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The GP leveled criticism at the specific example which does not contain a logical inconsistency. I’d go further and say that the linked page doesn’t accurately
by cgriswald 6y ago
The GP leveled criticism at the specific example which does not contain a logical inconsistency.
I’d go further and say that the linked page doesn’t accurately describe the fallacy. The first part of the fallacy is offering so many arguments (or even just arguments swamped in endless text) your opponent can’t or won’t respond to everything. (There’s also generally an implication that these arguments are known by the “spewer” to be tenuous or outright fallacious.) The second part is claiming that an opponent’s lack of response to any or all of the arguments means the opponent is wrong.
To me, the first part is just bad faith, but it’s not necessarily illogical. It’s the second part that makes it a fallacy.
- glenstein 6y ago>which does not contain a logical inconsistency. Are you sure we're reading the same page? Most things described as "logical fallacies" are informal anyway, and have nothing to do with "logic": they're not expressed in the form of a formal Quinean logical syllogism that maps out truth tables with elemental logical operators like AND, XAND, IFF etc. The only work the word "logic" is doing here is not as a formal term but as a vague complement that approximately means something like "rational." And invoking that term, or witholding it is just a personal expression of whether you like something enough to award it a merit badge that has the word "logical" on it. It's just playing calvinball. >The second part is claiming that an opponent’s lack of response to any or all of the arguments means the opponent is wrong. This is just incoherent to me. Second part? The page isn't grouped into parts. I'm assuming you mean the second half of the sentence explaining the shotgun fallacy. But the second half of the sentence isn't expressing a second, isolated idea. The whole thing together describes a rhetorical strategy for expressing an argument that attempts to escape refutation. It's as real as any other informal fallacy. If it falls short of qualifying for your personal complement that it's "logical", well, either you're referring to formal logic or you're not, and if you're not, then this whole exercise in deeming it "logical" is just a game of calvinball that doesn't have anything to do with anything.
- cgriswald 6y agoYou’re talking about the logical fallacy as described by the page. I’m talking about the fallacy the page is poorly describing. The example quoted by the OP is an example of neither.
- glenstein 6y agoI was directly responding to your claims that (1) the example provided on the page supposedly "does not contain a logical inconsistency" and that (2) there is a "second part" that is making a claim that you believe is in error. I don't know how responding to your own claims could possibly put me on the wrong side of a distinction between the fallacy itself and the fallacy the page is describing unless you were also on the wrong side of it, too. I suppose you're saying my response addresses itself to the idea of the fallacy and not to your criticisms of the way it's illustrated on the page - but I find that to be quite obviously wrong, because I am talking about what's on the page. Perhaps there's an argument than I'm not seeing, but you're being too cryptic and difficult to interpret for me to figure out what that argument is supposed to be.