tool for doing this for abstract systems of ideas, empirical science provides the same thing for fact claims. > Western philosophy has been incredibly effective at tearing apart everything that exists, but utterly ineffective in building anything back up from the ashes. The practical knowledge and technology built on the back of empirical science, a system itself built on the back of Western philosophy—and specifically an outgrowth of the exact aspect of Western philosophy you are attacking—is, more than a little “anything” that Western philosophy has provided the tools to build up from the ashes of self-delusion that it years down.
konjin 6y ago
Looks like you're looking for the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy That is to say people assume that logical equivalence is the same as logical entailment.
redis_mlc 6y ago
> It's only after you've tried, many times over, in futility, to build a coherent & effective belief system from first principles that you'll realize this approach is a dead end. Because religions don't make any sense. What's fascinating is that Islam is going through a period where for the first time it's being examined publicly using logic. And the result is not pretty - online versions of the Koran and Hadith are being scrubbed.
jadell 6y ago
Picking apart someone's belief through explaining their logical fallacies presupposes that they got to their belief through a logical process. "Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired." -- Jonathan Swift, 1721. To rephrase in a more modern way: You can't use reason or logic to get to someone to stop believing something they didn't use reason or logic to start believing.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  I always like the short version: "you can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into"

mulmen 6y ago

Perhaps the value in philosophy is destruction. As you say our brains already build up beliefs, why do we need a formal system for that? What we don't do naturally is re-evaluate those beliefs in the presence of new information.

smitty1e 6y ago
Popper was onto something with putting everything under criticism. And yet, as every piece of computer hardware needs an OS to be more than a brick, one yearns for an explanation of what "is" as badly as "what is not".

smitty1e 6y ago

Maybe a more conversational approach where - trust is established, - a relationship built, and - questions are asked in a sincere effort to trigger reflection could produce better results. Takes more patience and effort than we typically invest these days.

XorNot 6y ago
How do you really propose to establish trust though? Based on what? Trust requires the initial establishment of some reason to believe the other person, and we're mid discussing why we don't.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  "Conversational" implies dialogue. We're by no means the same, but the Venn has substanital overlap. By the time we speak to people, we often find them far less monstrous than we imagine, even if their traditions differ.

bitexploder 6y ago

This is why I love Greek philosophy so much. They were keen observers of the human condition, but they didn’t bind it all up in (formal) logic. Their philosophies were aimed at being practical life philosophies. How to live a good life (according to the philosophers). I find much in stoicism to be of particular use in modern life. CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, has many similarities with and could even be viewed as strongly influenced by stoicism. CBT really works for a lot of people and is one of the most successful therapeutic approaches in modern psychology at improving people’s outlook and fighting depression.

hans1729 6y ago

The solution, I think, lays in systems thinking. “Premise, premise, conclusion” can be rightfully used to represent (better: project) a perspective of a frame of a system. Simple causality doesn’t do the intricate complexity of existence and the patterns that govern it justice, but you can surely map systemic obervations, much like you can project a timestamp of a 3D-room on a lower-dimensional surface. Just don’t act like that’s the whole truth, because it isn’t, and it won’t be.

taeric 6y ago

The point of the fallacies is inline with your point. These are arguments we believe, even though they are not logically sound. That is, learning them will help you identify your own beliefs that are worth questioning. And, in this case, what behavior you may use that makes it hard to engage with others on their beliefs.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
Fallacies are your failure to apply scientific method. The fact that you are aware of them doesn’t change the fact that you don’t know how to use it. It’s like a blind person learning this something isn’t red. They’ll continue guessing until they came up with the right colour.
- taeric 6y ago
  While not wrong, this seems less than helpful. Not all of us have the equipment/context to replicate experiments. Such that the existence of a fallacy does not equal the existence that something is false. That is itself a logical fallacy.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Logical fallacies are just glorified cargo cults
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Fallacies are your failure to apply scientific method No, they are mostly failures to apply sound abstract logic.
notahacker 6y ago
> That is, learning them will help you identify your own beliefs that are worth questioning. But the OP's point is that they're actually not a particularly good way of identifying that (particularly the rhetorical fallacies). Many if not most things people believe which are incorrect do not involve any logical fallacy. Conversely, if I wanted to identify which of my current beliefs are probably incorrect, beliefs I hold largely because of the appeal of authorities supporting them, for example, would probably be a very bad place to focus my doubts.

m94710 6y ago

That’s ironic because haven’t you presented your argument in a formal format here? And attempted to build something for a coherent and effective belief system? And passed on sharing the relatable story that would allow others to understand how you’ve come to believe what you’ve outlined? Just because you haven’t been able to access any truth through philosophizing doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

yters 6y ago

Well, I for one encounter this fallacy constantly and discussion would be a net boost if all participants recognized and avoided said fallacy.

anthony_romeo 6y ago

I've read an interesting opinion on this in the past, something like: trying to improve one's argumentative skill by studying fallacies is like trying to improve one's mastery of the violin by studying examples of poor technique. There's value to it, but its not a way to reach true greatness in a field.

steve_g 6y ago
It's probably not the path to greatness. I'd say it's more a way to have a basic foundation for thinking. The thing about fallacies is that they can be persuasive. But if you recognize them for what they are, you can defend against the error. To extend your metaphor, very few people will be masters of the violin. But it's pretty cool to play it it anyway.

