Saturday, June 18, 2011

It's either a fallacy or it isn't

The PolitiFact Matrix is on a roll this week.

The latest victim:


Why would PolitiFact allow the appearance that they censor the comments of conservatives?  Beats me, but there it is.

And, as usual, here's the comment for the sake of spiders and the like, reformatted into Blogese:

@ Bill Benson, who wrote:
You camouflaged your point well... took you several quotes, a few snarks, a hyperlink, and a second post to get there.
Some people would immediately see the reductio ad absurdum, where JoAnn is confronted with a conclusion she would probably prefer to avoid.
Go back and read your original post.
I count one quotation consisting of a single sentence with an accompanying link. I'm not sure how you came up with your numbers. Maybe you're counting the succeeding post as well, though that makes it hard to see why you mentioned the second post separately at the end. Nor do I see "several snarks."
is not equivalent something like 'who knows how long they waited before publishing?' Articulating the only logical inferences from a poorly-argued point doesn't constitute a fallacy (false choice or otherwise). Declaring a fallacy doesn't make it so.
Likewise, denying that it is a fallacy while claiming to have articulated "the only logical inferences from a poorly-argued point" doesn't make it so. But the latter does make an excellent description of the false choice fallacy where at least one other option exists. If you don't think that showing JoAnn a case where her logic leads to a conclusion that is improbable at best (Wisconsin Democrats participating in the PFW boycott ought to receive the type of suspicion she was prepared to apply to Rick Santorum qualifies as a logical inference from what I wrote then I'd be eager to hear your explanation.

But it probably makes more sense for you to just admit that you argued fallaciously.

No comments:

Post a Comment