Have you met Mr. Straw Man?

[coberst]

Have you met Mr. Straw Man?

Quickie from Wiki: “A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.” Straw man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The straw man fallacy is an often used fallacy in the United States because American citizens have a low level of intellectual sophistication.

One recent use of this fallacy is that Guantanamo detainees are terrorists and thus too dangerous for detention on American soil.

Obviously American prisons contain many bad guys from whom the public must be protected. Also most of these bad guys are released while still alive. Also records indicate that that many of these released become recidivists.

The FBI scares us by saying that these terrorists represent a different kind of detention problem.

The “Fallacy Files” web site {http://www.fallacyfiles.org/} provides an important introduction to both formal and informal fallacies. I think their work on informal fallacies being the most important for our needs today. It is the informal fallacies that we must learn to recognize.

The early settlers had to learn the sign and behavior of the wolf and bear but it is the informal fallacy that today’s citizen must learn. When not recognized the manipulative sophistication of those who wish to control our society will cause us similar damage.

Those members of our early American settlers were required to understand many things about their natural habitation in order to survive. These early frontier settlers had primarily natural conditions that threatened their existence. They worried about and learned to understand the signs of the wolf and the bear also the clouds and the weather in general. Their survival depended upon it.

Today our well being, if not our very survival, depends upon our ability to understand the society we live in and the fellow citizens that occupy our space with us. Our needs for understanding our environment especially that part of it that contains fellow citizens has become acute because our fellows have become expert at manipulating our environment. If we do not understand how these things are being manipulated we are the losers.

Many of us who were first introduced to the concept ‘fallacy’ when we took a college course on ‘Logic’ found the matter to be boring. It appears, from what I hear, that many students took away from those classes distaste for everything related to the concepts of ‘logic’ and the associated ‘fallacies’. That is unfortunate and is perhaps an indication of why it is so important for all individuals to become self-actualizing self-learners after their school daze is over.

This wonderful phrase “the ubiquity of ambiguity” I found on a web site that I think all individuals who understand the importance of CT (Critical Thinking) might wish to visit.
Logical Fallacy: Ambiguity

What I am trying to say is that the folks living in the early days had to know the habits of the wolf and the bear to survive. Today we have to know the habits of those who wish to manipulate us by using logical fallacies.

[modest]

Originally Posted by coberst

The straw man fallacy is an often used fallacy in the United States because American citizens have a low level of intellectual sophistication.

One recent use of this fallacy is that Guantanamo detainees are terrorists and thus too dangerous for detention on American soil.

What's the strawman? If person A says "Terrorists are not too dangerous to be kept in American prisons" while person B says "Terrorists are too dangerous to be kept in American prisons" then there's no straw man. On the other hand...

If person A says "Regardless of how dangerous a terrorist is, they should be kept in American prisons because international law demands it" and person B responds: "You don't think terrorists are dangerous, but they blew up the twin towers on 9-11, so you're wrong and terrorists should not be let into American prisons." That would be a strawman.

Is that what you were thinking, Coberst?

~modest

[lemit]

Mr. Straw Man and I go way back. Trust me.

I first met the Straw Man in therapy some 40 years ago. He was introduced to me as psychological. I'm not sure the social or political context works. Straw-man by proxy? Okay, maybe. But I still prefer to think of the Straw Man as the adult equivalent of the monster under the bed. (We could do a whole thread on things we expect children to grow out of, although we as adults never do.)

Assuming Straw-Man-by-proxy works, I notice that Wiki's folk etymologies omit an obvious one: the scarecrow. "The Wizard of Oz" aside, I can't think of a better example of a straw-based artifice designed to scare.

But I still think the Straw Man works best as a self-realized psychological construct, a particular type of self-fulfilling prophecy that the Wiki examples illustrate pretty well. If it is externalized, it still should be fully believed by the creator of the construct. It can't be cynically created for the purpose of manipulation. That's something else.

Demonizing, witch-hunting, and red-baiting aren't Straw-Man arguments. The Straw Man is both more and less real than those artifices: more real to the person creating him; less real to everyone else.

Does that make sense? Or am I turning the difficulty of explaining this into a Straw Man?

--lemit

p.s. I just noticed some straw under my bed. I wonder what that could mean.

[coberst]

modest

Well said! I shall use your example when others ask for more explanation. Thank you.

I would make a little change and would say--If person A says these detaines should be kept in American prisons because international law and American values and law demands it" and person B responds: "You don't think terrorists are dangerous, but they blew up the twin towers on 9-11, so you're wrong and terrorists should not be let into American prisons." That would be a strawman.

[coberst]

lemit

I am inclined to say that you make the matter more complex than need be. Such complexity scares away just those peole who need to understand this fallacy.

[lemit]

Originally Posted by coberst

The early settlers had to learn the sign and behavior of the wolf and bear but it is the informal fallacy that today’s citizen must learn. When not recognized the manipulative sophistication of those who wish to control our society will cause us similar damage.

Those members of our early American settlers were required to understand many things about their natural habitation in order to survive. These early frontier settlers had primarily natural conditions that threatened their existence. They worried about and learned to understand the signs of the wolf and the bear also the clouds and the weather in general. Their survival depended upon it.

