About a year ago, I had an online discussion (not on this board and not with anyone on this board, as far as I know), regarding the merits of a certain corporation which we will call X. My opponent shall be known as B.
B’s argument seemed to imply that X lied to its customers, so I asked him straight out “Why would X lie to us? They have no reason to do so”. And I was right.
B’s response was to list a bunch of companies that had lied to its stock-holders and customers (for sensible reasons, which, as far as I could see, X didn’t have) and say “If these companies would lie, why wouldn’t X?”.
In other words, he shifted focus from why X would lie to if X would lie. I didn’t dispute that X would lie if they had a good reason, but in this case, they hadn’t.
That doesn’t quite fit, I think. If he’d said “these two corporations lied, so obviously X lies too”, then it would have fit. He made it sound as if I had said “X wouldn’t lie, they’re too nice” when in fact I said “X wouldn’t lie, they have no reason”.
Maybe it’s not a logical fallacy, but more of a shady debate technique.
Well, he’s misrepresenting your position. You’re not arguing that X can’t lie, just that they have no reason to.
When he responds to an argument that you didn’t make up, it’s called a straw man argument, in other words, he’d be “tearing down a straw man”.
There might be something more particular that applies to your case, dealing specifically with him saying ‘well, if they did it, then X did it’, but in general, if he’s attacking an argument you didn’t make, it’s called a straw man.
Definition:
In an analogy, two objects (or events), A and B are shown to
be similar. Then it is argued that since A has property P, so
also B must have property P. An analogy fails when the two
objects, A and B, are different in a way which affects whether
they both have property P.
He’s arguing that company X and companies Y, Z and A are all similar and that, since Y, Z, and A have the property of lying, then so does X.
I don’t think it is a clear-cut type of fallacy, except possibly ‘changing the subject’. There is a whiff of ‘begging the question’ (why wouldn’t X), mingled with a hint of equivocation (rephrasing your ‘why wouldn’t X’ with ‘why wouldn’t X’).
Yeah, straw man doesn’t precisely describe what’s happening here, but it is the term in general for when someone attacks an argument that you didn’t make, so that they could defeat it.
Perhaps we should call it the “Dan The Illogical Scientist” fallacy, as in the character from “Dilbert,” because that’s who I immediately thought of when I read the OP.
I think this is more like two ships crossing in the night, neither aware of the other.
B made the claim – a corporation lied, it is up to him to give evidence of it.
You made a counterclaim, they had no reason to lie, it’s up to you to give evidence there is no reason. Also inherent in your claim, is that there MUST be a reason to lie. This is counter to my experience, some people(so why not some companies) lie without any apparent reason.
