> the 'fallacy fallacy': Thinking that the presence of a logical fallacy in an argument implies that its thesis is incorrect.
It's worse than that. Paying too much attention to rigour and the mathematical validity of arguments unduly privileges strict logical argumentation over "traditional" informal argumentation.
Outside of technical areas there are almost no arguments amenable to pure logical argumentation. Think about it - why would you be arguing over something that can be mechanically deduced with certainty? In most circumstances logical syllogisms and the like are used only as "glue" to hold the real argument together.
We should recognise that arguments using these "fallacies" don't have absolute persuasive power, but we shouldn't go so far as to say that they can have no persuasive power at all.
I think pointing out a fallacy can sometimes be a good defense against somebody who is insisting that something is a mechanical certainty when it is not.
It's worse than that. Paying too much attention to rigour and the mathematical validity of arguments unduly privileges strict logical argumentation over "traditional" informal argumentation.
Outside of technical areas there are almost no arguments amenable to pure logical argumentation. Think about it - why would you be arguing over something that can be mechanically deduced with certainty? In most circumstances logical syllogisms and the like are used only as "glue" to hold the real argument together.
We should recognise that arguments using these "fallacies" don't have absolute persuasive power, but we shouldn't go so far as to say that they can have no persuasive power at all.