Today our well being, if not our very survival, depends upon our ability to understand the society we live in and the fellow citizens that occupy our space with us. Our needs for understanding our environment especially that part of it that contains fellow citizens has become acute because our fellows have become expert at manipulating our environment. If we do not understand how these things are being manipulated we are the losers.

Ah, legend and folklore.

Can we stipulate that modern "Urban Legends" are just plain legends? It is we who are urban. The legends follow us, like a wolf in a suit.

Like Straw Men, legends are more and less real than artifices designed to deceive someone else, although to work the artifices must resonate with legends. But legends, more than artifices like, for example, advertising, must seem to have been experienced by someone just like us to work.

Recently my barber told me that a barber a few counties away, someone he had met and who had told him the story directly, had encountered a nest of spiders in cornrow hair. Discounting the absurdity of the idea that hair that doesn't conceal much of anything could somehow conceal spiders and fighting the shock of having stumbled upon a fossil of a legend, I explained that the spider-in-the-hair legend goes back to the first bouffant hairstyles of the Seventeenth (?) Century and had been attached to every new hairstyle since, particularly the ones that would mean less work for haircutters. He wasn't impressed, because the barber who had told him the story had actually talked to the barber who had seen the spiders. Ah, reality. How elusive you can be.

So, that kind of psychological reality is much more effective because it fits into a space we already have inside our psyches. (That's why I always told my writing students they had to make their fiction more real than any non-fiction could ever be.)

Legends, good fiction, and Straw Men need to be self-realized.

--lemit

[Ben]

Sorry folks, I'm lost

What has this discussion to do with physics or math?

I know I'm the new boy here, I just want get a feel for the "rules"

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by Ben

What has this discussion to do with physics or math?

Seems more of a socio-political matter to me.

Originally Posted by coberst

What I am trying to say is that the folks living in the early days had to know the habits of the wolf and the bear to survive. Today we have to know the habits of those who wish to manipulate us by using logical fallacies.

Actually I wouldn't say it's only today nor just in the USA. Influential people everywhere have always done their best to manipulate the masses. Oftentimes it works not only with the less intellectual. Resort to logical fallacy relies on how people are not typically so logical but also on laziness; folks who simply can't be bothered with distinguishing arm from a. h. will always fall for it.

[CraigD]

It’s hard for me to decide if the original post of this thread asks a question about informal logic, or US law, policy and politic, so I’ll go with the safe assumption that it asks questions about both.

The informal logic question
The straw man fallacy, which I think can be more aptly termed, the “straw man rhetorical technique”, as the quote from its wikipedia article states, is an informal fallacy, meaning it’s not an error in formal, mathematically provable logic, but a catch-all name for vaguer, more complicated sociological and perceptual phenomena. A key feature of a SMRT is that it requires intentionality on the part of its author, who must not only “substitute a superficially similar” but significantly different proposition in place of his opponent’s actual proposition, but must be aware of the difference, not merely be making an error due to misunderstanding his opponent.

Considering Coberst’s proposition,

Originally Posted by coberst

The straw man fallacy is an often used fallacy in the United States because American citizens have a low level of intellectual sophistication.

“American citizens have a low level of intellectual sophistication” is an example of a statement so poorly qualified – lacking modifier such as “some” and “all” – that it’s ambiguous, and subject to be interpreted as “All American citizens have a low level of intellectual sophistication”. This interpretation is an example of a formal fallacy of distribution, where an attribute of some member of a collection is assumed to be true of all members.

If we interpret its second clause as “many American citizens have a low level of intellectual sophistication”, then Coberst’s proposition has richer meaning, because the assumed lack of intellect of most Americans implies that most of them are unable to recognize the SMRT’s misrepresentation of an original proposition, so the technique is “often used” by a few Americans to persuade many.

The US law, policy and politic question

Originally Posted by coberst

One recent use of this fallacy is that Guantanamo detainees are terrorists and thus too dangerous for detention on American soil.

As a question of US law and policy, the current controversy over the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is, I believe, at heart one of Constitutional Law.

Were the people imprisoned at GITMO imprisoned in a US state or federal jail or penitentiary, they would be subject to State or US law, which in turn must conform with the US Constitution. As article 1 section 9 of the Constitution states

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it

and as neither case of rebellion in nor invasion of the US is at present existent, these people would be legally entitled to be either charged in a US court with a crime or released. There is simply no provision in US law that allows people to be imprisoned without being charged with a crime or incapacity (eg: insanity or senility), regardless of how dangerous or bad they are.

If charged, Amendment 8 would apply, which states

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

As nearly all of the GITMO detainees were arrested outside of the US, many without witnesses to any criminal act by them, it’s unlikely that many of them could be charged with a crime in US court.

Some US politicians have argued that the moving of GITMO detainees to US jails and penitentiaries would pose a risk to public safety, not so much because detainees might escape, but because supporters of them might attempt to break them out, or use bomb threats or hostage taking to force their release. These politicians, IMHO, are guilty of the making emotionally charged appeals to fear that obscures more important legal issues.

I agree with the position of the ICRC as quoted in the GITMO wikipedia article:

Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third [Geneva] Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, [or] a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can fall outside the law.

In believe that in rejecting this position, US officials blundered badly in the legal reasoning that supported the use of GITMO, an error that may have severe and long-lasting consequences, and which I believe should be addressed and remedies as soon as possible.

[coberst]

Craig

That is a great post! I shall quote it to others.