Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 9

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September 9

Is there a word for...

...misrepresenting another person's argument in an exaggerated way, and then arguing against that position.

I find it happens quite a lot here, and elsewhere where debates occur, and have been wondering if there is a simple, relatively polite word or term for the practice. HiLo48 (talk) 11:31, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Aunt Sally, or straw man. DuncanHill (talk) 11:37, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

"Oh sure, like every argument you ever made has been exaggerated by others just so they can shoot you down. You must be paranoid to think that !" :-) StuRat (talk) 13:03, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Reductio ad absurdum? --TammyMoet (talk) 14:04, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Straw man and absurdum might both fit, depending on the specific argument, with the caveat that true RAA shouldn't "misrepresent" anything, but only deal with what is entailed by the premise. But whether a claim is (mis)representative is itself contentious! It's worth pointing out that Reductio ad absurdum is seen as a basically fair and logical way to debate, while straw man is seen as poor form, nearly (but not quite) a logical fallacy. Of course, the same argument will likely be classified as a straw man by the opponent, and absurdum by the proponent ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:47, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

  Strawman arguments are not logical fallacies, but rather informal fallacies based on starting from the wrong premise. Strawman arguments can be built on sound logic; they often are. Strawmen are based on the wrong axiom; but since the axiom is not itself being analyzed, merely accepted; it isn't subject to logical analysis. Axioms are presumed true. --Jayron32 18:03, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

"Reductio ad absurdum" (or in plain English, proof by contradiction) is just wrong; it's a form of proof, explained at the article. It amounts to "I will prove that X is true. Assume X is false; then (reasoning, reasoning, reasoning) and so we deduce Y, which we know is impossible. Therefore X must be true." People engaged in debate may express their claims as a reductio ad absurdum, but that's just a choice of form and irrelevant to whether they're reasoning from an invalid premise. Deliberately misrepresenting another person's claim in order to argue against it is indeed a "straw man" argument, as explained at that article. --65.94.51.64 (talk) 18:48, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Of course, there's a fine line between "misrepresenting another person's argument in an exaggerated way" and "representing another person's argument in an exaggerated way, only a hair's breadth short of misrepresenting it". A lot of argument can be found in that fine line. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:02, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, Jack represents the flaw in Aristotelian logic; it's a boolean condition: A thing is either A or not A according to classical logic thinking. The problem is that reality is not divided into two states; reality exists as a continuum of states between absolute truth and absolute falseness, and classical logic is built on the law of the excluded middle, whereas human experience exists solely in that middle. Classic Greek philosophy, which Western "logic" is built on, is full of these problems where simple propositions fall apart because of their simplicity. Zeno's paradoxes are built on the same presumption, they paradoxes only break down when you realize the axioms they are built on aren't realistic. --Jayron32 02:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)