Bayart 6y ago

>That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. Why would anybody have to be persuaded ? The point of thinking isn't just to manipulate people.

quickthrower2 6y ago
The original article is about a manipulation technique, hence the focus on that aspect
ahelwer 6y ago
This comment reminds me of a tweet I saw years ago, that roughly said "programmers read posts like a compiler: stopping immediately & printing an error when they see something they disagree with" Read the very next couple of sentences in my original comment.
hitekker 6y ago
The point is to persuade yourself. Or rather, to satisfy the collection of niggling doubts[1] we call the "inner critic". That voice constantly questioning us in our own heads, poking holes in our logic, and ensuring we're actually thinking and not pretending to think. The problem with fallacies, as I see it, is they're often employed to fool that inner critic. They can dress up any emotional, thoughtless reaction in the guise of reason. "I thought that person was rude" becomes "I believe this person is engaging in an ad-hominen attack." Or "they have a belief I don't like" becomes "Clearly, the other person has a case of confirmation bias." I think our inner critic will detect us taking such mental shortcuts; it won't be quieted so easily. I also think that's why fallacy-first thinkers will spam their views across threads. Unable to persuade themselves, let alone others, they resort to rhetoric to silence their own creeping doubts. [1] http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html

baby 6y ago

The limit of your vocabulary is the limit of your world. If you don’t know about fallacies then you don’t truly understand their existence.

Buldak 6y ago

For what it's worth, I don't identify preoccupation with identifying fallacies, or with rhetorical classifications like "bulverism" or "steelmanning" with philosophy. At least, if you take a degree in philosophy I think you'll find that it's very much not like this. In my experience, this approach is much more characteristic of online forum argumentation, and subcultures like new atheism and rationalism. (Case in point: I mean "rationalism" in the LessWrong sense, not the Cartesian sense!) I agree with you that the style is irritating and superficial.

imgabe 6y ago

I don't understand, so you just pick beliefs and ignore that the reasoning behind them may be fallacious? A fallacy might not point you towards the truth, but it can identify when something is not the truth.

Lammy 6y ago
Striving for a single “The Truth” seems like a fundamentally losing battle when I’d have to convince 8+ billion other humans to agree with me in every aspect of how I see the world, but an entire world that could fit in my single viewport would be a very narrow world indeed.
- imgabe 6y ago
  I agree, striving to find a single great Truth and convince everyone of it does sound like a losing battle. Luckily this is neither desirable or necessary. Ascertaining the small-t truth of individual beliefs is useful insofar as it enables you to better achieve things you want to do with tangible results in the real world. There is no need to convince anyone of anything in this endeavor, because they can observe the results for themselves.
BurritoAlPastor 6y ago
A fallacy can not identify when something is not the truth. A fallacious statement is not a necessary result of the argument that led to it, but it can still be completely true. There’s even a fallacy about it! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
ahelwer 6y ago
This isn't me saying how people should pick their beliefs. This is me saying how people do pick their beliefs. It's an exhortation to know thyself, and to let go of the delusion that you're different. If you're stuck in the illusion that your beliefs all follow logically from some carefully-chosen first principles, you have a muddier view of the world (and yourself) than someone who hasn't put the least thought whatsoever into choosing their beliefs.

courtf 6y ago

They're all just buzzword shortcuts for rapidly dismissing people and arguments we don't like. If we're going to hold arguments up to the standards of pure logic during any mildly subjective debate, one can only conclude that both opponents are wrong and always will be. All that's left after that is the political game of winning over the audience, which is almost certainly the reason the debate has held in the first place.

drewcoo 6y ago

The intent is something more like studying the chess tricks and traps books[1]. Humans learn new things by exploring the boundaries of those things. This is as true for secondhand stories of explorations as it is for firsthand experiences. I think it's just humans a-human-ing. Nothing immature about learning. [1] There are a bunch of them. Here's more on one: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8051867-the-greatest-ever-chess-tricks-and-traps https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8051867-the-greatest-eve...

dragonwriter 6y ago

> At this point I basically view preoccupation with fallacies, presenting arguments in formal format (premise, premise, conclusion), etc. as a proxy for immaturity. That isn't how people are persuaded, that isn't how people ever were persuaded, and that isn't how people ever will be persuaded. Escaping the rhetorical tricks that facilitate persuasion independent of the merits of a position is actually the point; the approach you are attacking is a tool for doing this for abstract systems of ideas, empirical science provides the same thing for fact claims. > Western philosophy has been incredibly effective at tearing apart everything that exists, but utterly ineffective in building anything back up from the ashes. The practical knowledge and technology built on the back of empirical science, a system itself built on the back of Western philosophy—and specifically an outgrowth of the exact aspect of Western philosophy you are attacking—is, more than a little “anything” that Western philosophy has provided the tools to build up from the ashes of self-delusion that it years down.

konjin 6y ago

Looks like you're looking for the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy That is to say people assume that logical equivalence is the same as logical entailment.

redis_mlc 6y ago

> It's only after you've tried, many times over, in futility, to build a coherent & effective belief system from first principles that you'll realize this approach is a dead end. Because religions don't make any sense. What's fascinating is that Islam is going through a period where for the first time it's being examined publicly using logic. And the result is not pretty - online versions of the Koran and Hadith are being scrubbed.

jadell 6y ago

Picking apart someone's belief through explaining their logical fallacies presupposes that they got to their belief through a logical process. "Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired." -- Jonathan Swift, 1721. To rephrase in a more modern way: You can't use reason or logic to get to someone to stop believing something they didn't use reason or logic to start believing.

cortesoft 6y ago
I always like the short version: "you can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into"