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Some ad hominem attacks are not fallacies. Suppose, hypothetically, that someone presents highly credible evidence accusing a candidate for Minister of Health and Welfare of cheating on her medical exams. Such an attack is unquestionably an attack on the candidate, but is clearly relevant to her potential role as head of the ministry. Thus, the argument is not a fallacious ad hominem argument.
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21.2.2.2 An Argument of Straw An argument of straw is another kind of fallacy that fails to meet the criterion of relevance. It fails to meet that criterion by intentionally misinterpreting an opponent’s argument. The fallacy occurs when a debater construes the argument of another to be other than what it is, then, attacks the misconstrued argument rather than the actual argument. Following the metaphor of “argument of straw,” the debater reconstructs the original argument into a weaker argument of straw, then attacks that argument rather than the original one.
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For instance, someone might oppose the death penalty because of the risk of executing an innocent person, particularly because, once a person’s life is taken, it can never be given back. A critic using a straw-person fallacy might respond: “Your stand not to penalize murderers because an innocent person might be punished is irrational. We might as well open the doors of all prisons and let everyone go to avoid convicting an innocent person.” That response uses a straw-person argument because the argument that the debater is attacking is not the original argument made by the other debater. The original debater did not suggest that the risk of convicting an innocent person means we should never convict anyone, but rather that we should not use a punishment that takes a life because life can never be restored.
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21.2.2.3 A Red Herring Fallacy A red herring fallacy is another argument that shifts the focus away from the current discussion in order to sidestep or even end that discussion. An argument that is similar to but different from the one involved in the current discussion is introduced in the hopes that the topic of the discussion will be changed in ways that are irrelevant to the original.
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The red herring fallacy was originally named for a practice used in English foxhunts. At the end of the hunt, the hunters would place a herring on the path of the fox so that the hounds would lose track of the fox. A red herring argument is similarly designed to cause debaters to lose track of the important issues.
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In the 2004 US presidential election, two of the main issues were the US economy and the war in Iraq. Not wanting to discuss those main issues, one party introduced policies in the US congress to ban gay marriage. In this case, the media and much of the electorate began to focus on gay marriage and discontinued the discussion of the original issues of economy and war.
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The three above issues are examples of arguments that are fallacious because they fail the criterion of relevance. Of course, many other ways to avoid that criterion are possible. A few of them are briefly defined below.
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21.2.2.4 Poisoning the Well Poisoning the well is a fallacious argument that attempts to discredit a person or a source in advance of their argument. “Dr. Summers is a Republican. We can only expect her to be against affirmative action.”
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21.2.2.5 Guilt by Association Guilt by association is a fallacious attempt to attack a person’s argument not on the issues pertinent to the argument, but on the basis of groups and people with whom the person is associated. “How can we possibly support Ms. Cooper’s views on the economy? After all, she married a capitalist.”
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21.2.2.6 An Appeal to Fear It involves an attempt to invoke fear to take the focus off the argument. An appeal to fear is only fallacious when fear is used solely to shift the focus from the issue. For example, “If we elect my opponent, we should all build bomb shelters for our families immediately and prepare to be attacked because my opponent has very little foreign policy experience.”
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21.2.2.7 An Appeal to Popularity It uses the popularity of a person, product, or belief to justify a favorable conclusion about that person, product or belief. For example, “Most Serbs support President Boris Tadic. So should you.”
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21.2.2.8 An Appeal to Tradition It attempts to argue in favor of a particular action on the grounds of tradition rather than on the basis of the merits of that action. For example, “The US Constitution has allowed citizens to possess guns for the past 200 years, so we should continue to do so for the next 200 years.”
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The previous fallacies include arguments that fail to meet the conditions of relevance. The fallacies in the next section include those that fail to meet the conditions of sufficiency.
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思辨精英：英语辩论-构筑全球视角 [:1705132538]
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21.2.3 Hasty Conclusions
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The general fallacy category of hasty conclusions is sometimes called “jumping to a conclusion.” This general category of fallacies is one wherein all of the evidence and arguments that the debater offers, taken in combination with one another, do not meet the test of sufficiency.
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Those arguments may not meet the test of sufficiency because the evidence was not systematically gathered, because the sampling of evidence was not systematic, or the debater ignored the presence of contrary evidence (Johnson and Blair, 2006: 70-72). The following examples are ones where an argument is relevant to the claim that the debater is making, but the evidence supporting the claim is relevant, but not sufficient. As a result, they are classified under the general category of hasty conclusion. Two common examples and a few other less common examples will be discussed.
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21.2.3.1 Hasty Generalization The first example, is a fallacy of reasoning by example. Arguments commit that fallacy when the examples selected to support the claim are insufficient either in number or in their representativeness.
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Earlier, a sample argument about genetically engineered foods (GEF) was discussed. In that case, the claim made was that GEF are dangerous to human health. Five examples of GEF were presented as evidence. But, the selection of only five examples from the hundreds of available examples of GEF is not enough to prove the link between the evidence and the general claim of the danger of GEF. Thus, this example is a hasty generalization.
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