Fallacy/rhetorical trick

Is there a name for the rhetorical trick of simply announcing to the world that you have won some dispute, even though your opponents have not given up, continue to defend their own position, and continue to make seemingly cogent objections to your position?

Lying.

Well, right, but I was hoping for something more specific (and maybe something a bit more formal and imposing sounding).

Intentional Error of Facts; Bluffing. Google “fallacious arguments.”

I don’t know if there is another name for it, but “propaganda” would seem to fit the bill here to some extent.

There are some posters who spring to mind who use this ‘technique’. “Asked and answered” in response to a re-stated question which has clearly not been (fully) answered would appear to be a sub-species of this.

I think that would fall under false authority and/or special pleading. So “O’Reilly, William” for examples of type.

Stranger

For these threads I’d recommend A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms by Richard A. Lanham. It’s been reissued repeatedly, but that link has the cheapest used copy at $0.01.

Lanham lists about 1000 terms, many of which are duplicates, but there’s a handier sorting by type in the back. A quick perusal didn’t find anything quite like the OP. You don’t really need a special term, either. It’s either lying or self-delusion. It therefore doesn’t rise to the level of classical rhetoric.

Big Lie.

Since **gms453 **answered the question in the first post, and since **njtt **said “right” ten minutes later and has not since returned, I suggest the mods close this thread as soon as possible.

Well, it may not rise to the level of classical rhetoric, but it seems to be quite effective in some circumstances. I have an example in mind from a current scientific debate (I would rather not be too too specific) where it really seems to be working quite well.

Two guys (plus various others who have intervened on either side) have been arguing a certain issue for about 40 years now. Both of them are well known and respected in the field, and the dispute itself is well known and the importance of the issue is recognized. However, I think few others (I am an exception) have bothered to follow the debate very closely since the early 1980s.

One of the disputants (let’s call him guy A), who dominates the sub-field, largely through being extremely prolific, has been announcing that the debate ought to be considered as over, and that he has won, since the early to mid 1990s, but since that time, his somewhat less prolific opponent has nevertheless published two books, one very major (and quite widely read) paper and several lesser ones rebutting guy A’s arguments and restating and developing his own. (Over the same period, guy A has also published numerous relevant articles, and a book, which again makes the claim that he has won. I have recently come across a number of people from adjacent fields that are affected by the issue who seem to take him at his word.)

Now I happen to think that they are both wrong in important ways, but most people in the field (most of whom got bored with closely following the seemingly irreconcilable argument years ago) clearly think that one or the other of them have got to be right, and clearly more of them think that it is probably guy A. In that sense, I suppose it is fair to say that he is winning, although guy B certainly has not given up, and does have some supporters. The thing is, as I see it, although guy A has some decent arguments on his side, he also relies on some very sloppy ones, and his dominance of the debate arises large from his incredibly prolific publishing, and his use of fallacious arguments and rhetorical tricks like this one. It is not the only one. He has certainly, and very effectively, committed the straw man fallacy against guy B on at least two crucial occasions, and against other more peripheral actors in the debate (including me). He has also sometimes misrepresented the nature and implications of some of his own work, to his position’s advantage, and repeatedly equivocated about many details of his theoretical position. (I am in two minds as to whether, and to what extent, he commits his fallacies consciously and deliberately. I used to think it was just that he was, in some respects, dumb - although he is obviously very smart in most ways - but over recent years I have increasing begun to suspect that a lot of it is quite conscious and deliberate. I have lost most of the respect for him that I once had.)

So far as I can see, guy B (who is not me, and is not a personal friend) has always done his best to argue rigorously and fairly, but it ain’t doing him any good. A big part of his trouble is that he has not been able to provide a very detailed and convincing alternative to guy A’s theory, only a general framework for what such a theory should be like. (Guy A’s theory is highly elaborated and full of detail. The trouble is that, when you look closely, a lot of the details contradict one another, and a lot of them seem to be based on nothing but unsupported speculation.) Thus most of guy B’s arguments boil down to pointing out fundamental flaws in guy A’s position (and some of the equivocations and more minor inconsistencies), and showing how plausible alternative explanations are available for the evidence that guy A adduces in his own support. (In my opinion, many, though not all, of these criticisms are spot on, but I am not keen about the alternative theoretical approach that guy B sketches.)

I, as a peripheral actor in this debate, would like to be able to call out guy A on some of his (as I have come to see it) underhanded tactics, and, in particular, the one that I have asked about. However, you can’t outright accuse someone of lying in the scholarly literature (not in this field, anyway), and I am not sure he is lying, exactly: he may believe his own propaganda, and really feel that he should have won by now, and that guy B ought to have given up long ago.

Thus I need a politer way to say it. If I could say he is committing some named fallacy, or is using some specific rhetorical trick (especially if it has a Latin name), that would do nicely.

Well, I thought I made it clear, in post #3, that I found **gms453 **'s answer, though not technically incorrect, distinctly unhelpful. I want to know what to call this particular sort of lie. My “right” was intended distinctly ironically.

And since when has been thought appropriate to close threads just because the OP waits a few hours before replying. What the heck is your issue here? :mad:

Whoosh. Rhythmdvl was clearly making a joke there, by illustrating the very rhetorical technique the thread is about.

I take it the debate is in a fairly well-established area njtt, such that they’re not arguing about the data? It’s about theory v theory on established data. If that’s the case and you want to take Guy A on, then it’s ‘just’ a question of thinking up the right experiment that can add clear weight of evidence to one side or the other. Obv such an experiment would have been done years back if it was easy to come up with, but really isn’t that what it’s all about? Framing a scientific argument in terms of fallacious arguments, straw men etc, sounds odd to me. Not that the scientific literature is above such tactics, far from it, but it’s all a sideshow relative to who has the data / killing experiment on their side.

Give him some line. You have your drag set too tight, if your not careful your going to loose him!

Rhetoric doesn’t have a term for it, but the Internet does. This technique in specific is called Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law):

The flip side to this is when the debate goes in circles for decades upon decades because one side keeps bringing up the same many-times-refuted arguments to maintain a façade of genuine debate long after every educated and honest observer has stopped arguing and come down in favor of one specific position.

Yeah. I’m pretty sure he was giving an up-to-the-moment example of what your OP was about…

In fact I’m sure of it. No need for anyone to reply to this…

The above line is another example

:wink:

After reading njtt’s “i’m-not-telling-you-what-it’s-all-about” post, now i want to know what it’s all about :slight_smile:

I second the motion!

And I would also like to say, I’m quite impressed with Frumpy Jones statistics, here on the Straight Dope. A member since 2000 and only 182 posts. That’s gotta be a record, of some kind! :cool:

People used to joke about Vietnam that we should “declare victory and go home”. Seems like the same sort of idea.

So, to get this straight. Your opponent asserts, without justification, that he has won and you have lost.

You seek a handy-dandy little [del]spell[/del] fallacy to make it clear that, in fact, you have won and it is he who lost.

The spell you seek, of course, is “No U.”

Yes, I am being glib and once again reiterating that effective rhetoric and sound argumentation involves a lot more heavy lifting that just looking up a snappy fallacy-label out of some misbegotten catalogue.

Why has the person asserted that they have won the debate? Is his opponent just reasserting points already disposing and not acknowledging that they have been handled satisfactorily? Is a matter where there are good arguments on both sides, neither one seems to be particularly well-favored, and one course of action or another has to be adopted?

Instead of replying to your victory-declaring opponent, “Says you,” why not explain why there remain open questions. This is the more important task, not conjuring up some jargony taxonomy of fallacies.