Straw man arguments

So called “straw man” arguments are even more common than ad hominem attacks in conversational discourse. They are equally underhand and equally logically invalid (the conclusions drawn don’t follow from the premises). I met somebody yesterday (a member of the political party UKIP - some of whose policies I actually agree with) who not only spoke extremely loudly but deployed so many straw man arguments that I had trouble keeping up with them all.

So, without further ado, what is a straw man argument? It is a gross simplification and misrepresentation - usually an extreme version - of an opponent’s position, either created deliberately or because of lack of comprehension that positions can be complex. In the most dishonourable cases it will be deliberate. The simplified position is easier to knock down, hence it is often chosen in preference to the true position.

This is bound to be annoying for the opponent (much to the glee of the proponent, one often suspects) because:

1. Their views are being (perhaps deliberately) misrepresented
2. Their actual argument is not being addressed
3. The argument is not proceeding (time is being wasted)
4. The proponent is behaving as if they have “won a point” when they have not

Examples of straw man arguments:

Person 1: “I think there should be more CCTV in society.”
Person 2: “You want a totalitarian state.”

Person 1: “I don’t have a problem with identity cards.”
Person 2: “You trust everyone in the government.”

Person 1: “I’m morally concerned with the problems in society.”
Person 2: “You think all of society is bad.”

And so on.

Straw man arguments should be exposed for what they are as soon as possible, but we are reluctant to be too damning of those who deploy them, because we never know if they are deliberately being underhand or simply cannot grasp the position as stated. These kind of arguments always involve rash assumptions, at best, however, so are never admirable.

I pointed out to my own “opponent” yesterday that he was deploying straw man arguments and entirely misrepresenting my position, probably willfully. To make matters worse, his response was to then deploy two other underhand tactics often used by those who see arguments as more an exercise in ego than an co-operative attempt to establish the truth:

1. Denying he had made statements of one minute ago
2. Accusing me in playground style - without any foundation - of having used the same tactics (as if two wrongs would ever in any case make a right)

It is at this point that we might rightly feel extremely annoyed, and I often wonder how people such as Richard Dawkins manage to keep their cool against others who are not arguing properly. That some people apparently want to argue for the sake of argument itself instead of for the sake of truth is truly a source of regret.

For the Wikipedia entry on straw man arguments, see here and for an excellent article on logical fallacies in general, see here.