Ok for the first time I read that flame subforum on here and it reminded me of something.
I’m trying to figure out what is the official categorization of this logical fallacy is, if it is one. You see this a LOT. Here is my first example, and I made these both up, they have nothing to do with any particular issue.
Dude: (Slightly angry) I tried to see ‘Wolfman’ in the theater, but a crying baby was there. Babies don’t belong in the theatre [they ruin the movie]
Other Dude: (With smug accentuation) All babies cry in the movie theatre?
OR ALTERNATIVELY:
Dude: (Somewhat disgusted with attitude) I went to lay down and study on the grass behind McPherson Hall, and this fat person took their shirt off. I was like, eww.
Other Dude: (With smug feeling of righteousness) Why don’t we ban everyone from campus who has an extra ounce of fat or more?
So are either of these logical fallacies? If so, are they ‘straw man’, or does that only apply when the attacker is using an unfair target?
What I’d say about this is that the Other Dude gave an uncharitable interpretation to Dude’s claim. If taken literally, what Dude said does imply that all babies cry in the movie theater. But you’d have to assume Dude is really, really stupid to think that that’s what Dude meant. It’s clear what he means is that having a baby in the theater raises the probability of the movie being ruined by an unacceptable amount.
In my experience, the smug accentuation you mention signals that Other Dude is really attempting to score rhetorical points rather than engage in a cooperative truth-seeking endeavor.
This could also be understood as Other Dude interpreting Dude’s utterances uncharitably. It seems a little different, though. In the previous example, Other Dude took Dude’s utterance unfairly literally. In this example, Other Dude takes Dude’s utterance to be intended to be justified by being an instance of a generalization (namely, the generalization “all people with an extra ounce of fat or more are disgusting,”) when in fact that generalization is so obviously false that you’d have to assume Dude is a complete moron in order to ascribe it to him.
Similarly to the first case, this kind of uncharitable reading tends to happen when the motivation is to score rhetorical points without concern for truth-seeking.
Although in my previous post I said Other Dude is “ascribing” views to Dude, in truth, I don’t think that from the brief dialogues we can tell whether Other Dude is ascribing views to Dude or else claiming that Dude is rationally committed to certain views (i.e., without necessarily actually holding those views). If it’s the former, then it is indeed a straw man fallacy. If the latter, then not.
The first one is not a fallacy at all. If we descend into specifics the discussion will turn into a debate about crying babies which I don’t think is the intent. But put generically its:
1/ I experienced an instance of x causing problem y. Response z should follow.
2/ Not all x cause problem y. (Impliedly) Z is consequently not an appropriate response.
There is nothing inherently wrong with 2/ at all.
As to your second example this is a straight strawman.
Permit me to extend the argument a little. First Dude wasn’t really presenting an argument in the second case: he was simply emoting. In the first case he was presenting a policy prescription based solely on his irritation. Second Dude probably wanted to tell First Dude to stop being an intolerant prick, but he also didn’t want to sound like a school marm. So 2D reached for a dominance display: he tried to make 1D look foolish with an uncharitable and bogus reading of his statements.
(FTR: I tend to agree more with first Dude, in the 2nd case with apology, in the first case without.) Incidentally, the OP seems to be a question directed at rhetoricians as well.
2/ is oddly nonempirical. If x causes y 99% of the time, it is true that not all x causes problem y. But sound policy is typically grounded on cost-benefit considerations: a few exceptions or even a lot of exceptions don’t necessarily affect the appropriate prescription.
Except that 2 is not what the OP said. In the OP’s situation, person 2 says that person one made the claim that all babies cry. Person 1 did not make that claim. It’s a strawman.
As you phrased it, person 2 isn’t arguing against a claim that person 1 made. Suppose person 1 feels that it’s very rare that a baby cries in a theater, but that it is such an egregious offense that banning of all babies was warranted.
The following scenario is exactly analogous to the situation in the OP, right? The strawman is clear.
A: I saw a person drink, and then crash his car. Drinking and driving should be banned.
B: Not every person that drinks crashes their car!
Reductio ad absurdem isn’t a fallacy; it’s a perfectly valid logical technique. You use it to prove something’s false, by assuming it’s true, and showing that that leads to a contradiction.
That’s why I said “inherently”. Of course it may be sound policy to implement response z. It’s just not a logical fallacy to suggest that, given that x doesn’t always cause y, response z is inappropriate.
The problem is that much is implied. The first person is impliedly saying that it is appropriate to impose response z on all instances of x so that y doesn’t happen. They don’t say this but it’s logically implicit. The second person is making the point they don’t think this is appropriate because not all instances of x cause y. The second person is almost certainly not suggesting that the first person actually meant or said that all x cause y (which would be a strawman). They are asking a rhetorical question precisely because the answer to the rhetorical question is known by both speakers to be “no”. And the second person’s point clearly is, given that everyone agrees that not all x cause y, z is not an appropriate response.
So the actual implied point being made by the second person precisely opposes the actual implied position of the first person, which is not a logical fallacy or a strawman.
If there is any logical fallacy in the first scenerio, it is Dude making a generalization fallacy by assuming one baby crying/ruining the movie applies to all babies. Other Dude is merely pointing out the fallacy
No, not that for any x, y, and z – just for these particular x, y, and z, which is certainly a sensible thing to say. You can argue “since not all babies in theatres cry, banning babies from theatres is not an appropriate response to some babies crying” without arguing “since not all drunk drivers crash, banning drunks from driving is not an appropriate response to some drunk drivers crashing.”
That’s not the argument being made then. The argument being made is then “it’s not that big a deal if some x do y, so z is inappropriate.” That’s a different argument.
The second example seems to be someone taking a statement to a ridiculous extreme. If the reply in the first example was changed to ‘All babies should be killed’ it would be more like this - Is there a name for that type of argument?
